Twitip

Twitter’s search engine is really one of it’s great features, and in this article I’m going to demonstrate some really cool searches you can do with it.

This is kind of a follow up to Thomas Baekdal’s excellent article here on Twitip “7 Secret Ways To Use Twitter Search” which you should check out as well.

1. Who’s saying stuff about me outside of Twitter?
This search will show you Tweets that people write about you or your company that link out to an external page. This is useful for finding what people are writing about you, or indeed when people link to your site without using your Twitter name
[your name|company] filter:links
Live example: mailchimp filter:links (more…)

By Neal Wiser. Follow him @nealwiser

NASA gets “Twitter Fever” and invites the public to a TweetUp at NASA Headquarters to honor the crew of STS-127.

I want to be an astronaut. Not “wanted,” as in it was my childhood dream. I want to be one. Ever since I was a kid I knew the difference between “LOX” and “lox” (LOX is liquid oxygen, a key ingredient of space shuttle fuel and is carried in the orange external fuel tank during a shuttle launch. Lox is smoked salmon and tastes great on a bagel with cream cheese).

I was not a normal kid.

But as badly as I want to be an astronaut, as much as I studied science and technical manuals of the shuttle’s flight controls, I chose another path, one that would ultimately bring me full circle to NASA Headquarters in Washington DC on September 24, 2009. On that date, NASA held a TweetUp. (more…)

The following is Part 4 of a series of posts by Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (Follow her @CrystalsQuest) You can also read Part 1 – Journaling and Part 2 – Link Lists or Part 3 – Conversations.

As blogging went mainstream, and more newcomers started flooding the market, the earliest bloggers were given a bit of momentum forward into the online equivalent of celebrity status – they were the trend-setters.

Not all of them took advantage of this push, though, while some of the newcomers rapidly adapted to blogging and took it by storm, getting their own place high up in the heirarchy with amazing speed.

The difference between these thought leaders and the majority of bloggers is the same difference we see affecting who gets promotions at work, makes it as a ’star’ in Hollywood, or even gets nominated to run the local Rotary Club.  It’s simply this: in order to lead others, you have to be willing to get out the front and lead others. (more…)

The following is Part 3 of a series of posts by Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (Follow Crystal @CrystalsQuest) You can read Part 1 of Lessons From The Evolution of Blogging – Journaling and Part 2 – Link Lists here.

The Blogging community grew bigger as more blogs were started, and existing blogs shared the love by linking to them.  Of course if you know SEO, you’d know that this meant the search engines started paying attention to these, and more people started discovering blogs. The community stopped being small, but started to distinguish between the well known and established bloggers, and the newcomers who were still learning the ropes.

This is where conversations come in.  Bloggers would read a new post by someone, with their editorial comments on it, and write an answering post on their own blogs. Naturally, this added fuel to the SEO fire, as cross linking gave blog sites some serious weight.  As the art took off and gained momentum, and more people wanted to start blogging themselves, software started making it easier to create and update your blogs, and eventually the ability to comment was born.

Enter the era of interactivity. (Don’t try saying that after a few drinks, ok?) (more…)

This post follows up a post yesterday that explored Why Asking Questions on Twitter is a Powerful Technique.

OK – so asking questions is important – but are any questions OK on Twitter? What kind of questions work best?

Photo by Macarena C.

Here are a few tips for asking questions effectively on Twitter.

Keep Questions Relevant

The types of questions you should ask will depend upon the way you normally use Twitter. If you use it in a personal way then almost any question will work but if your use of Twitter is more focused upon exploring a topic or niche, or if you’re using it for business – you’ll want to keep your questions at least somewhat on topic.

Acknowledge Answers

Simply asking questions and ignoring the answers is something I’ve seen a number of Twitter users do as a strategy for building up follower numbers. The problem with this is that it can leave those who answer feeling a little ignored. Of course it is difficult to respond to every person who answers (last time I asked a question on Twitter I had 100 responses – it would have taken over my day to personally respond to each). A few ways of acknowledging answers that go beyond replying individually include:

• a general ‘thanks for your answers’ type tweet
• picking a few responses to retweet and highlight as key answers
• use answers publicly – for example you could pull the answers together and use them (or at least some of them) in a blog post (see below for an example of this)
• summarize findings – for example if you ask people a ‘yes or not’ question tweet the results – eg: ‘13 people said yes they’ve tweeted from the toilet and 16 said that they hadn’t’

(more…)

Photo by Macarena C.

If I had to list my top 10 ways that I’ve grown my own Twitter network – somewhere towards the top of that list I would share this simple – yet powerful tip.

Ask Questions

The act of consistently asking quality questions on Twitter can have a massive impact upon your network. Here’s 6 reasons why questions are so powerful:

1. Questions Signal to Followers that you are Interested

So many people use Twitter purely to ’shout’ at their followers. They rarely make space for people to interact. Questions send a signal to your followers (and potential followers) that you’re not just on Twitter to have a monologue – but that you’re interested in dialogue and conversation.

2. Questions Prompt Conversation

I find Twitter to be most effective when conversations evolve on it. One of the best ways to ‘get people talking’ is to ask them a question – particularly if it’s about themselves and their experience.

(more…)