In this post Jade Craven (@jadecraven) reviews Twitter Success Blueprint.

Before I interacted with Sarah on twitter, I was so jealous of her networking skills. She seemed to instinctively know what would connect with her twitter followers. She was doing awesome promotions, like selling follow Friday space on her forehead.

I was so excited when I heard she was writing Twitter Success Blueprint. She understands this space and has the knowledge to help individuals, and small business, avoid costly mistakes and attract clients.

The Twitter Success Blueprint consists of eight chapters and a bonus section.

The content:

The first two chapters cover the information you typically see in information products.

• THE TRUTH ABOUT TWITTER - The KEY to using social media for business
• BRANDING FOR SUCCESS - How to set up your Twitter page for business

She provided an awesome outline for understanding how twitter works for your business

• Tweets build curiosity
• You Build Relationships
• Traffic flows to your website.

I can testify to this statement – but it has further benefit. Traffic will follow from your followers relationships as well. A key example is this review. Sarah, Darren Rowse and I all belong to a Melbourne twitter group called Tweetupmellers. Prior to the tweetup, I recommended that Darren publish a review of Sarahs ebook, and offered to do it. Obviously, this was accepted.

This shows how far you can reach on twitter. One of the key ways to draw traffic to your website is through other peoples relationships. I have a core group of followers who I ask questions when I want specific information, such as sales page advice and new product releases. Targeting these people, the influencers, can get your content in front of a LOT more people. Twitter Success Blueprint will teach you how to do that.

The next two chapters contained some advanced tactics and really demonstrated how the Twitter Success Blueprint could be really useful for small business owners.

• FOLLOW FRENZY- How to build a massive list of targeted followers
• TWITTER FOR CORPORATE USE – How to leverage social media

In these chapters, she talks about the strategies she used to gain a lot of targeted followers.

However it is the chapter on corporate use that I can see having the most benefit. She gives tips on how corporations can engage their audience by being authentic and contributing back to the community. Many people on twitter are very wary of being sold too, so these chapters are a must read for success.

I have a couple of friends on twitter who are so overwhelmed. There is a fine line between promoting yourself and breaking the unspoken rules of twitter. That’s why the following two chapters were so useful:

• TWEET SUCCESS – How to create tweets that attract attention
• TWITTER ETIQUETTE – The social media rules of engagement

These two chapters will be really useful for the new users. I learned a lot from both chapters and I’ve been using twitter for a year!

Twitter etiquette is so important, because many users are quite ruthless with their unfollows. The success chapter focuses on writing tweets that your followers respond to. This includes adding personality, integrating twitter with other media and providing calls to action. I LOVED this chapter as it really focused on being tips on how to be useful and really connect with your community.

These tips were expanded on in the final two chapters:

• CONNECTION STRATEGIES – Unique ways to engage your followers
• MONETIZING YOUR TWEETS – Making money with Twitter

The section I found the most useful was how to make money with twitter. She discusses affiliate marketing, using twitter during a product launch and converting followers into leads.

These chapters are vital for anyone trying to make money from this service.

10 pages of bonus content

The bonus content wont be for every reader. It consists of:2 case studies as well as a Q&A with some members of her twitter community. I found it really fascinating, even if when couldn’t apply tips to my own situation.

Would I recommend it?

Definitely. I see so many businesses and individuals that are new to twitter and are accidentally alienating their followers by making very common faux pas. They are leaving money on the table when they could invest in their education and develop a strong twitter brand.

At $22, Twitter Success Blueprint is a bargain. There are many products out there that cost more but contain way less information.

Here’s to your twitter success.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Review of Twitter Success Blueprint

We all have our reasons for being active on Twitter, the popular micro-blogging site. Whether you want to grow the readership of your blog, want to connect with like-minded people, or simply want to socialise online, you have your reasons for being a member.

Today I want to look at Twitter from a different perspective, and cover seven uses for Twitter that can be highly useful but certainly aren’t very common.

1. Reputation Management

A few days ago Darren mentioned how Twitter have now tweaked their title tags which allows for higher search engine rankings for your profile name. This may seem like quite a small and irrelevant change to some, but those with their focus on reputation management will know this is a big change.

With the internet growing in popularity by the day, anyone can ‘Google’ your name and find out a lot of information about you, therefore it’s important that there are no negative results in the top 10 listings. If you are working on protecting yourself, you can build an optimised Twitter profile and update it regularly so that you cover one of those top spaces.

2. Product / Service Reviews

Have you ever wanted to find a product review from someone who doesn’t seem to be pushing the item as an affiliate? I know I have. A good way to do this is to use the Twitter Search Engine and type in exactly what you are looking for. Of course you won’t find results for everything, but when people are pleased or angry about a product or service, they are likely to want to share it with the world.

3. Testimonials

Whether you are promoting your own product, or you want some genuine reviews for a product you want to share with your followers / blog readers, then Twitter can be great for that. I’ve been considering doing a review for ‘The Sedona Method’ on my blog which is a personal development program that has literally changed my life.

I asked my Twitter followers what they thought of it and got some great responses. Now if I was to put a review of this on my site, I would have more people who ‘back up my claims’ which add to the social-proof of the offering.

4. Find Beta Testers for Products or eBooks

If you don’t have a blog or any other form of ‘audience’ online, it can be hard to get in touch with people who can help you test certain programs or even eBooks. Thanks to Twitter, I even had a professional copywriter proof-read a 2,000 word blog post for me for nothing in return (I did offer).

5. Live News Tracking

For any of you that may have heard of me before, you’ll know that I spent the last 15 months living in Cape Town. Recently there was a fire in the city that covered Table Mountain, and it was literally a few hundred metres from where I used to live.

I was able to track updates about the fire and make sure that people were OK by watching all the reports on Twitter. Additionally, you could do the same for hurricanes, tornado’s or any other events that you would like to keep a close eye on.

6. Find Solutions to Problems

Going back to blog owners, how many of you have been frustrated by the inconsistency of Feedburner’s feed count reporting? I know some days I lose half my readers and then a few days later they all come back. Well, with Twitter it’s easy to find that you aren’t alone. People rarely blog about small problems, but they are happy to write about them in 140 Characters.

It’s not only Feedburner that you can find help with of course, you could ask your followers any number of questions, or just use their search feature to see if anyone has covered it before.

7. Competitions

I couldn’t write a post like this without highlighting the excellent work that @namecheap are doing with their Twitter profile. From March the 10th to March 24th, they asked a new question on Twitter every single hour, and the first three people to answer correctly received $9.69 added to their Namecheap account (enough for a .com domain).

This means that they got literally thousands of followers on their account, thousands of people sending them @ tweets from their profile, and even lots of blogs like this one covering their excellent use of the service.

What other uncommon uses can you think of for Twitter?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



7 Uncommon Uses for Twitter

If you have not heard about Twitter yet, you are missing out on one of the hottest social networking movements of the 2.0 era. Originally conceptualized as an in house messaging tool by the team at Odeo, the potential for mass adoption was quickly realized and the product was released to the public.

Just a couple short years later and Twitter has taken the internet by storm. Everyone, from those on the leading edge of technology to small business owners who are trying to reach a broader audience, have set up Twitter accounts and are now producing a stream of consciousness for anyone who may be inclined to follow them . . . 140 characters at a time.

Twitter Options for BlackBerry Owners

When it comes to hammering out short bursts of text to get your message across, BlackBerry owners and enthusiasts are no stranger to the concept. We are are constantly tap tap tapping on our qwerty keyboards and sending these types of messages to every contact on our list. It is to the point for many of us where it is hard to hold a full conversation without pausing to send a quick note on messenger. In fact we even have a new medical condition that has been dubbed “BlackBerry Thumb” which is a result of our constant typing on the notoriously small keypad.

It should come as no surprise then that BlackBerry owners are some of the most prolific Tweeters out there. What can we say, we know a great application/service when we see one.

There are a number of different applications available for your BlackBerry that will allow you to interact with your Twitter account while on the go. These are applications developed by third party publishers who have identified that we need a straight forward interface that we can pull up and send our latest blurb from and then get back to business.

Two of the more popular Twitter applications available for the BlackBerry go by the names of TwitterBerry and Tiny Twitter. There are others but these two seem to have captured the majority of the BlackBerry markets attention and are currently providing their users with a solid base from which to broadcast their lives in granular detail.

Let’s take a look at each of these BlackBerry Twitter applications in a little more detail.

TwitterBerry

TwitterBerry is an easy to use application developed by a company named Orangatame Software. It is free to use and provides much of the same functionality you will find in the online Twitter user interface. One of the best features is that all the messages you send via TwitterBerry are sent using your BlackBerry data plan rather than using up expensive SMS messages.

Installation of the TwitterBerry application is quick and painless. Simply point your BlackBerry browser at www.orangatame.com/ota/twitterberry/ and follow the on screen prompts until you are ready to start tweeting. Setting up TwitterBerry on my BlackBerry Bold took less than two minutes. I entered in my login and password and the application immediately imported my latest updates and those of my friends.

Getting around the application is also quite easy. With the latest update (0.8) TwitterBerry actually does most of the work for you. You don’t have to type in your friends names anymore, just highlight them in your list, hit the menu key and opt to send them either a reply or a direct message. TwitterBerry automatically fills in their names and leaves you the simple task of condensing your current thought into 140 characters.

Adding photos to your wonderfully crafted tweets is also something that you will quickly get used to now that TwitterBerry has integrated TwitPic into the application. Now all you as a BlackBerry owner has to do is snap a quick photo with your device (hopefully you have a camera), select that picture in your media file and choose “send with TwitterBerry” from the associated menu.

TwitterBerry has grown by leaps and bounds since it was first released. In it’s original incarnation there were a handful of navigational issues and some bugs that clearly needed sorting out. With the release of version 0.8 we see vast improvement in the form of more data being cached, the ability to reload timelines without opening and closing the program, and the time/data saving intelligence to only load tweets that have appeared since your last update. This last one is a life saver for anyone operating their BlackBerry in Canada with the slightly less than stellar data plans available.

TwitterBerry is compatible with the majority of BlackBerry devices available on the market today. If you are running anything higher than OS 4.0.2 you should be fine.

For a more in depth look at TwitterBerry take a look at the Complete Guide to TwitterBerry.

Tiny Twitter

Tiny Twitter is the highly used alternative to TwitterBerry for BlackBerry users. It provides much of the same functionality as TwitterBerry with an equally easy to navigate interface. Just like TwitterBerry, Tiny Twitter uses your data plan to send your messages rather than dipping into your limited SMS pool.

Like it’s competition, Tiny Twitter was located and installed in just a few quick minutes onto my BlackBerry Bold with no issues at all. Once I logged into my account I was sending tweets to my friends in no time flat. Tiny Twitter did seem to take a little bit longer to fetch my friends timelines than I was used to with TwitterBerry.

On the other hand, the scrolling marquee which contains my latest tweet at the bottom of the screen is a nice touch. Tiny Twitter also has quite a few options available for users who wish to customize their Twitter experience from their BlackBerry. These include: font settings, sync settings (auto-update every 4 min if you like), UI settings and more.

With all the added settings and options I found Tiny Twitter to be a little confusing to use and navigate. One aspect in particular I did appreciate though was that the tweets in a users timeline are displayed in full as opposed to being truncated with TwitterBerry and requiring an extra click to read the full text. Anything that helps reduce the number of clicks I need to make to access my information is a plus in my books.

The one drawback I found with Tiny Twitter is that you do not have the ability to see replies from your contacts. This can be a deal breaker for those who only follow a small amount of people but have followers that number in the thousands. Also, on a perhaps unrelated note, Tiny Twitter would not for any reason connect and update my account when I tried operating it over the office WiFi network. This may be a setting I missed or something I have overlooked, but I had zero success with the WiFi / Tiny Twitter combination.

Tiny Twitter is developed by Kevin Cawley and promises to be accessible from any Java enabled device.

TwitterBerry vs Tiny Twitter

Who Wins The War?

With TwitterBerry providing a straight forward Twitter experience on the BlackBerry and Tiny Twitter providing a slightly more enhanced experience, deciding which one is better really comes down to preference.

Those who are used to the simplicity offered by TwitterBerry are bound to be slightly off put by the many options that they can customize with Tiny Twitter as well as the fact that there is no ability to get replies sent to their device. The fact that many options are buried within sub menus is also bound to be a negative in some peoples eyes.

Those who have used Tiny Twitter first will no doubt be unenthusiastic about losing control over their browsing/messaging experience once they transition over to TwitterBerry.

That being said there is nothing stopping you from downloading both of these great BlackBerry Twitter applications and giving them each a chance to be your main Twitter app. Go ahead give them a shot, put them head to head and take the first step down the long road of letting the world know what is happening in your life 140 characters at a time.

This artile was written by the staff at BBGeeks.com, a website that offers tips, reviews, guides, information, software and accessories for BlackBerry users. You can also follow @bbgeeks on Twitter.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter On Your BlackBerry

Twitterific is the most popular Twitter client application for the Mac. It is simple, has a clean interface, and is easy and intuitive to use. It has some tradeoffs for this simplicity, as we will see. Twitterific can be used free of charge without limitation, but advertisements are displayed once per hour. If you pay the IconFactory $14.95 US, ads are removed. Twitterific is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well.

The Twitterific screen is completely resizable, and is usable even at its smallest widths and heights. It is possible to go into full screen mode with a keyboard shortcut. The white-on-black appearance may not be very eye-friendly to everyone.

As seen in the screenshot, replies and direct messages are a different color. Twitter errors are shown inline as a yellow box if you have configured your preferences to show them. If you are using the freeware version of Twitterific, advertisements are shown inline as well. Tweets that have been read are dimmed.

All of Twitterific’s options are available at the click of your mouse when a tweet is highlighted — user tools, replying to a tweet, and the person’s website. Buttons for going to your Twitter home page, preferences and refreshing are at the bottom left, next to the tweet entry area.

Twitterific has an extensive set of keyboard shortcuts that make using it even faster. There are only a couple actions that are keyboard only, and these are the standard Mac screen shortcuts such as command-W to close the screen.

The user tools are accessed by clicking on the gear symbol when a tweet is highlighted. As shown in the screenshot, most Twitterific actions are available from this one menu. Keyboard shortcuts are listed as a learning aid.

Here’s where some of Twitterific’s shortcomings become apparent. There is no way to easily retweet a message in Twitterific. You have to cut and paste, which is not that much of a pain, but something that would be easy to add to the program.

There are several important features that are missing in Twitterific that are common in other clients such as TweetDeck, iTweet, and Twhirl. There is no shortening of URL’s within the program, nor is there an interface with TwitPic, TwitScoop or similar programs or URL’s — however, Twitterific can update your status in iChat, Adium, or Skype when you post a tweet. Although you can favorite a tweet, you can’t display favorites, friends, followers, or a list of replies and direct messages. There is no grouping of people as there is in TweetDeck.

One of the strong points of Twitterific is its configurability. The preferences window has tabs for Tweets, Window, and System. Among the things that can be configured are:

• Download tweets from the public timeline or just the people you follow
• Refresh times from never to every hour
• Window transparency, shadow, font size, whether it is a normal window or floats above others, and whether it pops up on new tweets
• Expand or collapse tweets. Collapsing presents the tweets as a list. When you click on one, it expands.
• Automatically start Twitterific on login
• After posting a tweet, update status in iChat, Adium, and/or Skype
• Behavior when new tweets come in: keep the same view, most recent tweets, or last tweet selected
• Automatic login with last account used

You can also change the notification sound to four different bird twitters. Personally, I found them loud and intrusive, so I found a more polite bird sound and inserted it into the program. Let me know if you want to know how I did it!

The “Help” button is a disappointment: It only takes you to the IconFactory’s Twitterific page. I suppose they think that Twitterific is easy enough that help is not needed!

One of the things I have found most convenient about Twitterific is the ability to keep the same view when new tweets come in. That makes reviewing those hundreds of overnight tweets simple and easy.

Memory and CPU usage

This is an important consideration if you are using a Mac with limited resources. Twitterific’s memory footprint is quite small, and it uses a low amount of virtual memory. It uses very little CPU time except when checking for new tweets and making its notification sound. It plays very well with older Macs.

In comparison with TweetDeck (read our review of TweetDeck), Twitterific uses less than one-third of the memory, two-thirds of the virtual memory, and only 5 percent of the CPU time. Compared with Twirl, it uses half the memory, two-thirds of the virtual memory and only 10 percent of the CPU time.

AppleScript

Twitterific is unique among the Mac Twitter clients in that it supports AppleScript. For those that might not know, AppleScript is Mac OS X’s built-in scripting language. Twitterific’s support of AppleScript is pretty basic, just enough to send a tweet. But that means that you can write scripts that will send a tweet while using any other program.

Conclusion

Twitterific, for all its omissions, is as easy to like as it is to use. Although I have used other clients extensively, I keep coming back to Twitterific for its simplicity and its light load on my older Mac. It has many endearing features, mostly connected to its ease of use and configurability. It also has some annoying “features,” and some missing pieces that I hope will be fixed in the upcoming 3.2 version.

Pro’s of Twitterific

• Simple, clean interface
• Easy to use, intuitive
• Fast, no lag on redrawing images
• Flexible configuration
• Multiple accounts
• Small memory and CPU footprint
• Works well with older Macs and those with limited resources
• Replies and direct messages are in a different color
• Screen easily resized and is usable at any size

Cons of Twitterific

• No grouping or any way to just display favorites, replies, direct messages, friends, or followers
• No search function
• No retweet without cutting and pasting
• Loud and annoying notification sounds
• No interface with a URL shortener, TwitPic, etc.
• White on black screen may not suit everybody’s eyes

Have you used Twitterific as a Twitter Client? What is your opinion and user experience of it?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitterific Review

Back on November 10th, Darren did a reader poll where he asked, Do You Log Into Twitter.com To Tweet? So far, I sometimes use twitter.com and sometimes a client is in the lead with 430 votes. However, I always login to twitter.com is in second place with 247 votes. This review of Twhirl should provide insight into what those who are not using this client are missing.

Start From The Beginning:

Thanks to the API and the tremendous amount of third party support for Twitter, end users have a ton of options to choose from when it comes to accessing Twitter from something other than the Twitter.com website. There are FireFox extensions such as Tweetbar and TwitKit, sending tweets via cell phone etc. However, the focus of this review will be centered on Twhirl which is a desktop application built on top of Adobe AIR. In order to install and use Twhirl, you’ll need to first download and install the Adobe AIR framework.. Adobe Air is available for Windows 2000; Windows XP; Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise; and Mac OS X v10.4 or 10.5. The Linux release of Adobe AIR is under development.

Post Installation:

After Twhirl is installed, it will open up a dialog screen asking for your Twitter username and password. (Whether or not to trust third parties with your account username and password is fodder for another post but in my experience, Twhirl has not done anything unacceptable with my credentials.) The first thing you should do is provide Twhirl with a Twitter username. Once the username is added, select it and click on the Connect button. This should bring up the password box. After providing Twhirl your password, you should end up being logged into your Twitter.com user account. The next step is to configure Twhirl.

*Note* It’s important to note that Twhirl accepts multiple user accounts. You can even log into them at the same time. Twhirl will end up providing you a seperate status window for each account that you log into. I’d prefer a set of tabs that I can control from one main window but that isn’t supported at this time.

Configuration:

The configuration of Twhirl is separated by four distinct areas. General, Visual, Notify, and Network.

General: From this panel you can configure Twhirl to open the logged in account when the application starts, decide if Twhirl is always on top and to hide the window when minimized. This is where you can also decide if profiles are looked up through the application or in the browser by default.

Retweeting has become a popular way to rebroadcast information from one tweeter to another. However, the text that is part of the retweet count towards your 140 characters so it’s important to keep your retweet text as short as possible. For example, the default retweet configuration is Retweeting %s: %t. A better configuration I have seen people use is, RT %s: %t. The latter saves you 8 characters. This can be the difference between getting your message published or not.

Another strong point of Twhirl includes supporting the ability to post status updates to both Pownce and Jaiku. However, reading messages from these services is not yet implemented. Identi.ca is supported whereas in a future version, laconi.ca will also be supported.

Visual: As one could guess, the visual configuration deals with how the application looks and feels. This is where you can configure whether or not the tweet input is shown at the top, auto-hide the tweet input area, prefix tweets with sender’s name, and mark received tweets as new. The opacity configuration deals with how see-through the application window is when it is inactive. For instance, you can leave the Twhirl window open on your desktop with a low opacity value allowing the application to be less of a distraction. Only when the mouse cursor hovers over the window will the opacity reach 100%. The last option enables you to configure the font and size of the tweets. I’ve discovered that the Arial font is just fine but I prefer the size to be 12 versus 11.

Notify: This aspect of the configuration is all about messages received and messages sent. The first option, no notifications for old messages on start deals with whether or not you’ll see windows of old messages when you start the application. Disable this setting and restart Twhirl to get an idea of what I mean. The next option pertains to playing sounds and gives you a slider in which to control the sound volume. Sounds within Twhirl are heard after you receive the latest round of Tweets, Direct Messages, etc. Think of it as an audio queue. Personally, I have sounds turned off because Twitter by itself is distracting enough to the point that I don’t need to be continuously reminded to stickt my head in the stream.

The next option set is really cool and I recommend leaving it enabled. Notification windows are an excellent way to see the latest round of tweets or to view direct messages without having to see them within the application. For instance, I can have Twhirl minimized to the task bar but thanks to the notification windows, I can be kept updated without looking at the actual time line. I suggest fine tuning this option as it serves as yet another distraction. In my own use case, I configured Twhirl to only show me notification windows for direct messages or replies as those are the most important messages that I don’t want to miss. The last option provides a means of configuring how long the notification windows should be displayed. If you have quick eyes, you won’t need to edit this but in all other use cases, 4-6 seconds seems to be a good amount time.

Network: The network portion of configuring Twhirl is probably the most important aspect since it describes how the application behaves with the Twitter API. As it stands, the API limit for requests per hour is 100. Twhirl only allows a maximum of 80/req per hour, even if the box for following the reduced API limits is unchecked. The three sliders at the bottom determine the amount of time a request is made for a particular kind of tweet. If you are a heavy Direct Messenger, move that slider farther to the right. If you are more into replies, move that particular slider over to the right. With the way I use Twitter, I configure Tweets and Replies to update every two minutes while direct messages update every three minutes. While not real-time, this is close enough for me.

One thing to keep in mind is that the API limit is per account, not per client.

Almost Done:

Now that you have the application configured, it’s time to make it look better. With Twhirl opened, click on the logo in the top left hand corner. This will open up the account manager. Click on the colors tab. This will allow you to choose between 14 different color schemes. Personally, I enjoy the Into The Dark theme. While the official Twhirl website does not provide an area to download user generated color schemes, making your own is as easy as editing the XML files of the default scheme. I’ll explain how to do this in a future post.

Once you’re styling and profiling, you can either choose to change the language of the software from English to German, Italian or Spanish. Or, you can click on the Update tab that tells you which version of the client you’re using, a way to check for updates and a link to view the changelog. After you work your way through those tabs, you’re all set to start tweeting away at the luxury of your desktop.

Conclusion:

There are many choices for you to choose from when it comes to accessing Twitter from the outside. Twhirl just happens to be my favorite. This application serves as an excellent example as to what is possible using the Adobe Air Framework as a base for desktop applications. Considering Twhirl was acquired by Seesmic, INC. back in April of 2008, I see nothing but great things for this simple yet extremely effective application.

This Review of Twhirl was written by Jeff Chandler (@jeffr0) who is currently a writer for Performancing, BloggerTalks and is the host of two podcasts, WordPress Weekly and Perfcast.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twhirl [Review]