By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

If you’re new to online business and are trying to surf through the sometimes murky waves of the Internet, then the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath and relax. Nothing can get you more worked up than your own nerves doing a hoodoo number on your mind.  I’m going to offer you a few tricks of the trade I’ve learned along the way and hope that you’ll benefit in some small way.

1. Market Research and Analysis: This is where successful marketing plans spring to action. Justifiably, clients (or buyers) must want to achieve specific goals, so usability and receptiveness are crucial components that ultimately become the deciding factor for potential purchases. Analyze your products and/or services. Obviously, you must have a great product or service to offer your potential buyer.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

• Consumer Demand: What is it about my product (or service) that makes it essential to consumers? What sets my product (or service) aside from other competitors or like products?
• Communication/Presentation: Do I inform my potential consumers with detailed accuracy? Is my product (or service) being presented in its best light? Can I improve its viewer-ability?
• Amenities: Do I offer any special tools or tips (e.g., videos, workshops, eBooks, etc.) that enhance my products and/or services?
• Accessibility: Is my product (or service) easily accessible and within reach?
• Branding: Do I have a memorable slogan/brand? (e.g., Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?”)
• Quality/Affordability: Is my product (or service) affordable, and does it offer quality? Are financing or other loan options available?

2. Strategic Planning and Implementation: Examine your current marketing and advertising campaign to determine the best way to meet and exceed consumer expectations and demand. Try to discern which tactics are working and which ones aren’t. That doesn’t mean you have to entirely abandon the processes that you are utilizing, but it does mean that you might need to take a second approach as to how you go about your day-to-day web operations. After you’ve explored trends, applications, and web 2.0 marketing strategies, it’s time to jot down a plan of action to create real sustainable wealth in your professional business. Remember too, that two heads are always better than one; so get a professional (or personal) opinion from a friend or colleague to get her reaction on your commercial appeal.

3. Website Development and Promotion: The most critical aspects of marketing your product or service online are to know the foundation of Internet marketing and how to successfully harness the power of the World Wide Web at the stroke of your fingertips. How? Since the conception and birth of the Internet, advertising has taken on dramatically new angles, and is steadily climbing to popular ranks among the masses.

While large audiences still prescribe to network and cable television programs, the Web audience is growing by leaps and bounds. Aside from being a vital instrument for student and professional research projects, the Internet has become an ever-expanding media outlet for entertainment, information, work and direct-advertising. By integrating all points of a strategic marketing campaign, virtual web advertising agencies are able to assist clients with interactive ad campaigns that help promote exposure to clients (services and/or products).

In addition to frugal facilitation of free online marketing tools like PR-Inside.com, Free-Press-Release.com, and various online article distribution sites, Web 2.0 technologies are reinventing the way online businesses and professionals perform and succeed in today’s tough economic environment.

* Emerging web 2.0 technologies (e.g.: Twitter, FaceBook MySpace, LinkedIn, VOX, Me2everyone; Google Reader, FriendFeed, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Blip.fm, YouTube, HolisticTwitter, InSocialMedia, Wordpress, eBlogger, etc.) are excellent networking tools to help brand you and your services (or products).  *Psst…Twitter is my personal favorite social networking site, but I’m not telling anyone!

Don’t forget to utilize Meta tags and basic hotmail coding including anchor text links and linked graphics to enhance your web presence and visibility. This means using keyword/keyword phrase-rich, original content as copy and as distributable articles to assorted article-hosts.

To your success!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

Jason Preston (@jasonp107) is the Director New Media at the Parnassus Group, hosts of 140: The Twitter Conference (@140tc)

Let’s face it, Twitter is all about search. Real time search. Why else would they redesign their home page to show off their search functionality? The amount of real-time information pulsing through their service at any given minute is impressive, to say the least.

But for all that, Twitter’s built-in search is a frustratingly limited tool, providing access to a very limited amount of the data set available via the web site or their API.

Enter TweepSearch, a search application built by Damon Cortesi that allows you to search through the profile information of over 10 million unique accounts.

Here are three things you can do with TweepSearch that you can’t do with Twitter Search:

Search By Profession

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could find other marketers on Twitter? Other journalists? Other social media experts? Well it turns out that you can, at least as far as people volunteer their professions in their profile.

Searching for “journalist” on Tweepsearch yields, at the time I write this, 16,099 people you could potentially follow. “Marketer” pulls in 89,061.

These are all people who have added the term “Journalist” or “Marketer” somewhere in their Twitter bio information. You’re not going to get everyone of course, but then again, you’re probably not going to follow 16,000 people, either.

Search by URL

Let’s take the “profession” trick one step further; what if you wanted to find out who, on twitter, is associated with a certain business URL.

It’s a bit of a hack because TweepSearch won’t independently search the URL field, so if someone types a URL into their “bio” field, it will also show up too. That said, it works pretty well.

Say you want to know who on Twitter is associated with the game Spymaster. A good start would be to search for people who list playspymaster.com as their profile URL. Type:

www.playspymaster.com

into TweepSearch, and you’ll see a list of 22 results. Easy enough to comb through and pluck the real ones from the list.

Search within someone’s friends

Another cool trick you can pull with TweepSearch is to search within the bios of someone’s friends only. For example, if we wanted to see how many of Robert Scoble’s friends mention Rackspace in their bio, we’d type the following into the search box:

@scobleizer rackspace only:friends

This particular search turns up 69 friends. I Guess Scoble is popular at the office

There are a number of other cool types of search you can do based on the data Damon has available through TweepSearch. If you’re interested, there’s even a handy help page to walk you through it.

Happy hunting.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

New kid on the twitter block? Then you’ll love this innovative list of twitter ice breaker tweet posts that open lines of communication…and beyond:

1. Adulation. If you want to follow a particular person, then you want to introduce yourself in a genuine approach. For example, if you are interested in following me, you might say something like: Hi @CarolAnnB - I really found your last post on twitter helpful. I’m following u now 2 get the latest twitter tips & related info. Thx!

Sincere flattery will get you into my good graces and on my TwitterExpress!  It’s also a great way for you to get recognition in a sea of endless followers.

2. Animal Attraction. Most people have respect for animals - dogs, cats, horses, monkeys, etc. If you have a pet story you’d like to share to introduce yourself to the twittosphere, use a one-liner that’ll attract potential followers like: Hi @eHorses - love ur horse avatar. What types of horses do u own? I’ve got a black foal named Hercules. He’s a real riot!

3. Poetry. Are you poet and don’t know it? There are plenty of poets and lyricists on twitter pining to meet like-minded writers. You don’t even have to be a poet, per say, but just share a love of reading prose, haiku, parodies, and acrostic verse, among others. As an ice-breaker tweet, you might draw a prospective follower with: #Haiku –> The moment two bubbles/ are united, they both vanish./ A lotus blooms. - Kijo Murakami (RT via @Haikuluv)

4. Comedy. Everyone loves a comedian…okay, most people love a comedian. If you’ve got a funny bone and you have the extraordinary ability to make people laugh, hop to it! You might also enjoy comedy; so a great post to attract a potential comedian to your twitter may go something like this: Hey @MagicMike - feelin’ kind of down, got something funny 2 inspire me?

5. Inspiration. In this economy, anyone could use a little encouragement, so inspirational quotes and passages are a super way to bring people to your twittosphere. If you’re at a loss for words, don’t sweat it. You can facilitate online quote sites like BrainyQuote.com - excellent source for uplifting sentiments.

Remember, when you shine your light brightly, even just a candle’s flicker, you’ll draw more light to you…and more positive followers as well! 

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

By Alan Skorkin of Skorks. Follow him @skorks.

I recently got myself a brand new twitter account! Yeah I can hear the gasps already, ‘How could I abandon my followers like that’? Well before we get judgmental and call me a Twitter traitor, let me tell you about my old account and what prompted my move.

The Twitter Trap

I joined twitter for the first time about a year ago, at the time I was just getting into social media - a relative newbie. I was however savvy enough to know that the info was out there for me to find, so I set out to learn how to use twitter properly. I started learning how to get followers as well as who to follow myself, I read about how to tweet, when to tweet and what to tweet. I joined all the ‘popular’ twitter services, Twollow, Twitter Grader (and many others), I tried out TweetDeck and Twhirl. I was steeped in Twitter culture and my account was growing by leaps and bounds. Before I knew it I had 5000+ followers and was following over 4500 people. My twitter client was always on and I was tweeting 20, 30 or more times a day, I was talking to all sorts of people about all sorts of stuff. And despite all of this I was finding that I was not really satisfied with the whole twitter experience. Where were the deep connections that all the ‘experts’ were talking about where was the ‘value’, why was I doing this anyway? Sound familiar?

I didn’t really understand what the problems were until I decided to engage in a retrospective of my Twitter experience. For those who don’t know this is a software development concept where you look back and try to identify problems to see what can be improved (as well as identifying things that went well so that you can keep doing them). I identified several problems and I believe these don’t just apply to me but to many people who join twitter and get caught-up in the excitement before they really know what’s what.

The Issues (Almost Everyone Faces)

• Mass following people. I don’t mean mass following spammer-style, but following dozens of people a day is still mass following. You don’t really know who you’re following, there is no time to find out, and you don’t know why you’re following them, you just know you need to follow people, all the experts say so.
• Following people for no other reason than to get a follow-back.
• Following everyone that anyone recommends.
• Not filtering your own list of followers. Who else is being followed by several hundred bots and spammers (don’t be shy raise your hand, you know it’s pretty much all of you)?
• Spamming your followers twitter stream with anything and everything you can find. What you’re doing, what you’re reading, what other people are doing and reading, all day long…
• Retweeting not because you like the content, but because you need something to tweet and if someone else retweeted it, then it must be great.
• Relying completely on a twitter client (TweetDeck) because there is no other way to keep a handle on your account
• Making at best superficial connections with your followers, and at worst no connection at all.

This is where I was and this is where I think many people are. Your twitter account is bloated with thousands of useless followers, people you never engage with, people who you don’t really care about and who don’t really care about you. You never see 99% percent of your stream since you get hundreds of tweets per hour despite the fact you’re on twitter all the time.

What Others Were Doing

Then I heard about a new trend where some people would try to ‘restart’ their account by un-following everyone they were following. I found that I had an ethical problem with that, it seemed somewhat duplicitous to un-follow people like that, after all you were both playing the game (follow me and I’ll follow you), but you decide to change the rules without telling everyone else. And what’s the point anyway, all you get is hours of effort wasted un-following everyone, but the people following you care about you just as little as they did before. This is where I had a revelation. Rather than ‘restarting’ your current account, why not phase it out and get yourself a new one. You give all your followers the opportunity to keep following you on your new account as you slowly abandon your old account over the course of a few weeks. You get to keep the followers who actually care about you and you get the benefit of a clean new account.

The Brand New Account

So we’re back at the start of this post, I’ve got myself a brand new twitter account. These days, I am not a social media newbie any more, in fact I am pretty savvy. I’ve read all the experts and have drawn my own conclusions I know how to handle a Twitter account (or any social media account for that matter). Does THAT sound like you? Well, here is what you get from a brand new twitter account:

• An opportunity to rebrand any way you like. Choose an account with a handle you actually want to be known by.
• You no longer need to mass follow anyone, you know exactly where that leads. Only follow people you you’re actually interested in following. You can’t make a connection with someone you don’t care about.
• Talking about connections, you finally have the opportunity to make some genuine ones, because you only follow people you actually want to connect with and there is few enough of them that you have the time.
• You can tweet what you feel like and what you think is worth tweeting as you no longer need to ‘satisfy’ your ‘fans’. If you tweet great content – fine. If you tweet inane bon mots – also fine. Oh and only retweet content you actually like, you even have time to read it now.
• You can follow your twitter stream on the web! Throw away your twitter client (if you want).
• You can filter your account mercilessly. No more bots or ‘money experts’ following you, give the Twitter ‘block’ feature a real workout.
• Spend 15 minutes in total on twitter per day and still get more value from it than you used to.

At the end of the day what you really want is for people to follow you because they care about what you have to say, not because they expect a follow-back. Sure you won’t get a massive account with 1000s of followers (who knows though, you just might, you may be that interesting). What you will get is an account which is almost a community, an account where you can engage 90% of your followers when you tweet as opposed to 1%. That’s powerful, considering that to engage 90 people you would need to have 100 people following you, whereas with your old account you would have needed to have 9000. I’ll leave it to you to decide which you would rather have.

In the meantime I am enjoying my brand new twitter experience. Feels a little like a breath of fresh air, refreshing, fun and liberating. Send me a tweet if you like and I’ll reply, because I care about what you have to say, and I can keep track of my whole stream, from the web, with no trouble and minimal time investment. Can you?

[image credit: tomsaint]

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

By Chris Johnson of Guerrilla.me - Follow him @genuinechris

One reason alone is why I’m on twitter. To make money. I don’t mean to give Lara the willies. But it’s true. I also post stuff about my kids. I also have made great friends from twitter. I’ve also learned a ton about the world. Still, at the end of the day, twitter is about earning customers for me. Or, should I say, helping people. It’s working. I’m doing enough business to support my family of 4, just from Twitter.

[Honesty Box: We live in the Midwest and are radically cheap.]

This is the ethos you need to have starting out:

1.) Value And Honor Every Relationship Possible. Twitter is about relationships. It’s about small communities, ideas bouncing around. You’re there to help everyone possible. You’re there to be of service. Get it? You have to help people. Let’s get specific: be of maximum service to 100 people at and around your level. Get to know them. Go out of your way to help. For free. If you need to, put a spreadsheet down to remind yourself to interact with them and encourage them.

2.) Stop Broadcasting & Automating. OK, you can repeat stuff. And you should. You can use Twuffer. And you should. But if you’re gonna roll with the “Hey, here’s a widget that gives you 9,000,000 indifferent followers in 5 minutes,” you’re not giving anything good. You’re not adding value, you’re the guy at the wedding trying to hook you into MLM. You’re also marking yourself as a newbie. Use search.twitter.com to follow keywords as I mentioned in this post.

3.) Stop begging for love from the big names. I see people trying to get attention from “name brand” blogger with 25,000 followers with nothing more to give than “Hey check out my site, what do you think.” You don’t make it big by getting a @mrskutcher to notice you. You make it big by giving value to someone with 500 followers, and having him get so happy he refers his friends to you, on and off twitter. Help people first and you’ll win.

4.) Get Local, dog gone it. Probably the biggest mistake I made was to eschew the local market to chase other business. That was dumb. It’s something I’m correcting, but I’ve lost the first mover advantage in Columbus, OH. I’ve just started reaching out. What I’ve learned? Twitter provides instant rapport when you call on them. Twitter + your local area makes it even better. Had I done this a year or more ago, I would have had results much sooner.

5.) Don’t Follow So Many People. Following is a promise. To care, to watch, even if intermittently. To link, to help. I “follow” 1800 and that’s far too many. I can only watch about 300-400. I am representing that I care about people I don’t know, and that, I find deceitful. Your mileage may vary depending on how you use twitter, but following people you don’t watch isn’t my thing. I’m in it and about relationships. True fans, true friends. Not mass numbers.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

Now that you’ve joined the twitter bandwagon, you’re trying to figure out the best way to attract quality followers to your twittosphere. I don’t know too many folks who want a wave of spam bots following them, but sometimes that’s what we might end up with if we’re not careful with our twitter approach. What’s a twitter newbie to do when she’s new to the twitter-scene? Use the following twitter tips to create a presence that’s both clear and notable:

1. Did you create your twittosphere for a professional agenda? Identifying your niche market is the first key to attracting the audience you want on twitter. It’s also the most excellent way to develop enticing tweets to engage twitter users. If you’re on twitter for pure professional grounds, then you must offer tweets that invite potential clients. Remember, consumers (whether in virtual time or real time) want value for their purchasing dollar. As a professional twitter-tweeter, you must provide quality and relative information regarding your product (or service). And just like any bricks-and-mortar business, friendly small talk is in order. Tell twitter users about yourself — how you got started in your business, why you got started in your business, why you feel strongly about your business, who facilitates your business, and what makes your business a step ahead of the grain. Add a splay of links to your Website…but tread carefully; too much of a good thing isn’t always the best method to earn patronage. Offer links to associated information as well. There’s a right way and there’s a wrong way to achieve professional success on twitter. If every tweet contains a link, you’re probably talking at your twitter base - that’s the wrong way. If your tweets offer engaging dialogue, a random splay of links, and an answer/question-type format, you’re communicating with your twitter base - that’s the right way.

2. I joined twitter to establish friendships. If you joined twitter simply for personal reasons, then you’ve got just about free reign on how you approach your twittosphere. Common sense, however, plays a major role in how you develop and expand your personal twitter network, too. Don’t be the twitter playground bully and expect people to like you. If you come onto the twitter playing field to simply dump your negative energy, then you won’t attract quality friendships. Instead, you get what you receive: misery loves company.

Monkey-see, monkey-do… Our twitter followers often mimic our personalities (and visa vie) to some degree. For example, if you share music through Blip.fm or other twitter-aligned musical sites, you’ll find that your followers are more than likely music connoisseurs. If you like baking pies and pastries, your followers can probably offer you the latest recipe for homemade apple pie. And that is what it’s really all about; twitter — that is. Twitter is the social networking scene that allows ordinary…and sometimes extraordinary folks to strike common grounds in a mutual network of millions. Where else in the world can you go and have the opportunity to touch the mind, heart, and spirit of multi-generational cultures, creeds, and races?

3. Love…American style: I want to find true love on twitter. While twitter is a great social networking portal, I can’t say whether or not true love has blossomed on this media giant. Just like any social scene, individuals must exercise caution when attempting to develop any relationship - personal or otherwise. Unless you can confirm a potential significant other’s intent beyond a shadow of a doubt - tread carefully.  In today’s fast-paced virtual society, we get easily side-tracked by the now-moment of time. This often translates into making ourselves readily vulnerable to online predators, which have less-than-desirable intentions. Don’t offer personal information (home phone number, address, etc.) unless you absolutely trust an individual. Just because it’s twitter, doesn’t make it safer.

4. Trying to expand your group’s reach? If you’re like other hobby-loving creatures of habit, then twitter is perfect for you and the expansion of what it is you like to do. It’s also an excellent venue to expand outreach for independent causes like cancer, the Humane Society, and Eco-friendly organizations, among others. If your intention is to acquire more members and/or support of your cause, twitter gives you the perfect platform to get in contact with interested individuals. On twitter, you can post your concerns, your needs, and your goals. Learn who is researching resolutions, how you can become part of the solution, and where you can go to learn more. That works, too, if you’re offering information and resources about your group. But again, remember to keep your conversations light and friendly. Too much chatter and not enough dimensions to your communication can be a real buzz-kill.

5. I want to explore my philosophical side on twitter. Now that’s a topic I can personally get into. On twitter, there’s an explosion of diversity. From orthodox religious individuals to those seeking Zen enlightenment — spirituality and philosophy is alive and well here. Twitter is home to psychologists, spiritual mentors, personal and professional coaches, psychics, astrophysicists, astrologists, astronomers, actors, musicians, clerics, engineers, and more. The best part about the twitter climate is that every one has something to offer to the virtual hemisphere of knowledge. Teaching and learning is an everyday occurrence on twitter because it’s almost guaranteed that you will learn something new each time you login. And if you’re a real people-person, you’ll be able to share your ideas, philosophies, theories (and maybe conspiracies)…and in return, you’ll gain a wealth of retrospection, investigation, and potential answers.

Most importantly, keep it real on twitter. Don’t go beyond your area of expertise. Don’t lead individuals on with superficial tweets. Don’t give advice when no one has asked for it. Don’t be rude. And yes, learn how to “listen” on twitter before you respond; part of being a good communicator, means knowing what to tweet and when to tweet it.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

By Thomas Baekdal. Follow him @baekdal.

Twitter Search is just amazing because it can give you real-time feedback about pretty much everything. That is, if you know how to look for it. Here is how:

Before we start I need to point out that both TweetDeck and Seesmic (my two favorite Twitter apps - with Seesmic being the #1) allows you to open special search panels, allowing you to “follow” a search term, instead of a person.

This is a great way to keep on top of things.

The Secrets…

1: Get up to speed with all the latest buzz

The primary way that I keep up-to-speed on social networking is to follow a social networking search. For instance, let say you want to get all the new links about social media, not including the many re-tweets that people make.

Simply search for:

“social web” OR “social media” OR “social news” -rt filter:links

2: Find all the people who are not talking about you directly

Another thing you might want to do is to find all the people who talks about you (or your product) but isn’t including you directly. E.g. If I want to find all the people who mention my name, but aren’t replying to me.

Simply search for:

Baekdal -to:baekdal -from:baekdal -@baekdal

Note: You can also find everyone who links to you via BackTweets

3: Get all reactions across multiple twitter profiles

Another thing you might want to do is to get all the replies and mentions that refer to you, across multiple twitter profiles. For instance, I have 7 twitter profiles and I would really like to see everything in one place.

Simply search for:

to:baekdal OR to:baekdalarticles OR to:baekdaldesign OR to:baekdalnotes OR to:baekdal24hours (etc…)

BTW: Seesmic will do this automatically in the reply panel (which is one of the main reason why I prefer it over other Twitter apps).

4: Follow what people are saying about your competitors

You also may want to follow not only what your competitors are saying on Twitter, but also how people respond to them. All you need to do is to simply search for:

from:competitor OR from:competitor

E.g. If your competitor is H&M (@handm), you can search for

from:handm OR to:handm

5: Only follow links from certain people

One of the problem of following people on Twitter is that you don’t get to decide what to hear. Sometimes you just want to know about the links that they share, and not hear all the chit-chat.

Let’s say that you only want to see the links that I share, then you simply search from:

from:baekdal filter:links

6: Only get the new info about a topic

One of the most common way to use Twitter search is to search for hashtags or product names. But the results are very often filled with identical tweets.

So if you want to search for anything about ‘American Airlines’ but without the re-tweeted stuff

“american airlines” -rt -via

7: Find all shared pictures about a topic.

It can be really interesting to see only the pictures that people post about a certain topic or event. During this year’s Le Mans, I was continually following every picture that people tweeted. You do this by simply searching for:

“le mans” twitpic OR yfrog OR post.ly OR twitgoo OR pikchur filter:links

BTW: Another way to search for images is to use Twicsy

Have you figured out any other ways to use Twitter Search that you’d like to share? How about trying these above techniques and letting us know what you think, in the comments?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

by Fern Richardson of Life on the Balcony - Follow her @LOTB

As Fredrickus mentioned the other day, there are many reasons why someone will follow you on Twitter. Many revolve around the fact that you followed them first. But what if there is a sizable discrepancy between the people you follow and the people who have followed you back? Assuming that you are publishing great tweets on a regular basis (and thus there isn’t a good reason for the lack of reciprocation), one tool you should check out is Less Friends, by the awesome Ruby on Rails developers at Less Everything.

After entering your Twitter user name and password, Less Friends will compare the people you are following to the people who are following you and divide everyone up into three groups:

• People who follow you but you don’t follow back (”they follow you”)
• People who you follow but who don’t follow you back (”you follow them”)
• People who you follow and also follow you back (”mutual following”)

You can use this data in a number of ways, but I want to highlight a way to use it to convert green “you follow them” people into blue “mutual following” people. It’s pretty simple. Click on the user IDs of “you follow them” people and read their recent tweets. See if they asked a question you can respond to, or maybe you know of a resource that would be helpful to them. Start replying to their tweets. Retweet their good tweets. More likely than not, they’ll notice how helpful you are and start following you.

The logic is pretty simple. You get what you give. And if someone has forgotten how good what you give is, give them the opportunity to remember. It is really important to not spam people though. That will have the opposite reaction you want from your “targets.” Just like everything you do in new media, the key to success is providing something useful.

Once you’ve converted someone you’re following into a follower, don’t stop once you’ve gained a new follower. Keep on providing useful and helpful a tweets! But since you’re reading TwiTip, I assume you already knew that, right?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

by Bradford Shimp of All Biz Answers - follow him @bradfordshimp

image credit: Joel Olives

We all hear so much about how to get more followers on Twitter and how to use it to make money. Those things are well and good, but Twitter is a two way conversation. It is just as much about following as it is about getting followers.

Choose Who You Follow For the Right Reasons

Being a good follower starts with why you choose to follow someone on Twitter. I recently watched a video that presented a strategy of following random people to see who would follow you back. The sole purpose of this strategy was to get more followers.

I personally would rather follow one person who actively engages with me and who provides interesting and useful content than one thousand who will follow me back but who will not engage or be interesting. Take a minute to think about value. What is the value of one new follower who follows you back? It is one. Now, what is the value of following a person who provides a constant stream of interesting content? The amount of enjoyment and education you get out of following that person is immeasurable. Why would you trade that for just one follow? In other words, it shouldn’t matter if a person follows you back or not. The only thing that should matter to you is whether the person you are following provides you with great content.

Pass Along Quality Tweets

Once you find someone to follow who provides good content, don’t keep them to yourself. If you read a tweet that resonates with you, be sure to pass it on. In Twitterworld, this is generally called a retweet. You simply copy and paste the message into your tweet box, add RT and the @username of the person who originally sent the tweet, and send it on to your followers. You may also want to rewrite the tweet, but be sure to give the originator all the credit.

When you pass along good tweets, you are accomplishing several things. You are helping the originator get her tweet out to a much larger audience. At the same time, you are validating the tweet, saying that you agree with it and that is is worth reading. You also are increasing the tweet’s life span. If it gets retweeted by you, you have doubled the chance that someone will see it, because it has now gone on the Twitter stream twice. Finally, you are promoting the author of the tweet to your followers, and they may choose to follow as well.

Let Them Know You Are There

Everyone likes a little feedback. One of the best things you can do as a follower is to send out some affirmation from time to time. If you enjoy someone’s tweets, let them know about it. You can do this directly by sending a reply or a direct message. Or you can talk about how great the person is in a tweet. Be sure to use their username with an @ symbol in front of it so that they will be sure to see it. If you want to be sure all of your followers see your tweet about the person, do not lead with it. Twitter treats this as a reply and in some cases your followers who are not already following that person will not see it. Just add their @username later in your tweet.
Even the most prolific and well known twitterers can burn out from time to time. Nothing validates someone as much as a heartfelt shout out or thank you. Be that follower, and you will earn a lot of gratitude.

Follow More Closely

The more you use Twitter, you will likely follow more and more people. Without a plan, it will be hard for you to follow anyone closely. If you are just skimming over random tweets, you are not being a very good follower. You can vastly improve this by using any number of tools available to  help you keep track of the twitterers that you are following.

I personally use TweetDeck, a free tool that you can download to your desktop. It gives you the option to set up groups and place twitterers in these groups. This is essential if you are following a large number of people and you want to follow some of them more closely. You can’t follow every tweet of every person, but you can read a fair number of tweets from your favorite people if you use the right tools. There a many other choices besides TweetDeck, including TweetGrid and Seesmic. If you prefer not using any tools, you can also manually read the tweet streams of your favorite people to see what they have been saying. You do this by going to twitter.com and adding /username of the person whose stream you want to read, ie. twitter.com/username.
If someone is providing interesting and useful tweets, it makes sense for you to follow them more closely. A good follower doesn’t want to miss out on anything that is being shared.

The important thing is to not lose sight of why you use Twitter in the first place. Its about finding and building quality relationships. Those relationships can lead to many places, including friendships, business opportunities, and even income. But it all starts with a conversation.
Today, spend some of your Twitter time being a better follower. Promote some good tweets. Send some encouragement. Follow someone because you like what they have to say. Being a good follower is just as important as broadcasting your own quality content.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

by Tim Bursch - Follow him @timbursch

Isn’t Twitter just for tweeting? Mainstream media thinks Twitter is fluttering. Can you really listen to hundreds of people? How?

SOME TIPS ON TWITTER:

• Ask a question and then listen.
• Group people on TweetDeck and help filter the noise (See bonus tip below)
• Follow your favorite blog authors on Twitter
• Check out chats and discussions on things you care about here.
• Take a day off of tweeting and just watch the stream go by. Notice people. Who catches your eye? Who and what do you seem to pay attention to?
• Acknowledge people. If someone says they are grabbing coffee, ask for one too. : )
• Watch how other tweeps engage. If someone re-tweets you they are probably paying attention.
• Set up alerts on topics or people using Twitter Search.
• Use favorites to save tweets and tweeps you want to pay attention to.
• Focus. When you are having a conversation on Twitter it probably helps to stop checking email and writing comments on a blog. (working on it)
• Use open-ended questions. How, what, why?
• Don’t pre-judge. Don’t instantly “unfollow” people if they are not like you. Great idea from Aliza Sherman (@alizasherman)- go look at the person’s profile and recent tweets. You might change your mind.
• Notice when people are absent. Pay attention to who is being quiet too.

BONUS TIP: GROUPING IN TWEETDECK

I created a conversation group made up of people that I am listening to and want to engage in discussion. I start by reading this group first and then filter through other tweets. When you find new tweeps you want to pay attention to, just add them.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.