Twitter recently launched a service meant to give its followers some great deals and Twitter a means to monetize. Earlybird is a Twitter stream you can follow to get the latest deals offered by advertisers on the site. By following @earlybird, you’ll be among the first to know about these offers. What does this mean for you and your business?
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The Archives
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Earlybird on Twitter Catches the Worm
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010Twitter as a News Source
Monday, May 10th, 2010Using Twitter as a news source is not a new phenomenon. But, it hit close to home when I called my family members tonight that live in Oklahoma. Some of you may know that tornadoes have been tearing through the state this evening. I was noticing a few tweets and some Facebook status updates and it seemed like they were hitting a little close to home. Read More
Twitter Lists
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010I’m going to be completely honest here. I think I’ve created one or two lists, but I don’t really use them. And what I really mean by that is I don’t create them myself. I do, however, like to look at other people’s lists.
Fresh Content
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
People tell me all the time that they couldn’t possible have an interesting blog, or twitter account. Really? I don’t think that’s true. We all have something to say– atleast at one time or another. It’s a matter of making note of it, developing the thought further in your mind and making time to write about it. Here’s a little run down of how I try to keep content fresh on my twitter, facebook and blogs.
- Write ideas down. All my ideas seem to come to me when I’m falling asleep. I have a notebook on my end table near my bed where I can write these ideas down. Not only does it give me a release so I can fall asleep, but I wake up in the morning and review those thoughts. Some get thrown out the window, but others I chew on for a bit. I don’t thoughts or good ideas getting lost this way. Also, it’s a great idea to have a phone with a notes appliation so you can do this same thing when you’re out and about. Evernote is great for this and you will see trends that pop up overtime through your note taking.
- Read other blogs and twitter feeds. What are other people talking about? Sometimes this will generate ideas, or even a response. Just be sure to give credit where credit is due.
- Get involved. I love getting out and about in the city. It’s a great way to meet people and have new conversations. I make sure to take a couple minutes after a good event or meeting and jot down different ideas, or notes from the meeting.
I know this isn’t an all encompassing list of ways to keep your content fresh. I would love to hear about how you keep the ideas coming and keeping them fresh.
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Making Twitter Work for YOU
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009Feeling a little overwhelmed on Twitter and don’t feel like it’s being maximized as a tool for you? Here are a couple pointers…
If you have multiple twitter accounts to manage, my best suggestion is to use an application to manage your twitter stream. I go back and forth between Seesmic and Hootsuite. I love Seesmic because I can add all of my twitter streams and it blends them into one. So if I’m overlapping followers in these streams, I only see their tweet once. I like Hootsuite for the other reasons. I like that it is an excellent web application. It is also perfect if you have multiple twitter streams, and have a different voice for each stream. This application doesn’t blend these into one stream. As a side note, I use Twitterfon as my iphone application.
If you are having trouble sifting through all your followers, I would also use an application to create custom columns {you can do this in both Hootsuite & Seesmic}. I put my top 20 friends in one stream, a couple custom searches in another. That way I am sure not to miss what my friends are saying, and I’m able to stay atop of the issues that are important to me. Using search.twitter.com is also very helpful if you want to get instant results on what people are tweeting. I use search twitter if I’m meeting with a potential client to see what others are saying. I also use it if I’m researching a topic. It’s been added as a search engine in my book, right next to google.
If you feel like you’re getting sucked into twitter, well, that may be okay, depending on your business. If twitter is a main source of gaining potential clients and raising awareness about your services, you should be on twitter a lot.
How do you manage your twitter usage? What tips would you like to share?
Seesmic Web is Here!
Friday, July 10th, 2009Last month we blogged about Seesmic Desktop. We have been using this for a few months now and have really like its versatility and the ease of maintaining multiple twitter accounts. The only drawback we saw? It was only a desktop version.
No longer.
Seesmic Web has launched and now we can access our information from any computer with internet access. It doesn’t have all the capabilities of Seesmic Desktop from what we can tell. We’re still working on how to get our multiple accounts registered and our settings how we like them. But if it is anything like the desktop version, we’ll be happy.
Twitter Basics- Lingo
Thursday, July 9th, 2009So now that you have some of the basic knowledge of twitter, let me help you with some of the lingo that you will see while you are on there.
RT- Retweet. Use a RT when you like what someone has said, or would like to repeat it to your followers. It gives credit where credit is due. As you will see above Reporterssource is retweeting mysterymother.
# – this is called a hashtag. It’s like a label. It’s used on quite a few of the trending topics- see #iranelection and #notagoodlook. It is also used for twitter parties so you can easily find what other people are saying that have joined the twitter party (using tweetgrid, or something similar). An example of this would be #jourchat. #jourchat is a group of journalists and PR personal that meet weekly at a set time. The most popular hashtag you will see is #FollowFriday or #FF. On Fridays, you can recommend people to follow- give their user handle, why we should follow them and place #FollowFriday in the tweet.
Hopefully these twitter tips are a big help and we hope to see you on twitter. If you have any additional tips to share, please leave them in the comments.
Twitter Basics- Dashboard
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009Are you still wondering what all this twitter craze is about? Well, let me try to help. I think of twitter like texting to the masses. Twitter limits updates to 140 characters. Which is awesome. Short, sweet, and to the point. Since it’s short and sweet, it challenges you to use those 140 characters wisely. Twitter is used differently by everyone, but the main uses are to network, socialize, teach, learn and promote.
In today’s post, I am going to discuss 5 basic principles of Twitter on the twitter dashboard.
- Followers: Everyone can see what I’m saying if they want to. However, more than likely, it will be the people following me. Just like Facebook, you can add friends, or follow people. When you follow people, this adds their updates to your twitter stream. And likewise if someone starts following you.
- Mentions: Formerly known as @replies. When you click on this on right hand side of your screen, you can see when others are mentioning your twitter name. Usually people use this when they are directing a comment, or question towards someone in a public format. See below for an example.
3. Direct Messages: aka DMs. This is used when you only want that person to see your message. It still follows the 140 character rule, but is just not shown to the twitter nation. DMs can only happen when two people are following each other.
4. Search: You can search for anything and everything in this search bar. Keywords, usernames, etc. This may help you find people you can network with. Here is another great search tool you can use for twitter.
5. Trending Topics: This gives you the top 10 topics that are being discussed on twitter at that very moment. It’s a great news resource. I can’t even tell you how many times I have found out pressing news stories, or random trends on twitter before I have ever heard it from a news source.
I hope this helps give you some of the stapes of twitter. Stay tuned for more twitter helps. I will be talking about different twitter lingo, and other basic tips in my next posts.
