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 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.

Twitter is the easiest form of social media to measure, so make sure you’re getting the most from it.

By Marshall Sponder | Entrepreneur.com

The news is slowly sinking in that Twitter can help small businesses succeed beyond answering customers’ questions, networking and providing education. Within a fairly short period of time, Twitter could permanently change how small businesses operate to include hyper-local marketing, advertising, financial information, customer service, data mining, product and service alerts and micropayments.

Immaturity of business models and metrics and ROI questions surrounding social media are making Twitter cumbersome to use for many small businesses, but change is coming as more startups are building Twitter into their business models; meanwhile, Twitter metrics and tracking have also been rapidly evolving. New metric tools such as Twitoaster and ViralHeat are constantly being released to track Twitter’s effect on sales and marketing.

Twitter is the easiest form of social media to track, due to its open interface and data. Any kind of actionable data is worth tracking. For example, business owners can start by tracking how many followers they have at any one time, how many times their posts were shared and how many replies they got. They can also track more complex calculations such as how much their Twitter followers are worth. For example, Hillstrom’s Twitter Quality Score is calculated by dividing the number of followers by the number following, and a score of 1.5 or above demonstrates that a Twitter account is worth following and has quality information and offers for its followers.

Next, track your sales or word-of-mouth mentions back to your Twitter account. Use a URL shortener, to track how often your content appears on Twitter, and tie it back to sales. For example, you can establish a shortened link to a specific promotion and track how many times it has been clicked on and shared, which is important in social media.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebusiness/webmetricscolumnist/article202516.html#ixzz0M2A1pEXc

As Twitter surges toward an estimated 12 million registered users by year’s end (though some new stats may disagree), some of us are starting to deal with what we recently dubbed “followholism.” You’ve followed so many people, it’s hard to keep up, and it’s probably time to do a little housekeeping.

But where do you begin? Twitter’s own tools for managing followers are subpar. It’s nearly impossible to figure out who among your followers are following you back, and the interface for paging through followers is clumsy and difficult to use. Fortunately, Twitter’s API has given rise to a vast universe of amazing third party apps. So we’ve assembled a toolkit below of 10 services that can help you take control of Twitter and organize your followers. If you know any other tools that would be helpful for organizing tweeps, add them in the comments.

Find Out Who You’re Following

When I first joined Twitter, I started following people right out of the gate in order to get some utility out of the site — after all, the only way to join the conversation is to start following it. After I got used to Twitter, though, I had the urge to clean up my follow list. Eventually, I found that some of the people I had initially followed as a way to get into the community weren’t necessarily people that I was interested in continuing to follow. Here are some tools to help you investigate your tweeps and make an informed decision about whether to keep following them.

1. Twitter Grader - Using a detailed 5 piece algorithm, Twitter Grader assigns every users you run through its system a grade from 1-100. Using this tool you can investigate how engaged the people you’re following are and that can help you decide if you want to keep following them.

2. Twinfluence - Twinfluence is a scientific approach to measuring the influence of Twitter users. It’s another set of metrics you can use to help you figure out who you want to follow.

3. Tweetcloud - One of the most important factors when deciding whether you want to follow a Twitter user is what sort of content they tweet about. If someone tweets mostly about topics you don’t care about, they might not be the best person for you to follow. Tweetcloud creates a tag cloud of a person’s tweets to give you a bird’s eye view of the type of things they tweet about.

Find Your Friends

Not all relationships on Twitter are equal. Unlike many social networks, Twitter allows you to follow (most) people without their permission. There might be a bunch of people who are following you that you aren’t following back, and likewise there are probably some people you’re following who aren’t reciprocating. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — if their content is good, then you shouldn’t worry about whether they follow you back. But knowing who your friends are is helpful when you’re trying to organize your Twitter follows.

4. Twitter Karma - Twitter Karma is a great app that lets you sort through all of your follows and see who’s not following you in return, who you have a mutual follow/follow-back relationship with, and who is following you that you’re not following back.

5. Friend or Follow - Friend or Follow does essentially the same thing as Twitter Karma, helping you figure out who your friends, follows, and fans are on Twitter. The difference is in the presentation, and it might be a little easier to use for those with a large number of follows or followers.

6. Qwitter - Once you’ve done your initial cleaning, Qwitter is a nice app that will update you via email whenever someone stops following you. It will even let you know what you tweeted that caused them to stop following you, which could be useful (if you lose five followers every time you tweet about your cat, for example, that might be a hint to stop talking so much about your cat if you want to retain followers).

UPDATE: We’ve had some reports that Qwitter hasn’t been as reliable lately as it had been in the past. An alternative service that also notifies you when you lose a follower is Twitterless. If you really want to keep on top of when your followers jump ship, it might be a good idea to sign up for both services to make sure you have all your bases covered.

Get Rid of Inactives

According to a recent study, 80% of Twitter users have less than 10 total tweets. That might not be a bad thing — some people might join Twitter specifically to follow others and track their updates. But inactive users might also not be the best people for you to follow. Here are two tools that can help you weed out the inactives.

7. Nest.Unclutterer - Nest.Unclutterer will automatically block Twitter users who are following more than a certain number of people or who have been inactive for a certain number of days. You can specify those thresholds and white list certain tweeps so that they are exempt from the cleaning. Nest.Unclutterer is actually less about who you’re following, and more about making sure people following you are actually friends you want to be associated with.

8. Twitoria - Twitoria scans through your Twitter account and finds anyone who has been inactive for the past week, two weeks, month, two months, six months, or year.

Manage it All

Now that you’ve cleaned up your Twitter follow list, you’ll want to keep on top of things from here on out. Here are two apps that will help you better manage new follows and followers.

9. TweetSum - TweetSum digests all your new followers, rates them using what they call the DBI (”Douche Bag Index”), a number that supposedly weeds out Twitter users likely to be annoying, and then lets you easily follow them back or categorize them as tweeps you don’t want to follow. You can see a list of recent tweets for each new follower as well, which is helpful.

10. Tweepler - Tweepler is a new follower management application that lets you make quick, one click decisions about whether to follow people back or drop them into an ignore pile (out of sight, out of mind). In addition to being able to view recent tweets, Tweepler gives helpful stats about new followers, such as average tweets per day.

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.

Just starting out on Twitter? Looking for some Twitter Tips to get you started?

Twitter is bound to have a load of new users today as it is being featured on Oprah - so I thought it might be a good day to share some tips for the beginner Twitter user who is just getting going with the medium.

1. What’s in it for Your Followers? - How to be Useful on Twitter
2. 10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners - good sound advice and tips on getting going on Twitter
3. 8 Sure-Fire Ways to Tick off the Twitterverse - a few things to avoid on Twitter
4. 5 Ways I Benefit from Twitter - this outlines why I love Twitter in my business of building blogs
5. Defining Your Twitter Goals - this one is more for those who want to use Twitter for other purposes than just letting their family know when they’ll be home.
6. How to Set up a Twitter Account - most of your are probably past this one but it could be useful if you’re a ‘Pre-Twitter’ user.
7. 5 Steps to Model Successful Twitter Users - an exploration of a few ways that Twitter is being used
8. Think Like a Toddler and Find Your Voice on Twitter - using the analogy of growing up as a kid to growing as a Twitter User
9. Twitter in Plain English - cool video on the basics of Twitter
10. What Twitter Application is Right for You? - looking at some of the tools people use on Twitter
11. 10 Traits of Highly Effective Twitter Users - some good advice for growing your profile on Twitter
12. How to Get More Followers on Twitter - a question many ask. If you’re not a celebrity to start with - you might want to read this.
13. 6 Ways to Maximize the Use of Your 140 Characters - basic ‘Tweet Writing Tips.

To keep up to date with more Twitter Tips and Tutorials for both individuals and businesses wanting to get on Twitter - follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our news feed.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

by Mickey Mellen from Mt. Bethel Church of Marietta, GA. Follow him @mickmel.

Many churches and organizations are feeling like they should be on Twitter, but they’re not sure how they can use it for their cause. Here are a few techniques we’re trying at Mt. Bethel that may give you some ideas on how to get started:

• Showcase your staff: On your organization’s “staff” page, give clear links to those that are on Twitter. This is also a good place to link to their profiles on other social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Here’s ours as an example



• Summarize your staff tweets: Zappos does a great job of showing off their employee tweets. Kent Brewster has a script that can be plugged into almost any site to create a similar thing. To make it work, create a new twitter account and have it follow all of your staff members (and no one else). Plug that new twitter account into the script, and voila!
• Show live chats from events: A simple hash tag can go a long way. At a recent youth event, we enouraged people to use a hash tag when discussing the event, then we pointed parents to the Twitter search results page for that hash. It was very popular, but you run the risk of a bad apple saying some inappropriate things, and it can’t be cleaned up if you’re using this method.
• Find how who else related to your organization is on Twitter: If you have an e-mail database of your users/congregation, you can import that list to a new gmail account, then have Twitter search that account for active members. Follow them to see what’s going on, and many will follow you back.
• Tweet from retreats, events or mission trips: A great way to keep the people at home informed is a Twitter account dedicated to that event (like our current mission trip to Ecuador). The advantage to this over a hash tag is that parents and other concerned parties can subscribe to that user can get updates on their phone.
• Post weather-related news: If you have ongoing weather-sensitive events, such as outdoor sports, create an account dedicated to field conditions. Our recreation update account is often very quiet, but it’s worth gold on rainy Saturdays in the summer. It saves a LOT of phone calls from wondering parents.
  
• Post your blog entries: While the best Twitter interaction is personal, some users are losing interest in RSS feeds and just focusing on Twitter. Point your blog to a Twitter account as an alternative to RSS and e-mail subscriptions (blog to twitter). If you use WordPress, Twitter Tools is an excellent plug-in. If not, then twitterfeed can do the job.
• Always try new things: We created an account that uses sitetweet to post user activity (”user reading xx blog entry”, etc) to a dedicated twitter account. I personally find it a bit overwhelming, but some of the staff (and a few members) think it’s a neat thing to watch.

What other great ways have you found to use Twitter for your church/organization?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

Since it was launched last fall, over 1.5 million people have graded their profiles using Twitter Grader.

But what does a Twitter Grade actually mean — and how can you use it to improve how you use Twitter?

Here’s the scoop: Your Twitter Grade is a measure of how well you’re using Twitter as a marketing tool. The number is a percentile score based on how effectively you’re following best Twitter-for-business practices, compared to all the other people that have been graded.

To give you a better sense of how you can improve your use of Twitter as a marketing tool, here’s a breakdown of a few questions Twitter Grader asks when grading your profile (as well as some of the thinking behind them):

1) How many followers do you have? Reach is important, and Twitter Grader puts some weight on the number of people following you. Offering interesting content and interacting often online will get you more followers. Also, those who have a lot of followers are frequently thought-leaders in the space.

2) What is the power and influence of those people following you? Choose your friends wisely, and build a network of people who have have large networks themselves. To have influential people follow you is powerful.

3) How many people are you following? If you are following more people than are following you, it reduces your grade a bit. This “poor ratio” often (although, not always) implies that a person is following too many people at once, instead of letting organic relationships naturally develop. Remember to build your network organically, step-by-step.

4) How often do you update and interact with your network? Being an active member of the Twitter community defineitly gets you points. Remember to consistantly interact with your network. However, tweeting excessively without reason can hurt your grade.

5) How often does your network engage with you? Twitter Grader thinks very highly of people who are tweeted at, cited in the context of a tweet or retweeted. To have people interact or reference you shows authority. Give people a reason to talk about you.

What do you think? Are there other best-practices Twitter Grader should be assessing? How do you use Twitter for marketing?

by John Haydon (follow him at @johnhaydon) from Corporate Dollar

It’s not about you. I know, sounds cold but it’s true. It’s really not about you. It’s not about the number of followers YOU have on Twitter. It’s about how much value THEY gain from following you.

But in some ways, it’s not about them either.

In many ways it’s about your 2nd and even 3rd degree network - the folks who follow your followers.

It’s all about reach.

“But I have 7,357 followers on Twitter! Certainly that would mean that I reach more folks than my next door neighbor who has only 987 followers.”

Maybe. But maybe not.

Like my junk?

What’s powerful about Twitter is the potential for your message to be exposed to thousands of folks way beyond your immediate connections. This happens when your followers retweet something you posted or the followers of your followers (2nd degree folks) retweet something the your followers retweeted. There are a few tools that can measure this potential reach, but let’s focus on two:

1. Twinfluence

Twinfluence will show you four useful measurements of your Twitter network:

Second-Order Network: The number of folks that follow your followers. These are the folks that are exposed to replies and retweets from your followers. The more useful and/or *interesting your posts, the more likely your second-order network will retweet to their followers. Your 1st degree followers plus all their followers equals your reach.

Velocity: The average number of followers and second-order followers attracted per day is velocity. The larger your Twitter network is, the faster it grows. Again, posts that are useful and/or interesting.

Social Capital: The degree to which your followers have a high number of followers themselves determines your social capital. A user whose followers have an average of 200 followers each has a much more limited reach than another use whose followers have an average of 2,000 followers. Even if these two users have the same number of followers, their potential reach (the real story) is completely different.

Centralization: This indicates the degree to which you converse with a only a few other users. If, for example, you converse with only three users who each have 5,000 followers, your network is considered “fragile”. If one of these three users unfollows you, it could have a huge impact on your overall reach.

2. Twitter-Friends

Twitter-friends is a data geeks wet dream. A lot of very useful data that’s worth spending time understanding. For now though, start with these three measurements:

Network overlap: This graph shows you the level of two-way conversations you have with folks. As you become more “popular” on Twitter, it will be hard to tell how many replies from folks that you’ve missed. In my case, you’ll notice that the amount of incoming posts to me (@johnhaydon) is larger than my outgoing replies to folks. However, the overlap of these streams shows a fairly healthy two-way dialogue.

Conversation Quotient: This indicates the level of “spaminess”. The Twitter-Friends FAQ states, “People with a high CQ are using Twitter to have direct conversations with other users. People with a low CQ are using it more for broadcasting links or status messages.”

Retweet Quotient: This tells you how useful your junk is ;-). And we all know that long term success with any social media is driven by sincerity and usefulness.

An understanding of your Twitter network’s strengths and weaknesses will give you a good starting point in the direction that you want to go with Twitter.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

If you’re just using LinkedIn to job hunt, you’re missing out on the power of Twitter. Here’s expert advice on how to tweet your way to new contacts and opportunities.

By C.G. Lynch

February 25, 2009 — CIO — Though LinkedIn tops the list of professionally-oriented social networks for job seeking, you can also use Twitter to get the word out about your skills and talents to relevant people in your industry.

But you must take some steps to be a good Twitter citizen before you tweet yourself into your next gig. We spoke with some career and social media experts on how to utilize Twitter for the purpose of job seeking, and the ways in which you can promote your own interests while helping others at the same time. (As you’ll find, you can’t do one without the other).

If you’re new to Twitter, we recommend reading our beginners’ guide to Twitter, as well as our Twitter etiquette guide, to learn more about what makes this community operate. Overall, it’s important to remember that Twitter is about exchanging ideas and letting people know more about you based on the content of your tweets.

Read article…