TwitNine

Social media guru, Chris Brogan, created a really good list of 50 Twitter Power Tips. For those of you who prefer audio-visual media, as opposed to print, the list has since been turned into a video, which you can watch: here.

At Twitnine, we think that sometimes the best tips are the most obvious ones:

• A lot of @replies shows a lot of humanity/engagement. – In other words, give back to your followers. Don’t just plug your site or product. Make Twitter a two-way communication tool.
• Everyone does it their own way. You’re doing it wrong, too – to someone. – Tips and tricks can be useful and are a great way to help us learn. But it’s good practice to come up with your own ideas and methods. Do what works for you!
• A non-standard background and face avatar means we believe you may be human. – Never underestimate the power of a well filled-out bio and avatar!!!
• Spamming us repeatedly is okay. We just unfollow you. – Every tweet should offer something to your followers – whether you are expressing an opinion or asking a question. Make every tweet valuable!
• Start thinking in 120 characters (remember? save 20). Every bit of this advice is tweetable. – At first, it is difficult to limit yourself, but aim to deliver concise information to your followers. Remember: Quality over Quantity!

All of these tips are great. They are really useful tips for any new tweeters out there and also act as great reminders for the seasoned Twitter user.

I think it’s important to always remember that whether you’re using Twitter to try to sell a product or promote a website, Twitter is first and foremost a social media platform. You can plug your site or product to your heart’s content, but do not forget Twitter’s primary purpose – do not forget to network with your followers.

Twitter has fast become one of the most popular social networking platforms. But recently, some of it’s users have found themselves unemployed because of their tweets.

Probably one of the most controversial firings resulting from a tweet was that of CNN senior Middle East editor Octavia Nasr. In July 2010, Nasr tweeted, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Nohammed Hussein Fablallah.. One of Bezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.. #Lebanon”. Faballah was linked to bombings that killed Americans and her controversial tweet led to her being fired. Nasr later apologized, but tried to clarify her statement by saying that she had been referring to Fablallah’s attitude in regards to human rights.

Last year, Twitter user Conner Riley (aka @theconner) had an interview at Cisco Systems. She later tweeted, “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work”. A Twitter user from Cisco came across Riley’s Twitter account and replied “Who is the hiring manager? I’m sure they will love to know that you will hate the work. We here are Cisco are versed in the web.” Oops…

And then there was the California Pizza Kitchen employee who took to Twitter to express his opinion on their new staff uniforms: “@calpizzakitchen black button ups are the lamest **** ever”. The user thought that his identity was safe, but CPK tracked him down and he was fired.

But with that being said, how many of us have said things like that. All of us have made comments of this nature at one time or other.

I guess the point is that you’re free to say things like this “in private” – i.e. in person to another human being, but when you start tweeting them, and the wrong person sees your tweet, then there is an issue.

So, is this an infringement of privacy? Well, not exactly. I mean, it’s not as if you’re sitting in a coffee shop talking to your best friend.. You’re typing something which appears on the Internet and is visible to x-million people – all around the world.

So what is the lesson here? I guess the lesson is that you never know who is lurking behind the cyber-corners of the internet. Sadly, an innocent comment, joke or even your personal opinion can be turned into something much worse.

Tweet with caution – you don’t want to find yourself fired in 140 characters of less.

With today being the final day of the World Cup tournament, Twitter’s servers can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Over the past few weeks, Twitter has experienced more downtime than usual – due to record usage numbers because of the World Cup tournament in South Africa. In June 2010, Twitter experienced around 5 hours of downtime, compared with 50 minutes of downtime in February 2010 and only 22 minutes in November 2009.

And the reason behind all of this? Well, it’s largely down to an extremely high number of tweets any time a goal is scored. Twitter streams have suddenly been inundated with “GOAAAAALLLLL” or “GOOOAAAALLL #ESP”, etc.

Twitter’s head of communications, Sean Garret, did acknowledge that Twitter had anticipated issues because of the World Cup bring an increased number of users.

In a way, having higher usage levels than every before is a good problem to be having. And Twitter’s programmers can see this as an opportunity to make their platform stronger – to be able to cope with such concentrated levels of traffic. All in all, Twitter has served as a great way to bring the world together during this World Cup tournament.

And how can I forget the vuvuzela? Yes, there is a vuvuzela Twitter account which is dedicated to the highly annoying monotone instrument that is taking over the World Cup soccer stadiums in South Africa.

As of today, the vuvuzela has over 11,000 followers and it’s “BZZZZZZZZZZZZ” tweets have been retweeted all over the web. I think this account is a great example of how Twitter, and the internet as a whole, works.

The artist Prince said this week that the internet is dead. I think that this vuvuzela account proves him wrong. The fact that this Twitter account was able to generate over 11,000 followers in 3 weeks shows how viral Twitter actually is. It’s a phenominal way of bringing the world together, and I think it’s safe to say that Twitter is here to stay! (Hopefully, unlike the vuvuzela!)

It seems that “optimize” has become the new “it” word. Everything has to be optimized – our cars are fuel optimized, our business models are optimized, and now out Twitter bios have to be optimized.

Twitter is a great way to reach a worldwide audience. If your goal on Twitter is to promote yourself, your website, your business, your blog, etc., then Twitter optimization is a very good idea.

The first step is to fully fill out the bio section. The first thing that most people will look at on your profile is the bio section. From there, they will decide whether or not you are worthy of a green follow check-mark.

With that being said, if your bio is not filled out or partially filled and undescriptive, then you may be missing out on a lot of potential followers.

Twitter gives 160 characters for your bio – which is 20 characters more than the limit for tweets. Use every character wisely!

I think that the challenge comes in writing a good bio with a limited amount of characters – given that this sentence is already 144 characters.

The best thing to is is to focus on the keywords. Remember that you want your Twitter profile to be searchable. I guess a good way to think of it is in terms of SEO (search engine optimization) for Twitter. Imagine how you would optimize a website for search engines when and when you come to write your Twitter bio, think about what kind of followers you want to attract and what keywords you would use if you wanted to find your bio.

Be as real as possible. Some words to stay away from are “guru” and “expert”. It seems that every other person on Twitter is some kind of expert of guru of some kind.

Choose your keywords wisely and take your time. It’s important not to rush through this process. Tell your audience what you do, what you like, your hobbies. Make sure you describe yourself as best you can.

If you don’t have an optimized Twitter bio, now is a good time to create an effective one! Good luck!

The more users that Twitter has, the more effective it is as a social networking service. Twitter is becoming a customer service platform, job searching tool, and with the number of people signing up to Twitter increasing every day, it is becoming easier and easier to connect with people in your town.

Of course, finding Twitter users in your area can be a great way to network and get real-time information, like the weather, news, food, etc.

A good tool is Twitter Search. You can choose to search “Near this place”. For example by typing: “Near:Boston within:20mi” would bring you tweets originating from within 20 miles of Boston. This location search is based on the location field in people’s Twitter profiles.

Another great site is TwellowHood. It is a directory of Twitter users from the website Twellow, which is essentially the Yellow Pages of Twitter. This is a great site which is easy to use. You just click on the map, and zoom into your chosen area and from there you can browse through the list of local Twitter users. You can even see recent tweets from a specific area and follow new users straight from their Twellow listing page.

Alternatively, you can try NearbyTweets. This is a revamped version of Twitter’s own search feature. This site determines your location automatically, and then loads a list of the most recent tweets and Twitter users from within a specific radius. You can change the location, radius, and you can add keywords. The appeal of this site is that it looks great and is very easy to navigate – more so than Twitter’s own search feature.

There are several Twitter apps which include built in features for finding fellow tweeters in your area. Essentially, the functions are the same, they allow you to search for users near your exact location which is determined by the geo-location feature of your iPhone or iPod Touch. Four such apps are: Twinkle (free); Echofon (free), Tweetie ($2.99) and Twittelator Pro ($4.99). If you have others to suggest, please add them in the comments below.

Finally, if you want to take your social networking to the next level, you can attend a TweetUp. This is an offline meeting of people who organize their meet-up on Twitter. It’s a great way to get to know Twitter users in your area. Meetup is a great resource for finding or starting your own tweetup. Alternatively, you can Twitter search Tweetup.

All of these methods are great ways to meet people who are near you, but of course (and I don’t mean to sound like mom), as with any internet based endeavor, you do have to be careful with who you meet online.

Twitter has begun testing a feature that allows you to see who you and other Twitter users are following.

When you go to a certain person’s profile, you will see a strip of avatars above the grid showing who they follow. The headline above states “You both follow”:

A lot of people have commented on the similarity between this feature and Facebook’s “Mutual Friends” box. Yes, it is pretty much the same thing – and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.. Or is it?

In terms of bringing Twitter fully into the social networking world, implementing this new feature is a good move. It moves the focus more from the individual and how many followers and tweets they can churn out to the connections between people in the social media network.

Could it be better? Well, yes, it could be. They could try to include a feature that shows you how many people that you already follow is following a certain person. For example, if I’m on the profile of a web developer and it shows that 20 web developer gurus that I’m already following follow him/her, then I would be more inclined to follow that person.

Overall, I think it would make networking a bit easier, and it’s nice to see the online connections that are forged. Granted, it will make life a lot easier for stalker-types!

What do you think of this feature? If it is implemented, do you think you will find it useful? Let us know in the comments!

For some individuals, following 50 people on Twitter can be quite an ordeal. If those 50 people post 10 tweets per day, that’s 500 tweets to read! It makes you wonder how people who follow 100s, 1,000s and even 100,000s of other people sort through the mass of tweets that they must see every day.

Well, fortunately, there are quite a lot of applications that help us sort and filter tweets from those who we’re following.

1. Filttr: This is a web basted Twitter app that allows you to filter tweets based on keywords. It is a very versatile filter, which gives you the option to blacklist and whitelist key phrases. I found it a bit confusing, as it started blocking some of my contacts before I had even given it any keywords. I’m not sure why – maybe it just didn’t like them?!
2. Mixero: Mixero claims that it will reduce the noise. And it does a good job of delivering. It allows you to create and sort your contacts into groups – which might be quite time consuming if your contact list is big! You can create an active list of users who you find to be the most interesting so you can easily follow their tweets. You can create all kinds of different filtering systems for your contacts and tweets. The good thing is that it’s very easy to learn and simple to use.
3. MicroPlaza: This is a link sorting tool – it works on the premise that it will show you the most popular links being tweeted among your followers, as these are the people that you are interested in. Therefore the links that they are tweeting and re-tweeting will most likely be of interest to you.
4. TweetDeck: This allows you to put your friends into groups so that you can essentially slow down your Twitter stream. It makes it easier to follow tweets from family, friends, work, etc. There are quite a few other apps that have a similar function. Other apps you might want to try are SeesmicDesktop and PeopleBrowsr.
5. TwitIQ: This tool also lets you sort your contacts into groups. It also can track URL clicks. The fact that the interface looks like Twitter makes it easy to navigate around!

There are probably enough tweet-filtering tools out there to write 20 posts on, and this article barely scratched the surface of that list! Let us know if you have a favorite tweet sorting method, or if you have tried one of the tools listed above! Happy tweeting!

One of the most confusing things for new Twitterers is the hashtag. Basically, it is a topic with the hash symbol (“#”) in front of it. Twitter hashtags like #FollowFriday help spread and share information on Twitter and more importantly, help to organize it.

Hashtags are loved by conference and event organizers and are also a great way for Twitter users to organize themselves. When thousands of people agree to include a certain hashtag in their tweets on a certain topic, then it becomes easier to search for that topic and it is more likely that the topic will appear in Twitter’s Trending Topics.

So how does one efficiently identify, track, use and organize hashtags? Here are some steps to help you understand and make sense of hashtags.

1. Hashtag Identification. So anyone can log onto Twitter and see what is currently trending. But trying to decipher what the hashtags mean can be near impossible sometimes. But fear not, there is a great website that lists all current trends and (more importantly) why they are trending: WhatTheTrend.com. You can see the top 10 trends and search for trends. This is a great way to find people who are interested in the same topic as you.
2. Hashtag Tracking. There are a lot of great tools that can help us find out what is hot on Twitter. My favourite is Hashtags.org. It allows you to search for a hashtag and it shows you a trend graph and the most recent tweets containing the hashtag in question. It is a great tool for any tech journalists, marketing professionals and those of you who are just interested in trends.
3. Hashtag Usage. The key thing to remember is to not over do it! You don’t want your tweets to seem spammy. A good tip is to put it in context. Give an explanation so that your followers will know what your hashtag means.
4. Hashtag Organization. This is mainly useful for events, and helps attendees, coordinators, speakers, etc. track conversations via the hashtags. If you want to create a hashtag for an event, there are a few tips to remember.

• Choose a simple hashtag. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to get it right. Instead of spelling out the whole event name for the hashtag, use a shortened version.
• Remember to plug your hashtag. Put it on your website, on your twitter feed, add it everywhere! This way you can easily track any conversations that include your hashtag!

Do you have any unique uses for hashtags or any tips to share? Be sure to share it with everyone by posting it in the comments!

Somehow, social networking has turned into a “who-can-have-the-most-friends” contest. It started with MySpace. Some users would see someone with 15,000 followers and somehow feel that their 200 followers was completely worthless.

These sites, that were set up as social networking sites, suddenly became a popularity contest. The actual “networking” part has somehow got lost along the way.

Don't follow people like this!

Twitter gurus make the observation that the number of followers you have on Twitter correlates with the quality and value of information that you’re putting out there. For example, if you’re following 1,000 people and somehow 800 of those people follow you back, then it doesn’t really mean anything. But, if 800 people started following you of their own accord, while you are only following 100 people that you are interested in, then it shows that people are interested in you. People are following you because of what you have to offer – not because you followed them first.

I think the golden rule of successful Twitter networking is this: Only follow people who you find interesting and valuable – follow them if you would talk to them in real life.

You do not have to follow everyone that you come across!

Follow these guidelines before you click the “follow” button:

1. Don’t follow out of sympathy. “Poor guy, has no description, no website, 4 tweets and is following 2,000 people. I’ll follow him back”. NO. Following someone because they followed you is very silly – especially if it’s someone with no picture, description, etc. I mean, seriously, what on earth has this person got to offer you? Look back to the golden rule: Only follow people back if you find them interesting.

2. I would pay you for updates. Sometimes it’s good to consider whether or not you would pay to follow a person before you click the follow button. Would you pay $0.25 for their tweets? If so, then sure, go ahead and follow them. If you are following 10,000 people, then that’s $2,500. Somehow I doubt that you would be willing to fork out that amount of money to sort through people’s Tweets.

3. Twitter spring cleaning. Sometimes it’s good to go through our contact lists and do a quick cull to remove the riff-raff. The first thing to do is turn off auto-follow. Then use Twitter Karma to clean up your contact list. This tool shows who you follow who is following you back. This is a great way to delete people that you followed hoping that they would follow you back – who never did. Twitoria is also a great tool as it shows you which of your contacts are inactive.

The moral of the story is to follow people who you would actually want to talk to in the real world. This way, you can use Twitter to really engage with your followers and learn about the people who you follow and who are following you. It’s one of the best ways to raise your quality and value on Twitter and to bring your own personality to the online world.

Twitter seems to have come out of nowhere and caught the world by storm with millions upon millions of users. With 140 characters you are able to tell your followers basically anything that you want from what you had to lunch to what you are working on at the moment. Twitter is an essential part of any website and in order to compete you need to understand the basic guidelines

Twitter Followers – Right now you need to decide what you are going to use Twitter for as it will dictate the type of followers you want. If you are just interested in conversing with a large number of people than it is fine if you follow everyone and anyone. However if your Twitter is for business than you need to be a lot more selective. There are a number of Twitter management tools that will enable you to put forward a Twitter search as specific as a user who lives in a Waco Texas who is interested in making money online. If you are using Twitter for business than make sure your follower group is full of potential customers

Spamming Fellow Tweeters – Spam is not appreciated anywhere on the web so if you continuously run tweets that are trying to sell something your followers will not be following you for very long. I personally try to use a one in ten or even a two in ten where the majority of my links are interesting news and the others are specific to the product I am trying to promote. The last thing that you want is all of your Twitter posts to sound the same.

3. Cold Selling Does Not Work – If you are thinking I am going to get 10,000 Twitter followers and than bombard them with sales messages which will lead to a massive increase in my bank account I hate to break it to you but this will not work. A bazillion different reasons but the main two being the economy is still struggling and people have become much more blind to ads. Twitter is like anything else you need to back up what you say and when your competing against so many other people your Tweets need to stand out to get attention.

4. Time – It takes a lot of time to build up a loyal list of followers and many website owners for whatever the reason count on Twitter as their only promotional tool which is a mistake. Twitter can pay off huge but it is dangerous to put all of your eggs in one basket.

In closing Twitter is an explosive tool that shows know sign of slowing down but it is essential that you realize from the start what your main objective is to using this powerful tool. Build up your Twitter followers, nurture the relationships and create a strong social network are the key areas to keep in mind.