In this post Crystal N Woods (follow her at @crystalsquest) shares some great tips for those starting out in Twitter.

The buzz this year is all about Twitter, the ‘microblog’ service.

Both the web and twitter are full of pleas from people who say they don’t ‘get it’. In a nutshell, the point of twitter is to post very short updates - no more than 140 characters. It’s a bit like a txt msg for the web, on ‘what you’re doing now’. These tweets can be links to cool sites you’ve found, conversations with other twitter users, questions you want a quick answer for, what you’re having for dinner or even haiku poetry.

The main difference between twitter and txt is: when you send it out it goes out to everyone who’s opted to follow you. On the receiving end, you’re getting these updates from everyone you’ve chosen to follow. This constant flow of short messages to and from is called the ‘twitter stream’. It can be a bit overwhelming at first. Just like modern life. In fact, it occurred to me that the people who ‘get it’ and rave about it the most are the very same people who have achieved vast levels of success in this information age. So, here’s my take on the top 10 success tips for twitter… and Life!

1. Fluff and filler are no longer an option. Nobody has time/interest in reading them. Get to the point.

2. Be real. 140 chars is cut to the bone - you can’t wear a fake character on top and still fit.

3. Pick what’s important. You could use twitter to talk about your day down to the bowel movements, but then you’d have nobody following you. People follow you on twitter because what’s important to you is a match with what’s important to them, so share it!

4. To keep the relationship alive, feed it. Share yourself, and your interests, and give stuff that matches the other person’s interests.

5. Don’t take following/unfollowing personally - as interests change, people will come and go. Faster than in real life, but no different. Accept it.

6. Don’t get overwhelmed. You don’t need to drink the river, just drink FROM it. (this is a major difference between big & small fish)

7. The big fish swim in big streams. They don’t try to control them, just swim in them.

8. Being part of that big stream is NOT a guarantee you’ll have their attention: a fish doesn’t swim through every drop of water on it’s way upstream.

9. To catch the attention of a big fish, you need to:

• send something past them just when they’re looking at that part of the stream;
• send something they’re looking for so they hunt it down; or
• send something so catchy/helpful/viral that others keep putting it in front of them for you.

10. Practice. Start small with a few friends, and gradually grow your circle of influence. Even if you could jump in with 10,000 followers, you probably wouldn’t know how to keep them long unless you’d developed the skill of catching and keeping interest. That skill will serve you well online and offline in ways you can’t imagine…

11. Have fun! The people having the most fun are the ones you most want to hang out with. Be one. (yes, I overdelivered again. Oops)

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

If you've been on Facebook for any length of time, you know that causes run rampant there.  You can join non-profit pages, you can play games that benefit non-profits, you can declare your allegiance to a cause.  You name it, you can probably do it.

Most non-profits, if they're there at all, are stumbling around, trying to figure out how to best use the space.  But some have really got it figured out.

Over 6 million Facebook users send each other virtual plants/flowers for their (lil) green patch.  And they're told that every time they do, they're saving bits of the Rain Forest.   But what does that really mean?

How about over $109,000?

That's how much The Nature Conservancy has earned from people passing pansies.  (Say that 5 times fast!).  And they didn't even develop the actual application.

Toby Bloomberg has an eye-opening interview with the Digital Membership Manager of The Nature Conservancy that should be must reading for non-profits looking for a fresh fund-raising idea.

If you're a non-profit or involved with helping one — how are you using Facebook to date?  How COULD you be using it?

Today Jason Annas from Enlightened Web Mastery (@jasonannas) gives a process from learning from other Twitter users using the very useful Twitter-Friends tool (which we wrote about previously here).

When you first get started using Twitter, it can be very confusing to figure out what you should do. Are you being a pest? Are you annoying people? Do you just not “get it”? One of the biggest problems for me personally was, I just didn’t know they proper etiquette. I didn’t know what was expected, or deemed normal.

This article will attempt to show you what’s normal, and expected. In this article we will use an NLP concept known as modeling to make sure we really “get it”. The way modeling works is, you find someone who is successful, someone that’s a “super star” and you apply Pareto’s 80-20 rule to find the 20% of work they do that gets the 80% of their results.

1 – Assemble A Swipe File of Users

A “Swipe File” is an old copy term, which is a collection or great ads or sales letters that you keep as reference or inspiration. For the purpose of this article, I’m going to select 5 really good “Pro Twitter” users.

To get the most out of this exercise, you also need to assemble a swipe file of 2-5 “Personal Twitter Users”. As these people do not have a high profile, I will not be sharing any here, but the point behind having 2-5 personal twitter users in your swipe file is so that you can see how “normal” people act on twitter.

These are people who use twitter to connect with friends, and family, as well as just to have conversations with the world. A problem most people have who start using Twitter is not knowing how to act. By combining “Pro Twitter” users with “Personal” you will be able to offer a more satisfying Twitter experience.

2 – Choose 5 Twitter Users To Model

You need to come up with 5 “star twitter users”. I selected the following 5 because:

1. The Provide Value – They are not trying to get you to buy something, digg something up, or sign up for their lists.
2. They Are Successful – Some help people reach success, some have achieved success, and others provide tools to make you successful.
3. They Are Somewhat Famous – The reason this is important is because if they have time to tweet, so do you.
4. They “Get It” – These people understand how to use Twitter, and as such are worth modeling.

Here are 5 pro twitter users you can follow now (or atleast keep track of).

Here are their twitter accounts, as well as a very brief bio explaining who they are.

@problogger – Darren Rowse, Author of the ProBlogger Site

@LeoLaporte – Leo Laporte, (you may remember him from TechTV)

@KevinRose – Founder of Digg

@tferriss – Tim Ferris - Author of “The 4 Hour Workweek”

@wilw – Wil Wheaton – Actor from Star Trek The Next Generation

You may wish to come up with a different list, based off your own needs or desires, but make sure the ones that you choose meet some of the criteria above. You do not want to model spammers, who spend half of their tweets promoting their own products. Choose people who provide value.

I also selected these users because I think their habits are easier to emulate, and anyone can do it. If I were to select some Twitter power users, such as @GuyKawaski who posts 50 tweets a day on average, with a CQ of 43.5% and LQ of 64.5%, it might be harder for you to emulate them, and you likely wouldn’t want to anyway.

3 – Analyze Their Stats At Twitter-Friends

Twitter-Friends is a great tool that lets you analyze your habits as well as the habits of others. For this exercise we will take these 5 users, and check out their stats on Twitter-Friends, and see what we can learn.

If you do not understand how to use Twitter-Friends, check out this article for more information.

What We Learn From @Problogger

• Posts an average of 24 tweets a day
• @replies 13 times a day (about 50%)
• Out of 24 tweets, 10 are links.
• CQ = 54.1% LQ = 42.4%

What We Learn From @LeoLaporte

• Posts about 4 times a day
• @replies about 1 and a half times a day
• Out of 4 tweets, 1 and a half are links
• CQ = 42.7% LQ = 37.3%

What We Learn From @kevinrose

• Posts about 7 and a half times a day
• @replies about 5 times a day
• Out of 7 tweets, about 2 and a half are links
• CQ = 65.6% LQ = 32.1%

What We Learn From @tferriss

• Posts about 2 times a day
• @replies about .3 times a day
• Out of 2 tweets, about 1 and a half are links
• CQ = 13.3% LQ = 70%

What We Learn From @wilw

• Posts about 10 and a half times a day
• @replies about 4 times a day
• Out of 10 tweets, about 2 are links
• CQ = 38.8% LQ = 18.9%

What We Learn From TwitterFriends Averages

Here are the averages from twitter, not from our 5 users.

• Average Tweets per Day per user 10.4
• @replies per day is 4.6
• Out of those 10.4 Tweets, 2.2 are links
• CQ = 44.1% LQ = 21.6% Leaving 34.3% to plain text

4 – Analyze Your Stats

Now that you know how “the pros” tweet, it’s time to see how you stand up.

Check out your:

• Average Tweets Per Day, @replies, your CQ% and LQ%.
• Ask yourself, how do you stack up against your list of stars, your list of personal tweeters, and the average.
• Is there anything you need to focus more on?

5 – Assemble A Twitter Template

Now that you know how often you should tweet, and what type of tweets you should tweet. The next step is to generate a “Tweet Template”.

What you do is select a few tweets, maybe 10-20 interesting tweets from each user on your list.

Then take those Tweets and break them down into their core components. Can you see any trends? And similarities?

For example here are 5 Tweets

Here are 2 samples from Darren @problogger. Consider these for use as posting updates.

@problogger wrote -> Reading: Simon and Garfunkel’s 10 Blogging Lessons - http://tinyurl.com/89nme4

Template - Reading: Title - Link

@problogger wrote -> New at ProBlogger: Add Social Proof to Your Blog With TweetBacks http://twurl.nl/djz7gx

Template - New post on my blog -> Title -> Link

Here are 2 samples from Kevin Rose @kevinrose. Consider these as a template for your social posts.

@kevinrose wrote -> Lunch then movie at home, relaxing weekend. http://twitpic.com/zeeb

Template – What I’m doing -> picture

@kevinrose wrote -> listening to a little ‘hot chip’ while reading the emails

Template – What I’m doing, no sell, no link.

Here is a tweet from Tim Ferriss @tferriss. Consider this as another template for when you post a link that is non-promotional.

@tferriss wrote -> Experimenting w/ various ways to start a fire in a fireplace. How about a Coke can + bar of chocolate? http://tr.im/2nor Your tips + tricks?

Template – Ask question? Offer potential answer (or title) -> link -> question?

Conclusion

To get the most out of this article try and implement these 5 steps.

1 - Create a list of 5 users who are in the same field as yours that you would like to model.

2 – Create a list of 5 personal users (or more) so you can see how they act and behave, feel free to analyze their stats as well.

3 - Visit Twitter-Friends.com and analyze the stats of those users.

4 – Analyze Yourself

5 – Form a few templates

After you complete these tasks, you will know where you stand up in the “twitterverse” as well as how you can improve your twitter experience.

By using the templates I provided (as well as coming up with your own), you too can easily come up with creative ways to tweet and provide value to your followers.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

An online presence is a great way to connect with people, but remember: Everything you write or say online can be found . . . and held against you.

The internet provides an impressive way to connect with people (in essence leveling the playing field for home based business owners). Incorporating social networking into your business’s marketing plan will pay off tremendously. Many entrepreneurs participate in socially geared networking forums as well as business networking forums; the caveat is both reflect heavily on you and, by association, your business. Therefore, it’s important to realize the potential impact of your online activity on your business.

Social networking sites are a great way to stay in touch with family and friends, but remember the content published here is accessible by others. This includes people with whom you do business. Even though you may have separate sites/accounts that seemingly split your business and personal online personas, anybody could easily access the information on your personal site prior to doing business with you. For example, many HR departments Google candidates’ names to obtain additional information about them during the hiring process. So why wouldn’t a CEO turn to Google before entering into a business relationship with a person or company?

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Explore the Twitter Hashtag

There is a pretty useful trick that twitter insiders use all the time called a hashtag. The roots of the #tag are buried somewhere in IM coding, but it’s what you can do with it using twitter that matters. (More on hashtags if you want to techie stuff on this.)

The hashtag or #tag added to a tweet acts as way to create categories, groups or topics for tweets that others can use as well. This way, tweets can easily be grouped together using the search.twitter.com feature.

Let me give you a very commonly used tactic for this. Let’s say a group of folks are attending a workshop and tweeting their notes in real time. If everyone at that workshop were asked to add something like #mkt101 to their tweets, everyone present or not can see and share all the notes in one place.

During earthquakes and fires hashtags are a great way for people to get news.

Promoting events and product launches via a hashtag helps keep the word in context

Companies often use hashtags as a way for remote employees to use twitter as a communication tool for all the stuff people should stay on top of.

I use a hashtag for each of my live webinars and then people tweet and ask questions via twitter and I have a back channel of conversation and notes and another source of relevant content to support the webinar.

You can also find hot trends via hashtag at search.twitter.com. The homepage lists the trending tags. More than one twitter user has found that jumping into a hot trend conversation is a great way to connect with folks on something of shared interest.

Anyone can create a hashtag by putting # in front of anything. Keep is short so you don’t use up your 140 and try for a little unique. If you use a tag that others are using you will mingle your results with others.

Here’s an example of a search for the hashtag I used during the call with Seth Godin last week - #dtmseth

Google Adds New Features

As an online business, it is important not to look past your local audience. As a brick and mortar business, your local audience might even be your entire audience. Your presence in Google Maps is important. You (should) know that by now.

Keeping this in mind, Google has introduced some improvements to its AdWords local business ads for Google Maps (only). New improvements include:

- Info Window Features
- Reporting Capabilities

Your information window in Google Maps will now feature new interactive links designed to connect users to your business quickly. “Previously, a click on your ad’s info window could only take the user to your website,” explains Amanda Kelly of the Inside AdWords Crew. “Now, users will be able to interact with the info window to get the information they’re looking for about your business, right away. The new links include ‘Get Directions,’ ‘Street View’ (where available), and ‘Save to My Maps.’ Shortly after we implement these links, we’ll also add a ‘Send’ link, allowing the user to send your business info to their phone or email. Users will still be able to click through to your site if they wish — the info window simply offers additional free functionality.” Read article…

‘How do I get followers on Twitter?’ - it’s a question it seems everyone is asking. In this post Jo-Lynne (follow her at @dcrmom) shares some tips on being the kind of Twitter users people want to follow.

Hi. I’m Jo-Lynne and I’m a Twitteraholic. Yes, I’m unashamedly and unapologetically addicted to Twitter. I use Twitter to build relationships, to keep connected to the outside world, to distract me from the housework, and to find articles and information that I wouldn’t discover otherwise. I choose carefully whom I follow on Twitter. As with any other social network, there are ways to grow your community. In Twitter-speak, this means to gain followers. I’ve put together this list based on the characteristics of the people I most enjoy following on Twitter.

1) Be Interesting

It’s fine to announce what you’re doing and thinking and what you had for lunch, as long as you do it in a way that is entertaining to your followers. Twitter is micro-blogging, and like on your blog, if all you do is give a play-by-play of your mundane daily happenings, you will lose followers. The people I enjoy following find a way to make me smile with their quips and one-liners, even if they are just informing me what they had for breakfast. Here are a couple of examples from the past few days.

@subdiva could have said, “Packing to go to Disney tonight!” but instead she wrote: “Packing up to ring in the New Year on the happiest place on earth. No, not the wine store…”

@rocksinmydryer could have said, “I hate dieting” but instead she wrote: “May I just say, for the record, that PORTION CONTROL STINKS? Thank you, that is all.”

Of course not everything you post has to be clever, but if you’re just sharing your thoughts and happenings, try to make it worth reading.

2) Be Informative

Not every tweet should answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” If you are going to participate in the Twitter community, you need to give something back. I love it when people post links to helpful articles or leave bits of advice and information. Post whatever comes naturally to you. @skinnyjeans reminds her followers every day to get up and drink a glass of water and gives us a much-needed pep talk in the middle of the afternoon. I love this! @problogger always links to the articles he is reading, and I have found lots of new bloggers to follow this way. Not all helpful information has to be your own. If you see a good tweet, do a “retweet” so your followers can get the benefit of the information that is being shared.

3) Be Interactive

Don’t be a “hit and run” tweeter! In other words, don’t just log into Twitter to tell people what you are doing or link to your post and then leave. Respond to tweets, ask questions, answer questions. Twitter is a conversation, not a monologue, and the more you participate, the more you will get out of it, and the faster your community will grow.

4) Be Promotional

Yes, it’s okay to promote your own work, as long as it’s not all self-promotion, all the time. I love it when people link to their recent posts on Twitter. I almost always follow the links, especially when it’s done in a thoughtful way. I can’t always log in to my feed reader and catch up on my favorite bloggers, but for some reason, if they post a link in Twitter, I usually take the time to follow it, especially when they introduce the link in a thoughtful and interesting way. Which brings me to my next point.

5) Be Personal

For a while I used a plugin that automatically tweets a link to every new post I write, but I have turned off that feature and opted, instead, to write a more thoughtful introduction to the link I’m sharing. Maybe ask a question, or make a comment or introduce the link in a way that pertains to the subject of the post. No one likes to feel that they are getting spammed. And they are more likely to read it if you make it sound like it will be interesting or helpful. Don’t, however, be tempted to use the old bait and switch tactic to get readers to follow your link. They will wise up and you will find yourself unfollowed.

And while we’re at it, TURN THE ROBOTS OFF. It’s impersonal and insulting. I unfollow and block people who use automated responses. Period. The end.

6) Be Considerate

This is definitely a case of “do as I say, not as I do” because I KNOW I am so totally guilty of this. And yet, it bears mentioning because it really does get annoying, at least when other people do it. Sometimes we get into so many conversations or we have so much we want to share that we find ourselves clogging the Twittersphere with a long series of tweets. This is annoying. I won’t promise never to do it again, but it’s something to keep in mind. If you find yourself going back and forth in conversation with one person, it’s time to take the conversation to Direct Messages. Or email. Or text. Or, gasp, the phone. Believe it or not, some people DO still use the telephone.

7) Find a balance.

Finally, balance all of the above. If all you do is promote yourself, people will tire of you. NO ONE is that important. If all you do is update your daily happenings but never respond to others or give anything back, people will tire of you. NO ONE is that interesting. Balance is key.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

by Jules Rosen

Running your own business requires you to do it all. Sales , advertising, accounting etc. Even serving as your own marketing department as well. That’s where imprinted products can have such a big impact

The Small Business Association, said small owners often act “not only as the CEO of their company, but the head of sales, head of finance, and whatever else it takes to get the job done.”

If you’re the head of marketing at your company, you’re looking for ways to get your company’s name in front of the public, and you probably don’t have a huge budget to work with. Imprinted promotional products can be the perfect solution for the business owner. Read article…

When it comes to e-mail marketing, it’s all about the subject line. Make the most of yours.