Twitip

Define Your Purpose

Before you go changing anything around on your twitter profile to make it more professional you must decide what the purpose of the account is.

Is your purpose to connect with friends and family?
Is your purpose to share important updates to customers of your store or online business?
Is your purpose to attract potential clients and to give them an understanding of why they should choose your product or service?

If your purpose is only to connect with friends and family then you don’t really need to have a professional presence in my opinion.

But if your purpose is business related then the following steps will help you create a professional presence on twitter.

Sometimes people will have a personal and a business-related purpose for using twitter. In those cases I recommend having a personal twitter account and a separate business related account on twitter. (more…)

A while back we posted 181 Free Twitter Buttons, Badges, Widget and Counters to Help You Find Followers and now I just received notice of another great site to help you find even more free icons, badges, and graphic snippets to help you advertise your Twitter account on your website or social networking profile.

TwitterLogos boasts “the largest collection” but also allows graphic designers to submit their work to be featured on the site and get free advertising. There are many that I’ve seen before elsewhere, but many more that I haven’t. Check out this one, which would be great for anyone in the medical field.

Just a note: There are some in there that I noticed, especially those from Flickr, that are marked “All rights reserved.” So be careful… but most of them seem to be alright for use.

By Nathan Hangen, follow him @nhangen.

I know, it sounds strange in theory. But think about it like this: you spend a lot of time building a network on Twitter, engaging with your followers, and creating powerful partnerships, but what would happen if this single asset went belly up? You don’t put all of your cash into a single stock, so why should you invest all of your social capital in a single service?

Don’t get me wrong, I like Twitter, but I want to be prepared in the event that something kills my favorite social tool. I’ve never invested this much time in any other platform, nor have I met so many great people all over the world. Twitter excels at connecting people and helping them share ideas, but it can’t be the only way to connect, especially if your business or personal brand depends on it. (more…)

Jason Preston (@jasonp107) is the Director New Media at the Parnassus Group, hosts of 140: The Twitter Conference (@140tc)

Let’s face it, Twitter is all about search. Real time search. Why else would they redesign their home page to show off their search functionality? The amount of real-time information pulsing through their service at any given minute is impressive, to say the least.

But for all that, Twitter’s built-in search is a frustratingly limited tool, providing access to a very limited amount of the data set available via the web site or their API.

Enter TweepSearch, a search application built by Damon Cortesi that allows you to search through the profile information of over 10 million unique accounts.

Here are three things you can do with TweepSearch that you can’t do with Twitter Search: (more…)

By Kathy Colaiacovo of My Twitter VA – Follow her @mytwitrva

Twitter is now a daily part of television, radio and online news reports.  News reporters or hosts on television can be heard saying statements such as “…and on Twitter today…” or “send us a message on Twitter”.  It is becoming common place and many are jumping in the fray for good reason… when used properly, social media can be a great boon to your business.  The key words in that statement being “used properly”.

Outsourcing tasks to specialists who have the needed skills is a solution for many when it comes to launching on the various social media channels. Outsourcing works well because you hire someone to do work more efficiently than you can, giving you more time to work on your area of expertise. After all, your time is better spent directly on the revenue generating tasks so you can grow and prosper your business. (more…)

We received an email from Dan Zarrella, regarding the launch of his new site called TweetPsych (beta). You can read Dan’s blog post about the launch, or check out TweetPsych yourself.

From the site:

“TweetPsych uses two linguistic analysis algorithms (RID and LIWC) to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their tweets. The service analyzes your last 1000 tweets and works best on users who have posted more than 1000 updates. It also works best on accounts that are operated by a single user and use Twitter in a conversational manner, rather than simply a content distribution platform.”

This does sound very interesting, and you can see Darren’s results below:

Cognitive Content

1. Occupation & work
2. Senses
3. Present tense
4. Time
5. Upward motion
6. Media, entertainment & celebrities
7. Social processes
8. Past tense
9. Insight
10. Cognitive processes
11. Future tense
12. Tentative

Primordial, Conceptual and Emotional Content

1. Constructive behaviors
2. Social behavior
3. Abstract thought
4. Order

And for giggles, here are my results:

Cognitive Content

1. Present tense
2. Social processes
3. Tentative
4. Past tense
5. Self reference
6. Upward motion
7. Cognitive processes
8. Positive Feelings
9. Certainty
10. Negative emotions
11. Time

Primordial, Conceptual and Emotional Content

1. Social behavior
2. Abstract thought
3. Temporal References
4. Affection
5. Glory
6. Anxiety
7. Order
8. Audio sensations
9. Moral imperative

Looks like Darren’s pretty much all on the same alignment with his tweets, and I’m kind of all over the place! What do you think about your TweetPsych analysis?

by Jason Drohn, follow him at @jasondrohn

Twitter profiles are a dime a dozen. Anyone can sign up and start tweeting. Because Twitter locks down a lot of the customization options, it’s a bit harder to stand out from the crowd. The default backgrounds you find in your settings tab are nice, but they’re default! Everyone has access to them. Why settle for the standard background when you can do so much more.

What I’ve done is create 7 free Twitter backgrounds (in .PSD format) that you’re free to download and customize to your liking. I’ve also created a short tutorial on how to add your own pictures, text and information. If you have any questions, be sure to send me a message @jasondrohn and I’ll be sure to get back to you ASAP.

Anyway, here are the downloads:
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by Fredrickus Williford of Doctor Twitter. Follow him @BlackMediaProp

Many people think custom twitter backgrounds or themes with anything other than their business network profile and personal site links are not for the tech/business folks or only for the teenie-bopper Myspace crowd. I say it couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s 6 reasons why all Twitip readers should dispose of those generic Twitter backgrounds today! Why? Because you could start gaining more followers by connecting with your target audience and relating to your peers.

1.Identifying mutual interest in tastes and preferences. For example you may be one of the many Twitter Fail Whale fans or are interested in the TV show “Lost”. Guess what, there’s a background for that. Why wouldn’t you follow somebody with similar likes and interest? Isn’t that how we make friends in the real world? Twitter is no different.

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More and more businesses are looking to get onto Twitter – in this post Michael Gray shares some tips on how to get set up effectively.

As the popularity of micro-blogging continues to grow, it’s going to become a tool used by advertisers and marketers. In the same way that running a corporate or business blog is different from running a personal blog, running a corporate or business twitter profile is different from running a personal twitter profile.

Secure Your Name

Your username on twitter is limited to 15 characters, if your company name is 15 characters or less, or can be reasonably abbreviated to 15 characters or less secure it as soon as possible. Avoid using hyphens or underscores if possible, they almost always cause complications down the road. Even if you aren’t planning on using it right away, secure the name, as many people have had reported twitter is less than expeditious when addressing trademark issues.

If you have a large company and are going to have multiple people representing you, decide if you will be using one account also called a role account, or using multiple accounts. If you are using multiple accounts use a naming convention like IBMJoe or DellKathy. If you are using one account for multiple people don’t hide that fact. If it makes sense sign the tweet “@marysmith thanks for the tip ~john” or “@johnsmith thanks for letting us know ~ms”.

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Sara Rosso, digital strategist (@rosso) and Ms. Adventures in Italy shares some tips for optimizing your Twitter profile to increase your followers.

Since Twitter’s focus is on saying a lot with very little, it makes sense that the Twitter profile space is very brief and the default settings leave little room to present yourself in detail. It’s also the first and last thing potential followers will see before deciding to click “Follow” or to click away from your profile. Here’s a few tips to customize your profile so that potential followers will be convinced they can’t miss your Tweets!

1. Create a Custom Profile Page Background

Since the visual impact of your Twitter background is the strongest tool you have available, customize it to give people an eyeful of who you are.

You can make your own image on your computer and upload it under Settings – Design – Change Background Image. The first 200-250 pixels width on the left hand side is a great place to put additional profile information and list websites.

For a quick solution, you can create just the sidebar (250×700) as your background image with “no tile” selected. Then, modify the rest of the Twitter color scheme to complement it. You can use the first 200 pixels from the top for your picture or “header” for a possible logo and tagline.

The rest of the 400-500 vertical pixels should be used to tell others what you’re about and most importantly, what you’re looking for. Are you using Twitter to get business? To gather ideas for a project? To get feedback from customers? This is the best place to reflect your interests and other facets of your professional life if necessary, so that others can see it immediately.

Alternatively, you can use it to tell people how best to contact you like @garyvee who encourages people to email him instead of sending a Direct Message on Twitter.

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