Could a solution to the FollowFriday conundrum finally be at hand? I’m not sure, but @PhilBaumann has a great idea.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may have read my April post, Follow Friday, too Much of a Good Thing? In that post, I discussed some of the many Pros and Cons of #FollowFriday, especially why so many people are becoming disenchanted with the meme, and offered some recommendations that I feel would improve the FollowFriday experience. Unfortunately, while many people do seem to be making better recommendations recently, my personal FollowFriday experience still leaves me frustrated.

Dude, what’s your Problem?

Just to be clear, as I stated in my previous post, I love the concept of FollowFriday; a day set aside for Twitter users to recommend to their followers other people whom they enjoy following. It’s a great idea that helps users find new and (hopefully) fun and interesting people. And while it’s certainly the quality of followers, not quantity that counts, I’ve met many great tweeters through FollowFriday and, if you participate, I’m sure you have too.

Just Names. Endless names.

Unfortunately, as with all things “internet,” there were no rules about how to participate and regardless of whatever etiquette may have emerged, it’s far from universally accepted. As a result, people made up their own rules and, subsequently, made recommendations in ways that suited them and not necessarily their followers at large. Consequently, their resulting tweets are often filled with endless lists of names. No explanations. No qualifications. Just names.

Additionally, FollowFriday tweets can flood your tweet-stream. They clog the flow and make finding interesting or important tweets difficult, if not impossible. And of course, those names may not be real tweeters at all, but the addresses of fake accounts that are designed to lure unsuspecting tweeters for sinister purposes. Just take a look at your own tweet-stream on Friday and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

It’s all Academic

From a purely academic perspective, the wide variety of recommendation styles that have emerged is fascinating. In my previous post I identified the most prominent of these styles, and named them as follows:

• Blind Recommendations
• Packed Recommendations
• Clustered Recommendations
• Pretender Recommendations
• Automated Recommendations
• Recommendation Rings
• Recommendation Phishing (or Phriday Phishing, as I now like to call it)

While I am sure there are more permutations and that new ones have emerged since April, I have since stopped keeping track (leave a comment or tweet me @NealWiser if you know of new ones). However, one thing remains clear; for many people, FollowFriday just does not work as intended.

FollowFriday Today

Despite all this, FollowFriday is thriving. Micah Baldwin, the “father” of FollowFriday recently provided some interesting stats on his site Learn to Duck:

• #followfriday tweets hit a high of ~240,000
• #followfriday blog posts hit a high of 746
• #followfriday Flickr photos hit a high of 10 (really? photos?)

Clearly, FollowFriday remains a popular phenomenon and while I have noticed some improvements in how some people make their recommendations, there are still far too many who simply don’t exercise good FollowFriday etiquette. Proper etiquette could include (but is certainly not limited to) the following:

• Limit your recommendations to only the absolute best people.
• Explain why you recommend someone.
• Spread your tweets throughout the day via scheduling services like Tweetlater (currently rebranding themselves as SocialOomph, Futuretweet or Hootsuite.
• If making multiple recommendations, send them in small, logically organized groups.

Thank God, It’s FollowFriday (Not!)

Regrettably, I’ve come to dread FollowFridays. Not only for the above-mentioned reasons, but also because I feel that if someone recommends me (and I’m genuinely honored if you do), I feel an obligation to reciprocate, even if I don’t have to or want to. Additionally, and I’m sure many of you will agree, my schedule is so consistently packed that I have little time or energy to make yet another list, provide reasons for each recommendation, then tweet it.

I’ve tried developing systems to simplify the process. Two examples I used:

• I used TweetLater’s Keyword Alert email service to provide me with a record of everyone I’ve tweeted with that week as well as tweets where I am mentioned. Surely, if I’m tweeting with these people, they must be worthy. Unfortunately, this required me to scour each day’s emails and pick out candidates one at a time. Furthermore, the TweetLater email doesn’t list my DMs, and aren’t those with whom I DM, by virtue of having a deeper interaction with me, better candidates?
• I also modified the search process. By using the Mentions and Direct Messages columns in Tweetdeck, I didn’t have to sort through a week’s worth of daily emails. However, I still had to scour through long lists of tweets and record both the names and rationale for each recommendation. Still too much work.

I’ve tried other solutions as well, but they all suffered from the same problem; too many steps.

Then, On FollowFriday, August 21, my friend Phil Baumann gave me an epiphany. With a single tweet from Phil, the dark clouds of my FollowFriday despair parted and a golden ray of hope shown down upon me from on high. Could this really be a solution to FollowFriday?

Who is @PhilBaumann and What’s his Big Idea?

Phil Bauman is a friend, fellow blogger and Registered Nurse who blogs about the impact of social media on health care (check out his excellent blog, Phil Baumann Online). He’s also appeared on panels at several social media conferences and, to put it mildly, Phil really knows what he’s talking about.

Interestingly enough, Phil was motivated by Facebook’s recent acquisition of Friendfeed. According to Phil, “With FriendFeed’s future in doubt, I looked for ways to more creatively use Twitter. One of the things I experimented with was to… view my Favorites as a substitute for Follow Friday recommendations and as a way to share tweets that I find interesting without bombarding my followers with Retweets.”

As is appropriate for something involving Twitter, Phil introduced his solution by tweeting it.

Phil’s idea to mark tweets from people he would want to recommend on FollowFriday by favoriting them was not only elegant in its simplicity, but tweeting his recommendations was just as simple; he just tweeted the URL of his Favorites page.

To be sure, no solution is perfect. For me, Phil’s idea does suffer from a few drawbacks, such as:

• Not every tweet I Favorite comes from someone I necessarily want to recommend (don’t worry; I’m not referring to you).
• I Favorite a lot of tweets for a variety of reasons, but while publicly available, they are not necessarily tweets I planned on sharing.

Regardless of any potential limitations, Phil’s tweet is important because it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it uses an existing Twitter feature in a new way. And while there are variations, such as pointing people to your Following page instead of your Favorites page, as mentioned above, you may not necessarily want to recommend everyone you follow either.

On the other hand, Twitter could easily resolve the issue by creating a FollowFriday feature similar to Favoriting where a user clicks a button on a tweet to place that tweeter on their FollowFriday list. Then a link to that page could be scheduled to automatically tweet every Friday. Or an entrepreneurial app developer, such as PowerTwitter (get their firefox add-on here) or Favstar could add a similar feature to their respective apps.

While Phil’s solution may not be the perfect solution to FollowFriday (and if you don’t use your Favorites often, I suggest you try it), it does help us tame the FollowFriday beast. But perhaps more importantly, it is both a testament to how incredibly flexible the Twitter platform can be and proof that innovation on Twitter never ends.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Did @PhilBaumann Just Save Follow Friday?

It’s a common expression that in life, timing is everything. On Twitter, nobody tells you that your effectiveness is more dependent on timing that any other online activity.

Time your reading.

Beginners always think that twitter involves reading everything. If you want to give up your life do that by all means, but sensible people will limit their reading to appropriate times and ways.

Rather than becoming a slave to other people’s tweets, read at a time of your choice. Save yourself time by reading in bulk, rather than one tweet at a time. Switch off for periods and don’t worry about being out of the loop – if there is something important it will come round again. You can reconnect with everybody when you are ready, and the internet being what it is, they will be there waiting for you when you are ready.

Time your tweeting.

There is no point to tweeting when there is no one listening!  Who are you hoping will be reading? If they are in a particular time zone, then you need to time your tweets when they are awake, and if you are in a different time zone to your audience it may be worth your while using Tweet Later.

Know when your audience is listening. This will vary from person to person, but my own audience is listening from 08:00 till 09:30 when they switch off to get on with some work. They reconnect at about 16:00 – 18:00 as they wind down the day’s work. My audience is UK, so those are GMT times for me. Take the time to observe what time of day you get retweets, replies, and when your followers tweet. Those times are the times that you should be tweeting yourself.

Vary your tweets to the time of day – don’t flirt with an audience in the office, don’t tweet a technical analysis to followers who have just had their third glass of wine and are relaxing on the sofa at home. Make your tweets appropriate to the mood of your followers, not to your own mood!

Don’t waste your followers’ time, that is the quickest way to lose a reader.  Try to make every tweet worth reading. Don’t retweet items that everyone and their dog is retweeting, you won’t be first and they don’t want to read it AGAIN. Make time reading your tweets worthwhile, be unique and add value. When retweeting use the | character and add your own view after to make your tweet different and better than the original.

Take Time to Sharpen Up

Finally in the words of Covey’s “7 Habits of Successful People” – Sharpen the Saw. Take time to improve your tweeting, read, and learn.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



In Life Timing Is Everything, On Twitter It’s More Important Than That

Many people have pondered the question: how can Twitter be used as a marketing tool? Twitter is becoming a powerful tool to market your websites, content and products. If you’re running a niche website, Twitter is an indispensible tool in your marketing arsenal.

When I launched Webinar Central last fall, a directory and calendar of upcoming webinars, I was faced with a dilemma. I needed to market my site to as wide an audience as possible with no budget other than the cost of spending my time. I decided to turn to Twitter and it has become a key tool for building readership and interacting with my readers. Not only have a I built a strong readership, but networking with other professionals has created partnership opportunities that have been very exciting.

Since Webinar Central was launched in October, 2008, I’ve gotten almost 25% of my traffic solely from Twitter. During the early launch days, it was responsible for most of my traffic until the site rose in it’s search rankings and I started generating traffic the old fashioned way. So, it’s great for creating quality traffic, when your site would otherwise be inactive, while it waits for indexing from the Google Gods.

Setting Up Your Twitter Backbone

I recommend being methodical when you go about initiating a Twitter Marketing campaign. It will save you time, which is your most valuable asset. Here’s a guide to the back end you’ll need for marketing a niche site on Twitter.

Setting up Accounts

I would advise against using your personal Twitter account to market your niche website, especially if you post about personal topics on your Twitter feed. It will look more professional in the long run to have a dedicated feed. There are exceptions to this; like if you’re building a personal brand. For Webinar Central, I simply setup @webinarcentral.

Customize Your Profile

I chose a cute logo as my avatar to draw attention to it, and it’s proved popular. I also matched the color scheme of the profile to the logo and filled in all the sidebar information about the website. You don’t have much room to say a lot, so be sure to get your point across as succinctly as possible.

Badges on your website

So visitors to your site know they can follow your feeds on Twitter, I recommend putting a Twitter Counter badge as well a Twitter Grader badge near the top of your website, usually in the sidebars. I would not recommend putting your Twitter feed directly on your site; you will run the risk of being redundant.

Set-up Feeds to Monitor

Twitter’s search function is incredibly powerful and perfect for monitoring the entire network for what your site is targeted at. Think about the key phrases that your website targets. Once you run a search, Twitter makes it really easy to turn it into an RSS feed that you can throw into your RSS feedreader of choice. As an example, I monitor the phrases ‘webinar,’ ‘webinarcentral,’ ‘gotomeeting,’ etc. For my Anglophile blog, Anglotopia.net, I monitor for the word Anglophile and follow anyone that mentions it.

Setting up these feeds serves several purposes. The first is you can immediately follow people discussing the topic your website is based on. If someone talks about a webinar, chances are they are interested in learning about more of them, so they are worth a follow. Another reason to have these feeds set-up is so you can monitor the mood and trends for your topics, especially if there is a #hashtag for it.

Seek Followers

The most important aspect of Twitter Marketing is to gain followers. Not just any follower you can get your hands on but quality followers who will value your content and what you have to offer.

The first step is to monitor the Twitter feeds. Next, you can find people in your industry/niche and follow them. Follow their followers and so on. You can also use tools like Twitter Grader to recommend users that you should follow.

How do you measure success in this regard? If they follow you back, then they are a quality follower. If they don’t follow you back, you can weed them out later.

Twitter has limits for most new accounts. You can only follow up to 2,000 people at any one time. So, if you start reaching the limit, then it’s time to weed out the people who aren’t following you back.

I spent several days following as many people as I could until I hit the limits. Once I hit the limits I started cleaning out the account, to the point where my follower/follow ratio is very similar. This has left me with over 1,300 followers and growing by about 5% a day, without any further effort.

Working Smart – Twitter Tools to Use for Niche Marketing

Using Tweet Later

I’m not a fan of totally automating your Twitter activities, but I think it’s perfectly all right to automate parts of it. I’ve avoided having auto-replies and auto-follows set up, I think it’s important to screen who’s following you and to actually engage with them instead of sending them a DM that goes to your website or a product you’re pushing.

That being said, I use tools like Tweetlater lightly. For Webinar Central, I set up daily Tweets to go out in the mornings with a summary of that day’s webinars. If I have a new poll out, I’ll schedule a Tweet to go out in the afternoon to catch the bored in the afternoon crowd who may be looking for something to do. You can find out more about Tweetlater in this TwiTip Post about TweetLater.

Using Twitterfeed

Once you have a good following, you need to leverage that audience by making sure your site’s RSS feed is being posted on Twitter. You can use great free tools like Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed is a fantastic tool to automatically have your RSS feed posted on your Twitter Stream every time it’s updated. It’s free and very customizable. You’ll need to sign up for an account and set everything up. Everytime someone posts a new webinar to Webianr Central, it goes into the RSS feed and shortly thereafter onto the Twitter Feed. You can read more about Twitterfeed in this TwiTip Post.

That’s the extent of my Twitter automation.

Don’t Forget to Engage

Twitter marketing takes a huge investment of time to setup, but once you have it going, you should not stop. You always need to be looking for new followers and talking directly with your followers. To succesfully market your niche site on Twitter, engaging in the ‘grand conversation’ with your users is so very key. Don’t set everything up on auto-pilot and expect success to come your way.

The Golden Rules

My four golden rules for niche marketing on Twitter are: Be Useful. Be Timely. Be Willing to Engage. Don’t be Spammer.

Good Luck!

When Jonathan Thomas isn’t seeking the latest Webinars for WebinerCentral.net he’s taking a breather on his popular Anglophile Blog Anglotopia.net. You can follow him on Twitter: @jonathanwthomas or @webinarcentral

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Marketing a Niche Website on Twitter

Twitter is a great tool that can benefit you. But there are some mistakes that people make on twitter. To be a better twitter, it is best to avoid these mistakes, which is what I am going to share with you. Here is the list of the constant twitter mistakes.

1. Pride and Putting yourself First

What would you do if you got a direct message from someone you followed, and it says,

“Thanks for the follow! Be sure to check out my site, [site URL here] and see how cool I am!”?

You would probably feel like un-following that person, because of his ego and pride. So, be humble and think about other people first.

Spamming people with your links is putting yourself first. Would you like to follow that kind of person?

Think about what you would like to receive before sending a tweet or direct message on twitter. Pride comes before an un-follow.

2. Not Connecting With People

What do you feel if you talk to someone who doesn’t respond? Unnoticed. Come on, connect with people. One way of doing this is by asking questions. This shows that you want to connect with them. Be sure to appreciate the answers you have been given, or your answerers would feel quite ignored. For more information about this, click here.

Also, do not ask the same question repeatedly. Be patient. If you think he/she has forgotten about your question, send him/her a direct message. If you don’t get answered, let it be, or not it would be like harassing people. Pushing people is one of the reasons people un-follows you and blocks you. So, be patient and do not disturbingly push people. Also, when asking questions, be polite.

Another way of connecting with people is by answering questions. People will appreciate you and would probably answer your questions in the future.

Retweeting is also another way to connect with people on twitter. Retweeting simply means tweeting again what other people have tweeted. When retweeting, you must give credit to the original person who tweeted it. Only retweet information you find relevant or interesting.

The way you should retweet is “RT @(Original tweeter) (Original tweet)”

For more information on retweeting, click here.

3. Auto Responding

Seriously, get rid of those auto responders. Auto responders are impersonal.

Some auto responder services, such as tweetlater, offers to tweet a welcome message to your new followers for you; “Welcome: @follower, @anotherfollower, @another_follower, @Justanotherfollower” until all your followers are ‘welcomed’.

Do you actually feel ‘welcomed’ if you know that the welcome messages are automated? It is impersonal!

If you want to welcome a follower, be genuine and original. Send them a message they know is genuine.

4. Bringing no Value to your Followers

Although you don’t harass or offend our followers, do you think they still want to follow you if you don’t bring any value to them? Do you bring value to your followers? Do you think your followers would like to read your tweets? If you don’t bring any value to your followers, and do not do anything offending, you’re like just between good and bad.

Come on, be a value to your followers, do not just tweet what you are doing.

One way of doing this is to share links you find interesting. Ever came across a wonderful article? Share it! To make it easier to share articles and stuff, visit www.twitthat.com. They will provide you a button which you can drag to your browser. If you are on an article and you click the button, a window will pop up and will let you modify the tweet. Then, you click ‘Twit!’. And when the article is tweeted, the pop up window will automatically close.

You can also share inspiring quotes, answer your friends’ (the people whom you follow) questions, share a picture on twitpic, or even share a joke or two. You can also be funny in your tweets; “Going to sleep. Eyelids weighing 1 pound each! Good night/day everyone.”

Conclusion

To be a good twitter user, you should avoid all those 4 mistakes, think about what you would like to receive before tweeting. You could help your twitter friends to break a barrier. You could also answer their questions, or offer them suggestions or tips.

If you are a great benefit to your followers, your followers would be very happy and would probably return your kindness.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



4 Constant Twitter Mistakes You Should Avoid

Here’s a quick list of 5 that have enhanced my own use of Twitter this year and why:

1. TweetDeck

TweetDeck has become my primary Desktop Twitter client over the last 6 months of the year and has quite literally changed the way that I Tweet on a number of levels.

One of the biggest impacts that it has had is in the way that it builds ‘groups’ into my twitter workflow. This has helped me immensely to manage the noise that is associated with following and being followed by thousands of people.

Groups enable you to select any number of Twitter users to follow in a special window. This means that if you miss their twees in the ‘all tweets’ timeline you are likely to see their tweets in the group you’ve set up.

Also powerful in TweetDeck is the ‘Search’ feature which enables you to track keywords and who is using them right from within your Twitter Client.

I’m also a big user of TwitScoop so having the ability to have it included in a window within the client is handy too.

I guess as I think about it – the reason I like TweetDeck is that it enables me to use a variety of tools that could be accessed by a variety of services – all within the one client. I’m not constantly having to run to a search tool, logging into TwitScoop, checking individuals twitter pages – it’s all happening on my desktop in the one application.

I also love that it can be run quite effectively in a single column view or opened up to a more comprehensive one across the full screen.

The fact that TweetDeck is still only at version 0.20b excites me – there’s obviously a lot more to come!

TweetDeck is my Twitter application of the year!

2. Twitterlator Pro

Another massive change in my use of Twitter mid year was when I started using the iPhone as my primary mobile phone. I’d been looking forward to this for a long time (Australia only got the iPhone with the new 3G version.

Being able to Tweet from the road, local cafe, while waiting for the Train, at the football…. etc was quite a new experience and so I needed an iPhone Twitter client that was up for the job.

I tested them all – starting with the free applications and then progressing to the paid ones. I settled on Twitterlator Pro (itunes url) for a number of reasons.

Perhaps the biggest reason was the ‘replies’ page. Again – my biggest challenge with Twitter is that I am following a lot of people – so to follow the timeline for everyone that I follow is just not practical. When on my iPhone I tend to live more in the ‘replies’ section and Twitterlator Pro has one of the best of these.

I also love that you can manage multiple Twitter accounts from the one application, that you can see Twitpic pictures within messages, that it has a ‘nearby’ feature to find out who is twittering close by – etc. Many of these features can be found within other iPhone Twitter clients but for me Twitterlator Pro simply ‘fits’ with my Twitter workflow.

Note – there is a notable up and coming iPhone Twitter client that could just take the place of Twitterlator Pro.

In the last month or so Tweetsville (itunes url) was launched and while I’m hooked on Twitterlator Pro Tweetsville (website) has been getting more and more of my iPhone Twittering attention because – well, its got most of the features that I use on Twitterlator Pro but just seems more intuitive.

It’s in its early versions so still has room to improve but I suspect will become my #1 iPhone application in 2009 – the only reason I didn’t name it in my main list is because I’ve been using Twitterlator Pro for six months and so it’s really been more useful to me this year than the one month I’ve had with Tweetsville.

3. TwitterBar

I almost overlooked this application when planning this list – simply because it’s become such a part of my Twitter workflow that it has almost become invisible.

TwitterBar is a Firefox Add-on that allows me to share links on twitter from the address bar of Firefox.

As I’m surfing – if I find a site that I like and want to share all I do is simply add a few words that I want to include with the link to the address bar (before or after the URL) and then click a tiny little grey button to the right of the address bar. Doing this posts the URL and my message to Twitter.

If I’m not sure if I have enough characters left I hover the cursor over this little grey button and it tells me how many I have left.

There are other tools for sharing URLS on Twitter and I’ve tested many of them – but this little add-on is quick, easy, quick and unobtrusive…. and I use it 10-20 times a day!

4. TwitterFeed

I know some on Twitter don’t like tools that automatically post links from blogs – but…. well I’m a blogger and my Twittering centers around blogging. Add to that that most of my followers are online when I’m asleep because I live in Australian and I needed a tool that would do what TwitterFeed does.

In short – TwitterFeed checks the RSS feeds to my blogs every hour (you can change this frequency) and if something new has appeared in the feed it takes the link and tweets it for me. It allows me to customize the tweets so I can add a little message (“New from TwiTip:” for example) so followers know what the link is.

There are options for what is shown (you can show the title, title and description and description only) and you can even filter your tweets by keywords (so that only some links get posted).

TwitterFeed offers you a range of URL shortening services – I use Tweetburner (twurl) which allows me to go to Tweetburner and check what links are being clicked on most (handy to know as a blogger interested in tracking what posts are connecting with readers most).

Again – there are other tools out there including some good WordPress plugins that do it from your blog – but I use TwitterFeed because…. well it works (99% of the time).

5. TwitScoop

This is another tool that I’m constantly looking at (more than I realize). As mentioned above – I use it largely because it is built into TweetDeck but do use the actual site too.

There are a number of things that I use it for including:

1. It’s my newspaper in the morning – one of the first things I do in the morning is to check TwitScoop to see what is ‘hot’. I’m amazed how much news I find through it over my morning coffee.

2. As a blogger is is a fantastic tool for watching for hot trends and topics that are being discussion right now. A number of times I’ve been able to break stories simply by watching what is ‘buzzing now’.

3. Conferences – it’s also quite useful when you’re at a conference, listening to a speaker or tracking a live event to see what people are saying about it.

Other tools that I’ve been using:

There must be hundreds of Twitter Applications and Tools available now so the above 5 just scratch the surface. I’d love to hear your own Top 5 list in comments below.

Before you do – here’s a few others that I use from time to time.

• TweetBurner – as mentioned above, I use this to shorten urls and track what gets clicked on (TwitClicks is another of these).
• Twhirl – I used this a lot at the start of the year and still do on occassion – but TweetDeck has taken it over.
• Tweetlater – I only use it occassionally but it is useful if you need to set a Tweet to go off later.
• MrTweet – everyone’s been raving about this new service lately – it recommends people for you to follow based upon your network.
• TweetBeep – free twitter alerts for keywords
• TweetScan – another alerts tool
• TweetStats – interesting stats on your twitter useage

OK – so it’s over to you – what are your Top 5 Twitter Applications and Tools for 2008?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



5 Twitter Applications and Tools that Made Me a Better Twitter User in 2008

Twuffer is still in beta – so use it with a little caution – but it looks like a fairly useful solution for those wanting to set Tweets to go off later.

OK – some Twitter purists are already scrolling down the page to tell me why future tweeting is evil and goes against everything that Twitter stands for…. I know I know – Twitter is about telling people what you’re doing ‘now’ – it’s about conversation in real time….

You’re right – but there are times where I’ve found myself wanting (and even needing) to set Tweets to go of in the future. This is particularly the case for me as an Aussie, living in a different time zone to that of most of my followers (most of whom are in the USA and asleep when I’m awake and awake when I’m asleep).

While I do most of my Tweeting in real time – there are occasions when I’ve found myself wishing I could Tweet something later.

For example when launching a product or service and you want to highlight it but you’re asleep, on a plane, on a date, scared you’ll forget to do it.

Another time is when you have something that isn’t time sensitive that you really want to say but realize you’ve already tweeted 72 times in the last hour and perhaps your followers need a break.

I don’t recommend doing all (or most) of your Tweeting with services like this because it tends to kill some of the interaction/conversational aspect of Twitter – but it can be useful at times to have a tool at your finger tips that enables you to do it.

Whatever the reason, if you want to set a Tweet to go off later, Twuffer might be the tool for you.

To use it is relatively simple. Head to Twuffer.com – enter your Twitter username and password (that will put some off I’m sure) and you’ll be taken to a settings panel like this:

You’re given the opportunity to set your timezone, date format, time format and whether or not you want your tweets appearing on the Twuffer homepage and then you’re set. Hit Save and you’re taken to your dashboard:

The dashboard is very simple and intuitive. You have tabs to see your queued tweets, those that you’ve sent and your settings.

You also have a field to type your tweets and then a couple of drop down menus where you can select the future time and date that you want your tweet to go live.

You can see I’ve already entered three Tweets on Twuffer and at the time of this screenshot was waiting for those tweets to go live.

If you enter a tweet (or more than one) you can see them in the ‘Queued’ area:

In this area you have the ability to delete any queued tweets to stop them going live.

When you enter tweets they get loaded up ready to tweet all with an Ajax interface which is all very smooth and pleasing to the eye.

Overall the service is simple and easy to use. The only negative that I can see with it is, as you can see in one of my queued tweets above, that you can only set tweets to go off on the hour. If you need a tweet to go off at 2.30pm or 4.02am you need to pick a time on the hour on either side of your desired time.

Another small gripe that I have is that if you enter a tweet and then hit ’set status’ straight away (forgetting to set a future time and date) it goes live immediately. Perhaps a warning message ‘did you mean to send this right now’ might be helpful.

Does it work?

OK – so you can see that I set three tweets to go off at 2pm my time in the ‘last picture’. Did they actually go live?

The answer to that is YES…. but…. they actually went live on Twitter at 1.30pm – half an hour early.

So perhaps accuracy isn’t perfect – the tweets were made at around 1.10pm so they did go out in the future – just not quite when I wanted them to. Perhaps if your future tweet absolutely has to go out at a specific point in time, you’d better set the alarm clock to wake you up or remind you to do it manually – but if you don’t mind so much about an exact time Twuffer could be for you!

Some Alternatives to Test

• FutureTweets (we’ve written about this here)
• TweetLater

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twuffer – [REVIEW]

Is there rhyme to your twitter reason? Do you have a plan when it comes to your tweets, or are you a spontaneous tweeter? Believe it or not, there can be a happy medium.

If you let it, Twitter can easily steal your time and work efficiency. And as much I enjoy conversing with others in the comforts of my home office, it can be extremely distracting if you are tuned into Twitter all day long. So how do you stop diluting your work day but also take advantage of this rockin’ social media channel… especially, if it’s not in your regular job description (if it is, lucky you)? Simply put, you need a Tweet Plan. With a Tweet Plan you can pre-organize and categorize your tweets for future use… keeping you more on track during your work day. Hey, you plan your blog posts, why not your tweets?!

FOLLOWING YOUR OWN TWEET PLAN

1. Select your twitter check-in times

If you are really trying to purge the noise, stick to “Tweet w/Coffee” or “Tweet w/Chocolate”. My cute way of saying first thing in the morning or after dinner. This will be the time of day that you spend organizing and planning your tweets.

2. Start with your Daily 5, which are 5 pre-planned tweets

First decide on what you plan to tweet. If you use twitter for personal use, your options are endless. But if you utilize Twitter for business too, then you may need to think more strategically about tweeting a combination of industry value and personal flavor. So your Daily 5 should include a variety of tweet types and various media. Don’t flood followers with only blog post updates. And on the flip, we don’t want to hear how many times your puppy crapped on the floor in one day. So like most vices in life, you need to find your middle ground. Here a few examples of tweet types for your Daily 5.

• Images – Share pictures you take or find. Try Snaptweet, TwitPic, or I prefer the Gyazickr app (which also posts to Flickr) on my iPhone.
• Videos – Share your own videos or favorites from other networks like YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Seesmic, UStream, etc.
• Blog Post Updates – You can auto update your blog posts to Twitter by installing the Twitter Updater Plugin on your blog.
• Witty Joke or Comment – If you come across a funny sign or just interesting thought, jot it down and share later on Twitter.
• Helpful Industry Resources – Scan your RSS reader and/or social bookmarking sites, or favorite industry blogs for helpful tips and advice or cool tools. Share links to them!
• Make a Tweet Plan to Get the Most from Twitter – Have a favorite author or poet, share an occasional quote – it’s even better when you can relate it to a current event.
• Announcements /Events – Share information about an event your company is hosting, holiday food drives, and/or other news.
• Ask Questions – That pertain to business or personal. Try creating a poll especially for Twitter at Polldaddy.

3. Make a Tweetlist categorized by your Daily 5

Here’s an example of what your 5 planned tweets could be for the day: (1) blog post update (2) inspiring quote (3) cool image or picture (4) helpful resource (5) witty joke or comment. Now start scanning your resources and collecting tidbits to later become your planned tweets. You could plan for the day or plan for more than one day. BTW-Notice I said pre-planned “tweets”, NOT direct messages. Please DO NOT spam your followers with DMs, unless you want to get unfollowed. Save DMs for continuing personal or professional conversations that you don’t want to share with all your followers.

4. Next, head over to Twuffer or TweetLater

Choose one of these online solutions which will allow you to schedule your tweets. Schedule for the day, week for longer. Just enter your 140 character tweets, set your date and time and you’re done. Twuffer/Tweetlater will deliver on-time, while you are getting work done or out of the office at appointments.

5. Set up Tweetlater to automate a welcome response to new followers

I love receiving news that I have a new follower and usually visit their Twitter profile, check out their Website and/or interests, read their recent update stream, and send a hello or welcome DM. That can take a lot of time if you get a lot of new followers. So I created this message that is sent via Tweetlater to my new followers: “Wooohooo, we’re Twitter friends! Check out this video I made for you: http://budurl.com/niknik.”

6. Your daily 5 should be supplemented by 1-3 spontaneous tweets

that makes your tweet total for the day around 6-8. Tweet personal, business, or random experiences in your day. When and if something hits you, waste no time and tweet it. But remember what your task at hand is and get back to it!

MEASURE YOUR TWEET PLAN

If you are the type of person who enjoys measuring your efforts, you may want to check out a suggestion from the other half of the nik_nik equation, @cyberhomes. Reggie Nicolay, Director of Social Media at Cyberhomes, measures the media he tweets with BudURL. He finds the tool helpful in discerning what people like and want to hear more of, by measuring his blog posts and other resources he shares on Twitter.

TWEET PLAN DISCLAIMER: This plan may work great for those with little time in their day to tweet, or employers who don’t want you tweeting. For some, taking time to organize tweets may actually be more time consuming that just tweeting off the cuff. This is NOT a plan for spontaneous tweeters and those of us that have adopted Twitter as a member of the family. This plan is for twits that want to tweet but are finding it hard to do so during their work day. Just remember, this is one Tweet Plan example, what does your Tweet Plan look like?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Make a Tweet Plan to Get the Most from Twitter

• Twitter desktop clients (I’m a fan of Twhirl and TweetDeck)
• Twitter Applications for iPhone (I’m a user of Twittelator Pro)
• Twitter user ranking services (like Twitterholic)
• Visualization tools (like TweetWheel)
• Tools to import RSS feeds to your Twitter account (I use Twitterfeed)
• Tools for setting tweets to go off later (Tweetlater)
• Metrics tool (TweetStats – Twinfluence)
• Tools for sharing pictures on Twitter (Twitpic)
• Services to tweet to groups (GroupTweet)
• Twitter Directories (Twellow)
• Tools for finding new people to follow (Twubble)
• Tools for helping you to track Twitter Conversations (Tweet2Tweet)
• Trend Tracking tools for what’s hot on Twitter (Twitscoop)
• Tools to help Twitter integrate with other applications (TwitterCal – which lets you add items to your Google calandar by Twitter)
• Services for groups to tag and organize tweets (HashTags)
• Twitter updaters (Ping.fm – which allows you to update status on multiple sites like Twitter)
• Twitter backup services (TweetTake)
• Services to let you track which links people are clicking on in your Tweets (TweetBurner)

These are just some of the tools services I’ve used in the last few weeks and they only scratch the surface at the hundreds of Twitter tools that are released.

What Twitter Tools and Services do you use? Leave the ones you love in comments below.

I’m looking forward to finding out which ones get mentioned most and finding some new ones that I’d not previously discovered.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



What Twitter Tools and Services Do You Use?