1. 60 seconds on the web

This one shows what happened on the web during 2011 in a timeframe of 60 seconds, if we minimize the whole year to it. 600 new YouTube videos, almost 700,000 search queries on Google and Facebook status updates and close to 100,000 tweets should say enough about what power the internet holds nowadays.

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2. Disruptive Companies

It is easy to see how Apple, for example, disrupts today’s web. The iPhone and iPad start to replace the computers and old phones and always bring new ideas to the table.

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3. Instagram’s Fun Facts

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4. User Generated Content

Nowadays people say “Content is King” and after reading this infographic you will see why they mean it. There is so much content on the internet that is really difficult to keep up with, therefore we have to sort out the things we are interested in and only follow those.

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5. App Store Info

Want to see some interesting information about the apps in Apple’s Store? Then this infographic is for you.

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6. Foursquare Reaching 10 Million Users

This is an animated .gif and you might want to see it in full.

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7. Spam

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8. How Busy are Americans

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9. Facebook Relationships

This infographic is not only about Facebook users, but also about their relationships. Very good to understand how Facebook works for us and how we interact with the others.

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10. Bugs in your Open Source Code

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11. Twitter History

If you tweet a lot, you probably already know some of these, but otherwise this is an interesting read about the records on Twitter and some other statistics. It is not only for 2011, but includes some events from last year.

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12. Farewell to Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the former genius and Apple co-founder, died in the latter part of 2011. This infographic is more or less dedicated to him and tells us the important milestones in his life.

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13. iCloud

Apple’s new technology is shown and explained in this infographic.

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14. iPhone Users and their Security Concerns

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15. Online Hiring through oDesk in the Bay Area

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16. Future Social CEO

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17. Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line

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18. How does Google make a Profit

If you still ask yourself where does Google, a free service, make its money from, then this infographic will definitely provide an answer to you.

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19. The Life of a Facebook Photo

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20. Differences Between Mac and PC Users

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21. The Apple Products Tree Since its Foundation

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22. Online and Offline Marketing

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23. Social Media Marketing and its Effectiveness

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24. The StartUp ToolKit for Online Entrepreneurs

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25. A Day in the Life of a CEO

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Twitter

The Look

You won’t see anything drastic on the new homepage yet there are some adjustments. The new homepage is designed to make it easier to access and scan the relevant information for you. The biggest improvement is the media which is now embedded into the timeline. There’s no need to view photos or videos in new tabs anymore, you can access them straight away ( of course, you still have to click). You can also immediately access your favorite features from the lefthand side.

The new homepage’s goal is to be consistent between all your devices. Twitter has always been about simplicity and nothing has changed with this version. Although with the right aligned timeline Twitter has has started to resemble other social networks.

The profile view has experienced some changes. The number of lists you’re included on is now gone. In fact, lists have been made more irrelevant with this update. You also get a larger picture thumbnail and the new Me tab allows you to edit your profile straight within the profile page.

@Connect

The @Connect tab has taken over the previous Activity tab’s duties. It’s the place where you can see who has followed or mentioned you, retweeted or favorited one of your tweets. The tab is splits Interactions and Mentions so you can easily track your Twitter influence. Basically nothing much has changed except the name which I believe does the trick.

Another thing Twitter has introduced in this version is the switch from usernames to real names. Now everything’s backwards – first name you’ll see above the tweet is the real name which is a hyperlink and only then comes the username.

#Discover

Discover lets you tap into a stream of useful and entertaining information, customized just for you. Discover is something like the old search function only way more better. What it does is it generated your personalized information and stories based on who you follow, your location, trends and your interactions. Discover tab consists of five sections – stories, activity, who to follow, find friends and browse categories. Interacting has been made extremely easy.

While some of the experienced users often get bored by those following suggestions which aren’t always the best, the #Discover is a superb feature for those who are new to Twitter and don’t quite know where to start off.

Brand Pages

Twitter has followed the example of Facebook and Google+ and introduces the brand pages feature with this update. Although it’s nothing game changing because most of the companies already have Twitter accounts this feature will allow companies to customize their header to make their pages look more official. Companies will also have the chance promote a tweet which will appear at the top of the timeline. The new pages also let brands separate their replies and mentions. And, of course, they’re free.

Embedding Tweets

@1stwebdesigner nice article, this one reason why I need optomise my website for mobile devices.

— Juan Tarrats (@jtarratsart) December 21, 2011

The new update also comes with great news for developers. Instead of copying and pasting a code users can now simply embed their tweets with just a couple of clicks. All the usual actions are available and easy to use with the embedded tweets – reply, favorite, retweet.

WordPress bloggers will be able embed Tweets directly into their posts by simply copying the Tweet URL or using a familiar shortcode.

Finally, Twitter has refreshed the design of Follow and Tweet buttons and introduced two more buttons – #hashtag and @mention button. The new #hashtag button tells your visitors there’s an interesting conversation happening on Twitter, and lets them join in with just one click. The @mention button encourages visitors to Tweet to your account, driving public conversation directly from your website.

What’s gone

Most of the negative feedback comes from iPhone users. The option to translate tweets is gone and users can no longer copy and paste from a tweet. There’s also some buzz about saying thank you to multiple people. With the tweeting now happening from a pop up window you no longer reply to several people at once so you just have to type in the user names manually. Which again is a little inconvenient because of the use of real names.

Yet I was unable to find anything significant that the new version lacks so I’d be grateful if you could point these things out for me and other readers.

Overall

Twitter really appears to have hit the bull’s eye with this update. Most of the users seem very fancy about the new changes and reviews are only praising the new features. There are opinions that Twitter has officially gone mainstream but that’s the very same thing you’d do with such an influx of users. The new version really makes engagement and interaction easy. We’ll see the results but for now on it seems rather promising and optimistic.

Additional resources

• New Twitter: 25 Tips and Tricks for Savvy Tweeters
• The New Twitter: It’s Just Not For Me, But I Understand It
• Six ways the ‘new new’ Twitter changes everything

Tweetdeck

The same day Twitter announced it’s new version the most popular tweeting platform Tweetdeck got a new look as well. Tweetdeck was acquired  by Twitter in May 2011 allegedly for around 40 million dollars. Finally, the conversion from beta is complete and we can get our hands on the new platform.

You can get Tweetdeck either as a web application, Chrome plugin or desktop plugin. In this review I’m using the desktop version yet there’s actually no difference. So, what’s new?

The Look

The most radical yet not so noticeable is the shift from AIR to a native desktop app. The dashboard is almost identical with the old version however there’s been an irreversible change. The next thing you might spot is the missing orange logo which is replaced by Twitter’s blue bird.

The column navigation has switched to the top of the window and is more handy. Yet there’s a considerable drawback namely the columns aren’t resizable anymore. Actually you couldn’t resize columns in the old version as well but the minimum width for them was lower and more columns would fit the screen.

Unlike the old version the tweeting is now done from a pop up window. Some other minor changes include blue links, switch from usernames to real names, tweets now miss day and date and a smooth search bar at the top right.

Overall, the look now seems somehow cleaner and coherent. Browsing experience is made more pleasing and perceptible. Yet there’s a price. And it becomes apparent when it comes to performance and features which is far more important than sleek neat visual look.

Performance & Features

Usually with an upgrade we expect new features and improved performance but it’s quite discussible within this case. So is there something new? The message box is more compact as it merges the messages you have with a person. Also you get a solid info about a user you follow by clicking on his avatar. Yes, that’s about it.

But what’s gone? First of all there’s no more support for Foursquare, LinkedIn and Google+ also hasn’t hit the list.

While some of you might be glad that the AIR is gone there are some cons. And the most apparent is the approximate 20 second delay for updating tweets. It may not be so essential for ordinary user but it may create some problems for those who used to use Tweetdeck seriously.

Here are other important drawbacks and missing features:

• There’s no more option to edit lists and add new people to them.
• Retweeted tweets doesn’t stand out in any way so it’s harder to spot them.
• Media from Twitpic, Instagram, Youtube etc doesn’t show in a pop up. Instead you have to view it in browser.
• @Me column shows only mentions without retweets.
• No drag and drop support for image upload.
• You can’t translate tweets anymore.
• No more support for keyboard shortcuts.

Overall

While Tweetdeck can be proud of the fresh beautiful look it just can’t hide and countervail all the missing features. One of the Mashable’s commentators wrote – “Tweetdeck wasn’t just a Twitter client but an overall social media dashboard.” Sadly but it’s kind of truth. Some maintain that this is the Twitter’s strategy to stimulate users to use the native Twitter website and maybe it is so.

However, Tweetdeck was never a business platform. It was created for Twitter power users and I believe it hasn’t changed it’s nature. The new look is definitely a benefit and, well, do we care if Twitter pushes us to use it’s own tools? For the average user it doesn’t make a difference and if the app works and meets all the needs – why not to use it?

For freelancers it might be a bit difficult to handle social media, because of the loads of information on and about it. There are many myths about social media oand I will list some of them here, so you will not have to think about them anymore from now on.

1. Social Media Equals Immediate Success

Well no, it doesn’t. As much as I would like to say it does, instant success is not something social media guarantees. If you created a page for your company on Facebook, it’s very unlikely for you to get the first client within a week. You need to spend time and maybe even money to bring people there, while also spending time and money on trying to make them want your services.

The best way to have success in social media is spending a few hours each day on it, not getting burned out by working 24/7 work for weeks in row, because this doesn’t guarantee the success will come faster – the probability is actually lower.

So don’t think that having social media accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook will bring you success right away, because it is not like that. Use social media wisely and wait to see the results – good things come to those who are willing to wait for them.

2. Be on Every Platform

Photo by Lee Traupel

This is another false myth people talk about all the time. It is not a requirement to be on all the social media platforms, although it could be an advantage. On the other side, being on all the platforms (in case you are a small company) might actually do less than you thought. This might turn out bad because as a small company you probably do not have somebody employed just to take care of your social media responsible, therefore you probably do everything. This means there will not be enough time for every platform and some of them might get left behind. This will do anything but create a good impression for your clients, so avoid signing up everywhere if you are not confident you can handle all of them.

Moreover, not every new platform will reach success like the big ones, so make sure you have accounts on the big social media platforms and take it from there. If you think some other minnows have chances as well, have an account there too, but keep in mind that you do this for the sake of your clients. If they are not present on the respective platform, there is not need for you to be there either.

3. Social Media Replaces a Website

No, it doesn’t. I can’t stress enough about how important it is to have a website – separate from your social media accounts. The web 2.0 platforms are there to only aid your website, not to replace it. The most important thing about your website is that you have total control over it – from the host and domain, to platform and content. This is different on a social media platform where you are restrained by different rules. Whereas a website is yours as long as you want, a social media platform where you have all your clients can fail and cease to exist in a matter of days – if you have no website, how will you regain contact with your  clients?

This can’t happen with a website, which is yours and where only you decide on the content and layout. Nobody changes the rules without you knowing and if the host company goes bankrupt, you always have your backup (providing you actually do, which is a good thing to keep in mind) and can move in an instant to another provider. Social media does not replace a website because they have totally different purposes. This is why you should always have both of them.

4. No Contacts Are Made Through Social Media

This is another one which should totally be ignored. Clients can be landed through social media, this is something that I did before and that I will continue doing. Sure, social media is for fun and in our private circle we use for a total other purpose, but in a business environment clients are often landed through social media. Now if you are a freelance editor, don’t expect to land Darren Rowse and start writing for him immediately, because this will not happen. However, it is very possible to land any kind of client on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and, after building a strong relationship with him, to actually make him pay for your services.

5. Social Media is a Waste of Time

This couldn’t be more wrong. Not only is social media is important for any kind of business, it will also bring you clients and make you more popular on the internet – which, last time I’ve checked, was the second most used media in the world – far more used than radio or newspapers and close behind TV. You could consider that for some people social media is a waste of time, but I repeat, this is for some people. Companies need social media like air, especially because of the reasons mentioned above, but also because of many others.

If you have a strong social media strategy and want to invest time and money into it, social media will transform into a way of keeping your clients closer. Think they would rather read about your latest information on your Facebook page than get a weekly e-mail from you, which will end up sooner or later in the spam folder. You are the only one who can make your social media strategy transform this channel into a useful one.

6. High Number Equals Good Results

If your social media strategy is having as many followers as possible, then it is probably a waste of time for you too. Having numerous uninterested and untargeted followers will never bring the results you look for and you will end up thinking social media is a waste time. The large number of followers does not impress too many people when you are a business or a freelancer, if they are not interested in what you have to say. You can be followed by 1.000 people in the first two weeks, if only three of them interact with your, that is your real audience.

Try to target your audience a bit more and learn something about each one of them – at least while you still have a small number of followers. Clients feel when companies make an effort for them and appreciate it, so jump into this right away when you sign up on a social media platform.

7. Not Everything You Say or Do Matters

Unfortunately it does. If you don’t believe me, try to look for the stories about people who were fired from their jobs because of social media mistakes. Employers, employees, clients and prospects follow you closely and weigh every sentence and answer you make public. When you are a freelancer it might not cause that much damage, but if you are a company it might tear you apart – especially with the press following social media today as well, so pay attention to every detail of your conversations online (and for that matter offline too).

Conclusion

Social Media is huge today and if you are still not convinced about this, then there is something wrong. Try to take a look around you and realize everybody is active there and your clients are probably part of “everybody”. If your prospects are there, you have to be there too, otherwise they will move to another freelancer or company who is active on social media, and you will remain with those few faithful contacts everybody has.

Use social media wisely, have a strategy beforehand, follow it, be ready to invest in it; closely follow your discussions and watch for conversation mistakes and you will be just fine. Before considering these myths and many others, try to conduct some research yourself and you will realize most of them are false.

Do you know some other myths about social media? Do you ignore them or do you believe in them?

Before you start marketing on social sites, choose the tools you need that will help you reach your marketing goals and save you both time and money. Below are 14 tools you may use to help you more effectively build a social media platform.

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media dashboard and all in one web solution that allows you to promote to all the most popular social sites. This includes Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and others. It also allows you to track people and businesses you are following and read your social streams in one place.

Free and paid versions are available. Extensive tracking allows you to find media metrics like  your Klout score, which is a measure of your influence across the internet. A blog, frequently asked questions (FAQ), and a help desk will give you full support to create effective social media campaigns for your business.

2. Klout

Unlike Hootsuite, which is an actual tool to help you communicate with your audience, Klout allows you to measure your influence with that audience. Using a scale of 1 to 100, Klout uses 35 different variables on Facebook and Twitter to determine your true reach, amplification probability, and network score. (This simply means how well you are getting your audience to act on your message.)

3. PeerIndex

PeerIndex is similar to Klout because it allows you to measure your overall authority on the internet. This is more than just about being popular; this is about your real authority and true influence on those you connect with. Using eight benchmark topics, your “fingerprint” is built up on a category by category level. How receptive your audience is also influences your overall authority.

4. Traacker

Traacker serves two functions. First, it allows your company or agency to effectively find and connect with the influencers in your industry. Second, you may measure your influence. Unlike the other two tools previously mentioned, which are free or low-cost, this solution will cost you several hundred dollars per month to implement.

5. Radian6

With other solutions you are actually tracking your brand, company, or yourself. With Radian6, you have the ability to track unlimited topics or keywords. Price range is similar to Traacker, with discounts available to non-profit organizations.

6. Bufferapp

A free/low-cost solution that allows you to spread your tweets out throughout the day. Build your followers and even tweet while you sleep. You’ll keep your readers happy and automate your tweets.

7. Chrome Tweetdeck

While our other solutions have focused on online tools, this “Tweetdeck” is specifically for the Google Chrome browser. It’s simple to use, with a sleek design, and best of all it’s free. You’ll easily organize all of your tweeting, and if you use Facebook too, then you’ll be able to handle both your Twitter and Facebook accounts with this one tool.

Don’t have Chrome? No problem because this tool is also available for the Android, iPhone, and as a PC Desktop so you can easily keep track of all of your Twitter activity.

8. GeoTwitr

Simple tool that allows you to sign in with your Twitter account and then mark your location. It’s free, and if geo targeting is important to you and your business, why not?

9. Tweriod

Would you like to know the best time to send your tweets so that your readers act on them? This tool analyzes both your tweets and the tweets of those connected to you so that you know the best time to tweet.

This site is also connected to some really good paid tools that will help you get even more out of your social media efforts. If you want to increase your Twitter following, or build “likes” to your Facebook pages, then definitely check it out.

10. Twitterific

Most tools created for Twitter are available for the PC. Twitterific is different. Similar to Tweetdeck for Chrome, this free tool allows you to use Twitter on either a MAC or an iPad.

Don’t want to see ads? No problem. There’s also a paid version you may buy and remove all the ads.

11. NutshellMail

Wouldn’t it be nice to get all of your social media activity in one email? Even better, wouldn’t it be nice to get it when you want it, not when it happens?

NutshellMail, a solution created by Constant Contact, allows you to save time monitoring your brand on all the most popular networks, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Yelp, YouTube, and Citysearch. See what all of your friends and business associates are doing, and get the information in one convenient email.

12. Tweetings

This is the first fully featured Twitter client for iPhone. If you have an iPad, it will also work for you. A desktop version is available for PC users to get live, instant updates.

13. Twimbow

Color code your tweets with this colorful Twitter client. This web-based Twitter client allows you to engage your Twitter followers more fully, as well as effectively because you can now organize your conversations. Keep up with your conversations better and know at a glance not only what you’ve said but answers you’ve received.

14. Seesmic

Seesmic bills itself as “The only social media tool you’ll ever need,” and it really does a good job of meeting that claim. With a version available for every browser, as well as both MAC and PC versions, you’ll find over 80 social services available. Don’t see a service you want? Then add it. You’ll find the most complete solution that’s free, and you’ll more easily track your social interactions, even if you’re on a smart phone.

There are many tools and services available to help you keep track of Twitter, as well as all of your other social media accounts. If you’re a business person, you’ll want to take advantage of as many of these services as possible to not only help you stay on top of your social media campaigns, but save you time.

Measuring your influence on the Web is more than just determining who’s reading you. By measuring your influence, you’ll know where to focus your social media efforts, driving more traffic, and more sales to your business.

The amount of Twitter abuse going around the Twitterverse is mind-boggling! Some offenses are worse than others. While we can ignore a few of them, there are some that we just can’t.

Don’t get me wrong. Twitter isn’t a cutthroat place where you make one mistake and people unfollow you. But Twitter is not a nonsense place (despite the Justin Beiber craze you see there some times).

We realize that you may be new, that you may be finding your way around, or simply trying out the myriad of new Twitter services that crop up. But what you need to realize is that your Twitter followers need to be treated with respect. Don’t go filling their timeline with one-word tweets that read ‘Lol!’ It makes you look like a bit of an idiot to be honest. Like that person on the train who laughs out loud in the middle of the crowded train. No one’s going to ask, what’s so funny? They’re going to give you a look and then ignore you.

The above scenario is what’s happening to you on Twitter if you’re using and abusing the following Twitter trends.

1. Follow Friday

(photo source)

Every Friday, we see our timeline filled with ‘#FF @thisperson @thisone, @thatone and @thisone too’.

Now why in the world would I want to do that? Who are they? What do they do? Why are you recommending them?

How to do it right: There’s only one way to get it right. Recommend one person per tweet and with a reason as to why, because they’re cool is not a reason. Explain why you think their tweets will benefit your followers or how they benefit you. Now that doesn’t mean that you recommend 15 people in a row – that’s just irritating. Tweet the recommendations throughout the day at intervals and never more than three at the same time.

2. Retweeting your own RT’s

If a person has more than a few followers, and is a nice, helpful person and tweet regularly, sooner or later, someone’s going to say something nice about them.

Now had someone complimented them in real life, they’d say thank you and would have felt all warm and happy for the rest of the day. On Twitter though, they RT the complimentary tweet.

I’m not sure why people think this is acceptable. You’re tooting your own horn! What happens to people in real life who toot their own horn a lot? They get ignored.

This is one mistake I often see otherwise Twitter etiquette savvy people making all the time. We get that you’re happy someone likes you so much. We like you too. What we don’t like is you retweeting every nice thing someone tweets about you.

How to do it right: There’s only one way to do it right and that’s by not doing it. Instead, grab a WordPress plugin called Tweetstimonials and install it on your website or blog and let it serve as testimonials for you.

Trust me, a person visiting your website for the first times wants to read testimonials. They want to know that you’re trustworthy and that you and your service/business will take care of their needs.

As a disclaimer, let me just say that there are some (very rare) times where it may be acceptable to retweet a complimentary tweet. For example, you’ve just published a blog post or released a product you worked really hard on and spent hours perfecting. Then you get a tweet saying how much your post, product etc helped the person. Retweeting that tweet with a prefix reading ‘This just made my day!’ or ‘All my handiwork just paid off’ will go down much better with your followers.

That being said – don’t do it often!

3. Auto DM

Auto DM’s make me want to scream. They’re a waste of space and no one takes them seriously. Yet, so many people still insist on sending Auto DM’s the minute someone follows them. A generic ‘Hi! Thanks for following. Hope to connect with you soon.’ sounds harmless but the receiver knows that it doesn’t mean a thing. The person doesn’t even know yet that I’ve followed them, let alone know me! It makes me wonder if the person is for real.

How to do it right: There’s no way you can do this right. Half the people have turned off their new follower notification in their settings so chances are they’re never going to notice you followed them unless you took the initiative and tweeted with them.

But you know what does make me sit up and take notice? Receiving the same message as a public tweet. It tells me you keep tabs on who follows you, that you’re online right now and genuinely interested in making my acquaintance. More over, it makes you real and I can’t wait to reply to your tweet and connect with you.

4. Auto follow/unfollow

If you have a program that auto follows everyone who follows you, then I shudder to think what your Twitter timeline would be like.

The whole point of Twitter is to follow people who interest you – not follow back every Tom, Dick and Harry who follows you. It doesn’t serve any purpose. You’re blindly following people who you don’t know anything about. They could be spammers, they could be bots, worse, they could be people who stand for things that you abhor.

Choose your own people to follow. That way, you’ll have relative control over your timeline, will be able to engage more and probably actually know a good percentage of your followers.

Twitter isn’t all about having a big number of followers. You’d be surprised at what just a couple hundred followers can do for you that your 20,000 auto follows can’t or will never be able to.

As for auto unfollows. Stop. Please. That’s just juvenile. You end up coming across as a petulant and spoiled kid. Worse, you’re doing this automatically so you don’t even notice when someone unfollows you. A program does and since you’ve set it to unfollow every one who unfollows you, it’s doing just that.

How to do it right: There’s no way to do this right. Build relationships and friendships on Twitter the old-fashioned way.

5. Twitvalidation

Oh man. This one never fails to boil my blood. You decide to follow someone because you like their bio and what you can see of their timelines and think ‘Hey! This person looks cool. It’d be fun to tweet with them.’ So you follow them and the next thing you know you’re getting a DM from them to click on a link to validate that you’re a human and not a bot.

Twitvalidation is a service that sends out DMs to anyone who follows you asking them to verify that they’re not a bot by clicking on a link.

I mean, wth?! That’s not only insulting but it’s like asking me for money when we’re only meeting for the first time.

No one has the time to click on a link that will take them to another page to click on another link and so on just to prove to you that they’re a human being.

If you can’t take the time to check out your followers for their authenticity then we most certainly don’t have the time to validate ourselves through a program you’ve installed to check your follower’s validity.

How to do this right: By not doing it at all.

6. Tweeting the same tweet numerous times

(photo source)

So we get that you have blogs to promote on Twitter. You’ve written a killer post that you’re dying to show the world. We get it. We really do. But  instead of sending out the same tweet 50 times a day, take the time to space them out over a few hours and change the message.

Same tweets look like spam when tweeted numerous times.

How to do it right: Choose a program that let’s you schedule posts to be sent out at certain times throughout the day. Do a quick Google search, there are numerous free services. Next, take 15 minutes to write your tweet differently. If you can take the time to write a killer post, you can most certainly afford 15 minutes to write different tweets all linking to the same post.

Do this, and notice how your website visitors, followers and even comments increase.

7. Not hitting reply

With 20,000 plus followers, you’re a big shot on Twitter. But would it kill you to hit reply? This one is a pet peeve of mine and some of the most respected and prolific bloggers with thousands of followers are guilty of it.

Everyone understands that you’re busy, that you have hundreds of people vying for your attention on Twitter and we also understand that sometimes a tweet just slips your notice. But only replying to friends on Twitter is just plain weird.

Even if the person tweeting you has nothing interesting to say, after the third tweet, it’s time to send them a thank you for your time reply.

This is one of those trends that isn’t obvious. But try it out. Tweet 10 super popular folks with a large number of followers and see how many of them reply to you.

How to do this right: Just hit reply. It’ll take 10 seconds out of your day. Probably less.

8. Protected tweets

I don’t understand the point of protecting your tweets. If you want privacy, there’s Facebook for that. And if you want to control who reads your tweets or who follows you, again, go to Facebook!

If I have to tell you why protected tweets are irritating, irrational and just plain wrong, you haven’t understood what Twitter is all about.

How to do it right: Again, by not doing it. Unless you’re a 16 or below and just trying it out and are worried about the kind of people who might follow you, there’s no good reason for you to protect your tweets.

9. Facebook or LinkedIn connection request via auto dm

I’ve already trashed auto DMs but I felt this deserved a sub head of its own. If you’re sending out ‘Hi there! Thanks for the follow. Let’s connect on Facebook/Linkedin’ tweets then you need to stop.

For the love of Twitter, let’s first connect here on Twitter before moving on to LinkedIn or Facebook! Show me that you’ve noticed me first. Interact with me, say hi, find out what I do and if it’s compatible or related with what you do etc.

Asking to connect via Facebook or LinkedIn when I’ve just followed you on Twitter is like hoping for a feel on a first date. Which in case you didn’t get my meaning, is wrong. Just wrong.

How to do it right: By not sending these auto DMs. Once you’ve connected with the person on Twitter and have talked to them, they’re not going to refuse your Facebook or LinkedIn connection request if you know each other fairly well through your Twitter interaction.

10. Hash tag abuse

Seen those tweets that have so many hashtags that it looks like the entire tweet was just one big hashtag? Yeah, there are plenty of those out there and quite a few of them are probably showing up on your timeline.

This Twitter crime is committed by a lot of Twitter savvy people too. We realize that hashtags let you reach a wider audience and sometimes connect a tweet to a topic that would otherwise not have been obvious but use it relevantly!

How to do it right: Make sure that your hashtags a. make sense, b. are relevant and c. not more than 2 in a tweet. You can fit in three without pissing people off but still, don’t do it too often!

Your take on most used and abused Twitter trends

What are some Twitter trends that make your blood boil, unfollow people or lose all respect for them?

Share your thoughts and Twitter trends that you feel should be banished!

They have a pretty simple customization when you generate them, but what many people haven’t noticed is that you can make advanced customization to them with CSS. This is possible because the Twitter team has made it without using any inline CSS rules, and they are such nice people that almost all their CSS is quite simple to overwrite (just with the class of the item itself in most cases).

Then, what you have to do is to turn on your CSS Zen Garden side and let your imagination create awesome widgets in a really simple way.

So, let’s rock!

Our result

Here you can see a preview of our widgets. The first one is our profile widget, and the second is our search widget (searching about tweets related to 1stwebdesigner, of course). You can see our DEMO or DOWNLOAD SOURCE to try your own combinations.

The widget customization

Let’s start with the profile widget, so we can try out some customization.

You can generate your basic profile widget on Twitter’s page.

If you run this code you will see a structure like this:

<div #twtr-widget-N .twtr-widget> <em>- Where N is our widget's ID on page (if you have more than one) and class is the same for all widgets</em>
	<div .twtr-hd> <em>- Widget header, with avatar, screen name and @user</em>
	<div .twtr-bd> <em>- Widget body, with all tweets</em>
		<div .twtr-tweets> <em>- All  tweet's container</em>
			<div #tweet-id-N .twtr-tweet> <em>- Each tweet has his own div with a unique ID</em>
	<div .twtr-ft> <em>- Widget footer, with twitter's link</em>
<em>

With this generic structure in mind we can do all the customizations. But the first thing that we can do to make things easier to customize our widget is to set its background to transparent when you call it’s js, with this:

//this is how we call our widget
new TWTR.Widget({
	  version: 2,
	  type: 'profile',
	  rpp: 4,
	  interval: 6000,
	  width: 300, //we've changed our default width, to make it prettier
	  height: 300,
	  theme: {
		shell: {
		  background: 'transparent', //this is important
		  color: '#333'
		},
		tweets: {
		  background: 'transparent', //this is important
		  color: '#333',
		  links: '#c10000'
		}
	  },
	  features: {
		scrollbar: false,
		loop: false,
		live: false,
		hashtags: true,
		timestamp: true,
		avatars: false,
		behavior: 'all'
	  }
	}).render().setUser('1stwebdesigner').start();

Let’s start our CSS with the widget’s main box:

.twtr-widget {
	float: left;
	width: 300px; /* this is important if you want to make any positioning */
	margin: 50px 0 0 80px;
	padding: 0 0 15px;
	background: #fafafa url(wavecut.png); /* our cute background */

	/*** cross browser box shadow ***/
	-moz-box-shadow: 0 0 2px #fff;
	-webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 2px #fff;
	-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Glow(color=#ffffff,strength=3)";
	filter:
		progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#ffffff,direction=0,strength=3)
		progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#ffffff,direction=90,strength=3)
		progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#ffffff,direction=180,strength=3)
		progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#ffffff,direction=270,strength=3);
	box-shadow: 0 0 2px #fff;

	/*** kind of cross browser rounded corner ***/
	-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
	-khtml-border-radius: 3px;
	-moz-border-radius: 3px;
	border-radius: 3px;
}

The result after this will be a basic widget with a new background, shadow and rounded corners. Well, after that we need to change our widget’s header, so:

.twtr-hd {
	/*** cross browser rgba ***/
	background-color: transparent;
	background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.3);
	filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#30ffffff,endColorstr=#30ffffff);
	-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#30ffffff,endColorstr=#30ffffff)";
}

Now you may notice that the area where your avatar is, username and @userid has a different background. The funny part is that it works even in IE (oh, yeah, rga on IE). You could make your avatar bigger, change your name’s style, or even hide this stuff if you want. You know, from now on it is all up to your imagination!

If you are one of our loyal readers you may notice that [update link with clean url after approved]we’ve talked about curly quotes with :before[/link]. Long story short, you can create this effect with a few lines of CSS and get a really good result in all major browsers. We’ve customized our tweets list also, with a border, but with this element you will have to force priority with CSS because it has two classes in Twitter’s default CSS:

.twtr-widget .twtr-bd .twtr-tweet { /* they have 2 classes in default, do we have to use 3 */
 	margin: 5px 0 0;
	 padding: 0 0 5px;
	 border-bottom: 1px solid #cecece;
}
.twtr-tweet:before {
	display: block;
	float: left;
	margin: -5px 0 0 5px;
	font-size: 50px; /* let's make it a big quote! */
	content: "“";
	color: #bababa;
	text-shadow: 0 1px 1px #909090;
	font-family: "times new roman", serif;
}

And last but not least, we just hide all that Twitter link stuff. As an alternative, you can hide default content and replace it with CSS (as we’ve done with our curly quote) or jQuery (with text()). So our footer will be:

.twtr-ft { display: none; }

Searches and advanced querys

You can create an advanced widget with search widget. You could, for example, get tweets from all your blog’s writers, and what people are saying about them. This kind of thing is possible because we have advanced search operators.

You can set this in your widget’s “search” attribute. Our example’s js would be something like this:

new TWTR.Widget({
	  version: 2,
	  type: 'search',
	  search: 'from:dsgn_pro OR from:1stwebdesigner OR 1stwebdesigner OR 1wd', // here is our query!
	  interval: 6000,
	  title: 'What do they say about 1stWebdesigner',
	  subject: '1WD related tweets',
	  width: 300,
	  height: 300,
	  theme: {
		shell: {
		  background: 'transparent',
		  color: '#333'
		},
		tweets: {
		  background: 'transparent',
		  color: '#333',
		  links: '#c10000'
		}
	  },
	  features: {
		scrollbar: false,
		loop: true,
		live: true,
		hashtags: true,
		timestamp: true,
		avatars: true,
		toptweets: true,
		behavior: 'default'
	  }
	}).render().start();

Now what you have to do is try out some variations until you get something that you find really interesting. Some good operators that can help you in this task are:

• #item - hastag search operator
• from:USERID - search for anything tweeted by @USERID
• filter:links - When you add this to your query, it will return only results with links. Pretty useful to search for resources :D
• :) and :( and ?- They search for positive / negative / question attitude in the results. Pretty awesome, it should be an international operator in all search engines
• -item (minus) – This is the “not” operator. It excludes all “item” from search.

Are you hungry yet?

There are some alternatives to this widgets that are really worth trying:

TwitStamp

This service generates an image with your last tweet so you can put it anywhere without worrying about js loading cache or anything else. Really useful for mail or forum signatures.

TwitterFans

With this WordPress plugin you can show your followers. It is really close to what you get with Facebook’s likebox.

Twitter feed for WordPress

It does almost the same thing as the Twitter widget, with better WordPress’s integration.

Let’s presume you’re already familiar with the basics of Twitter and your current goal is to grow your follower count. Want to learn advanced techniques?

Twitter Marketing Guide

Written by: Tim Soulo

Bigger Longer & Uncut.

Hi, my name is Tim and I’m pretty sure that you’ve landed here right from your Twitter account. Ok, you got me this time as the above claim does not apply to everyone, but I’m confident that this post is currently hot on Twitter! How do I know that while writing the very first paragraph? C’mon, it’s gonna
be a Twitter Guide – I’ll just use the tips below to make it go viral :)

Twitter Basics Part 1: Creating a Twitter Account (The Right Way)

Let’s presume you’re already familiar with
the basics of Twitter and your current goal is to grow your
follower count. Moreover you need those
dedicated followers that read your
tweets and, what’s more important,
retweet them to their own followers
making your content spread.

Just in case you’re not sure what I mean by basics, here’s a quick refresher.
 

Username: The very first dilemma that most business owners face while creating a Twitter account is whether to use a personal name or a business name. There are pros and cons with both, but I think that having brand name is mostly beneficial for big established brands as people already know them and are willing to follow.

Recently I did some consulting for a website builder company and offered them to switch from a branded account to a personal account of their founder and CEO, as people are most likely to follow an interesting person, who they expect to tweet valuable things, rather than following a ‘website builder’, which they assume will most likely tweet nothing but spam.

Your Twitter username should be unique and memorable. Remember that people will have to type it in order to mention you – don’t make them type too much.
 
Here’s an extra tip from Hubspot:

(though this does not seem to apply to @1stwebdesigner lol)

Bio: There are only 160 characters which you have to fill in to tell the Twitterverse about you, your company and/or what you’ll be tweeting about. Your Bio is used all around Twitter next to your profile picture and people READ the Bio section to decide whether to follow you or not. Anyone you follow will receive an e-mail with a recap of your profile including your Bio. Do you think they’ll be interested enough to follow you back?

My Bio is probably not the best, but I tried to make it stand out from the crowd. Best Bio practice is to briefly state who you are and what others will get if they follow you.
I often ask myself two questions before following someone:

1. Who is that person?
2. How can they be useful to me?

Some people go really far with this incentive tip and use their Bio to suggest a Free E-Book to each new follower, but this sounds kind of desperate to me.
 
Image: People on Twitter mostly use a personal photo as their avatar. I think this is because Twitter is a powerful personal branding tool and you might want your followers to recognize you.
 
My vote goes for consistency – if there’s a non-photo avatar that you use around the web (forums, comments, guest posts), I think you should use it on Twitter too so that people who have seen your avatar around the web recognize you.

Web Link: Why would you miss an opportunity to promote your website in your Twitter profile? And, besides, here’s what Hubspot says about the impact of the web link on your follower count:

Background: You can easily create a customized Twitter background, but is it worth your time and efforts? First of all your Twitter account will become more attractive – but that’s pretty obvious, right? What’s not that obvious is that with a well designed background you have a chance of appearing in one of those numerous Twitter background showcases. Thousands of people will see your creative profileand they might become your new followers.

Twitter Basics Part 2: Following the Right People

Now, that your Twitter profile is complete and following all the best practices, it’s time to follow some people. Following the ‘right people” will not only keep you up to date with all the latest news in your niche and help you to network, but it will also affect the way Twitter uses your profile in its recommendation engine. Every time you follow someone, you are being associated with them in some way. With the automatic recommendation engine Twitter uses, I have to assume you’d prefer to be associated with people who you share something in common with. It might be the place you live, the field you work in, or a circle of mutual friends and acquaintances.

Follow the people you know: this is the number one tip. You might be reading some blogs or websites on the topic that you are interested in. Most of the authors mention their Twitter profile at the end of the post. Follow them as they might tweet lots of cool stuff.

Twitter Search: Each term you search on Twitter is now being split into four independent searches: Tweets, Tweets with links, Tweets near you and people. There’s even more than that – check this awesome guide by SEJ to become a Twitter search ninja.

Twitter lists: Twitter List is Twitter’s way of allowing users to group profiles (and their tweets) together – you can check the lists that people you follow are listed in. You can also check if you are being listed and see who you are being listed with.
 
Twitter Directories: There are places where Twitter accounts are neatly organized and categorized. To name a few: Listorious, WeFollow, JustTweetIt, TweetFind. Browse them and I’m sure you’ll find some interesting people to follow. By the way, why not add yourself there?
 
Custom lists: Bloggers always used to create lists: “10 Best Books on Marketing”, “20 Coolest Design Blogs”, “15 Social Bookmarking Sites” – you all know that sort of stuff. The new trend is top people in each industry to follow on Twitter: designers, bloggers, marketers, seo experts, social media gurus and so on. Do a couple of Google searches for those lists as they may suggest some really cool people to follow. If you can’t find a list on your niche, you should definitely create one and maybe you’ll get some new followers just for being an author of that list.
 
Online Tools: There is an enormous amount of Twitter tools to help you find and manage followers. I don’t want to promote any of them, so just try them all to see which one works best for you.

(Twitterverse by Brian Solis and JESS3)
 
Play around: As I’ve said before, Twitter has an awesome recommendation engine, so once you start playing around with Twitter you’ll get lots of recommendations. Definitely check out the powerful “Who To Follow” tool, which speaks for itself.

Advanced Twitter Tactics Part 1: Getting More Followers

I want you to check out an excellent study by Ian Lurie on the quality of Twitter followers. He started collecting data after some spammy guy who had 32,000 followers retweeted one of his posts. You might expect that a retweet by a person with such a huge following will grant your URL lots of clicks and further retweets. Well, what Ian got was only three clicks.

I won’t tell you the rest of the story, for it is too cool to be rewritten. Twitter power is not about the quantity of your followers, but about the quality of your, and your followers, content. In this part of my guide I will teach you how to gain quality followers.
 
Think: Yeah, that is my first tip. But I think it’s the most powerful one. Think of the way YOU follow new people and think how many of them eventually stay in your Twitter feed. Then do the same stuff that they did to get followed by you. If you ask me I mostly follow people who blog. When I see a smart post, I will do my best to find the author on Twitter, follow him and perhaps even communicate a bit. The second way I may follow people is when they @-mention me in their tweet. I will usually check the profile of that person and if it appeals to me – I’ll follow them.
 
Follow to get followers: This is the best known tactic to grow your follower count and it’s based on the newest psychological disorder called ISFBaG (I Should Follow Back Guilt). When you follow someone, they receive an e-mail notification and may follow you back. You can mass-follow people via Twitter interface, use some online tools or even create scripts, which will auto follow people, who tweet specific keywords.

Another study by Hubspot shows that your following to followers ratio dramatically affects your chances to get a follow back. So ideally you need to keep the number of people you follow lower than the number of your followers – this way you are more likely to get a follow back.

People might think that having a large number of followers will add credibility to their account. Well from now on they won’t be able to trick you! It’s easy to measure the credibility of a Twitter account by comparing the number of followers to the number of the lists.
 
Rand from SEOmoz has one listing per 7.6 followers ( 24,368 followers / 3,187 lists = 7.6).
If the ratio is more than 10 – that’s a signal that a person is a spammer who does a lot of mass-following.

Run a contest: People love contests, freebies – such events always attracts great attention. Classical contests go well on social networks, but if you can think of some extremely unique event, it may do wonders to your social presence. There is an interesting story, I would like to share (little NSFW) how Dutch porn star attracted a lot of people to follow her! She got around 15,000 followers within a couple of days since that claim, but you should think twice before running a contest like that. :)

Know who is sharing your content: Once you publish some content online try to track who is tweeting about it. You already know that those people appreciate your work, so it’s usually a matter of a “thank you” message to get a follow back from them.
 
Promote your Twitter account: That’s probably the most popular and most obvious advice, so I’ve left till last. Use your Twitter account URL everywhere you can: e-mail signatures, social media profiles, forum signatures, blog comments, business cards etc. There’s no rocket science here, just use every opportunity you can to share your Twitter account.

Advanced Twitter Tactics Part 2: Building Relations

It’s cool to have a couple thousand followers, but do they care about you after all? You might have followed my tips to gain quality followers, but still it does not mean that they will interact with you and help you to spread your content. What you need is to build relationships with them so that they know who you are and read your updates.

Reward your followers: You can do that with a follow back or, alternatively, you can just thank them for following you in a reply or direct message. Just don’t spam everyone with those automatic Direct Messages which no one cares about. Try sending a personalized message with some information that the recipient may be interested in.

Retweet others: People on Twitter usually keep an eye on their retweets. So try retweeting someone else’s tweet and add a personal comment to it – this is a great way to get noticed and start communicating with people that you follow, and your own followers.
 
Public mentions: #FollowFriday or #ff is a nice occasion to show your appreciation to someone by publicly mentioning their account and providing a reason for others to follow them. However there is no need to wait till Friday to do that.
 
Twitter lists: When you add someone to a Twitter list, they won’t be notified about it, but they may find it out on their own sooner or later. Make respectful Twitter list names to show some appreciation to people you list there. I am really happy each time someone adds me to a marketing related list. (this was a call-to-action :) )
By following other people’s Twitter lists you can get some attention too, as people might check who else is following their lists.
 
Twitter list Ninja Tip #1: follow @listwatcher as it will send you a DM each time someone adds, removes you from their list, or changes their list. Being listed is a reason to get in touch and say thank you, ( or something else, if you were removed :) )
Twitter list Ninja Tip #2: learn how to automate your lists with Formulists online service.
 
Follow people who @mention you: This is a great way to show your appreciation for being mentioned and, besides, this will make a person to take a closer look at your profile and what you tweet about.
 
Twitter Favourites: Currently this feature is not widely used, but I think it can be considered as a form of appreciation too. Each tweet that you add to your Twitter favourites is saved in your profile under the “Favourites” tab. I doubt that the author of a tweet will ever see that, but others might find your favourites feed useful and that can be another reason to follow you.
 
TweetChats: It’s a regularly scheduled online event which is perfect for networking. For instance you can check #seochat – this is a search marketing chat which is held every week. If you fail to find a TweetChat on your topic, maybe you should launch one yourself.

Twitter Ninja Part 1: Getting Retweets

Eventually, the aim of every single tweet is to be noticed and get retweeted by others. If you think that your tweets get enough engagement, try measuring the CTR (Click Through Rate) of every link you tweet. This can be easily done with Bit.ly URL shortening service, just add a + at the end of any short URL and you’ll see the stats. In most cases you’ll notice that the engagement not as good as expected. So what can you do to improve it? Lets see…

Tweet metrics: Almost everything can be measured, including tweets. In his great study Rand Fishkin tried to calculate and improve the CTR of his tweets. This resulted in a few takeaways:
 

• * the average CTR of a tweet is about 1.17% of the followers number;
• * shorter tweets get a higher CTR;
• * tweets on a topic that people expect from you get a higher CTR.

Ask for a retweet: A study by Dan Zarrella shows that you can easily increase your ReTweetability by simply asking your followers for a retweet. Only five letters can make a change – “PLS RT”

What to tweet: You already know that tweets on topics that people expect from you get a higher CTR. In addition to that, another study by Dan Zarrella reveals the fact that tweets about Twitter perform really well. (Remember I promised this post would be HOT on Twitter? :))
 
You can also use various bookmarking and news services to discover what’s hot and trending and tweet about it: StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, TweetMeme.

When to tweet: There are lots of statistics on this one which show different numbers, but in general the best time to get retweets in the US is 4 PM and the best day is Friday. So try to stick to these when scheduling your most important tweets.

Twitter Ninja Part 2: Miscellaneous Tips

Leverage your website: In case you have a website or blog, why not to use it to promote your Twitter account a bit? WordPress users can check this awesome selection of Twitter plugins and the rest can get inspired by the showcase of how people embed their twitter feed into their website design.
 
Use Hashtags: This feature is used to unite Tweets around a particular topic. I understand hashtags as a search tool. Instead of searching on Tweeter for “social media marketing” you can simply do a search for #smm or just click on a hashtag whenever you see it in someone’s tweet. This will list all the tweets that have a particular hashtag in it. So every time you add a hashtag to your tweet, it increases its chances to be found by random people.
 
Track Google SERP: You can easily get a daily Direct Message of your websites Google position using a twitter bot by TweetedRanks (free tool).
 
Get your website pages indexed faster: A recent experiment concluded that a tweet which gets 3 retweets or more will help in increasing the time and rate at which the tweeted page gets indexed.
 
HootSuite Hootlet: I must confess that HootSuite is a tool that dramatically improved my tweeting experience. Specifically I am obsessed with their bookmarklet tool. You just drag it to your bookmarks and when you want to share the post on Twitter you just click the bookmarklet and the message window pops up. What’s more important, you can schedule your tweets right from this Hootlet window. This is the best Twitter tool I’ve ever used.

This is it! The end of my Twitter Marketing guide, but definitely not the end of the creative ideas and ways to use Twitter to market yourself, your content, your company or your products.

I hope you all enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to reading your comments. And don’t forget that you can follow me (@timsoulo) on Twitter.

Here is a beginner’s guide to help you start your own career on the web. Socialize. Be connected. Be friends. Be known. Have fun!

1. Create your account

Just go to Twitter.com and click the Sign Up button.

You will be asked to fill out little details about you. Type in your Full Name (I suggest that you put your real name. This way people who know you will easily find your profile.), a username, a password and a valid email address. You can check and uncheck the checkbox if you want your friends to find you by your email address. Read the terms of service and click the Create my account button.

There will be an image verification that you need to type to make sure that you are a real human. Then click Finish.

Wait for a second and check your registered email address to confirm  your twitter account. You will be given a link to confirm your account to have a full access to Twitter and full notifications will be sent to the email address so you will be updated.

That’s it you have your twitter account.

2. Set up your Settings

In your twitter page, go to the upper left panel. You will see your username with a drop down menu. Click Settings to modify a more personal or private setting.

Account

Be sure to have a correct name. It will direct you to profile setting if you wish to change your name into real one. Twitter supports different languages. Choose the language you are more comfortable with. Select also the Time Zone you are at. You can also check the Tweet Location for you to add a location on your tweets, so that people can  see where you currently are. If you want to see the videos and photos from other people that you are not following you can check on the Tweet Media. Privacy is important in social networking, so if you want to protect your tweets then check the tweet privacy.

Password

If you choose to change your current password just type in your current password and your new password. This is one way to protect your twitter account.

Mobile

If you can’t get enough of your tweeting experience over your computer, you can add  your mobile for more tweeting experience.

Notices

Check and uncheck the notifications you want to receive in your email address or mobile phone.

Profile

Profile is one of the greatest feature of Twitter because it will appear on search result and make people identify you easily. You can upload your picture to let your followers see who you are.  Edit the bio to tell something about yourself. On your profile page, you will be able to see how many tweets you posted, who is/are following you, the number of  followers you have and lists.

Design

You can select your ready-made theme to personalize the look of your account. If you are a designer, or has an artwork background you want to use, you can also upload it for a more personalized feel.

Connections

It will let you manage the applications connecting to Twitter.

3. Follow your friends or anyone you want to get updates with or anything that interests you.

Just simply type on the search field and type in the username or the name of the person you want to find.

Then click on the Follow button.

That’s it you have successfully followed a friend, or in this case a celebrity. Just search and search all those people you want to be connected with. If you want to follow them in your mobile device, turn on the Device Updates. If you want to find your friends in your existing email accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail & Messenger and LinkedIn just click on the Find Friends link and start to link with your friends.

You can also browse topics you are interested in such as Art & Design, Books, Business, Entertainment etc. that you can follow.

4. Share your tweets

Type in your tweets on the What’s happening? box at the Home page to start tweeting. You are allowed to type only 140 characters. You won’t be able to tweet your post if it’s more than 140 characters. If you are to tweet for a specific person on the list of people you follow, you just add ‘@’ sign plus username e.g. @jhanely2001 . Be sure to be careful on your tweets. When you start to tweet, you start to get public. People can read your tweets or activities so be sure to have a responsible tweeting.

5. Private message

If you want to privately message or directly message someone in your Twitter, click the Message tab and click New Message. Write down your message and be sure to put the username of the person you want to send a message.

6. What’s Hot?

Trends are the most talked about news, events or posts happening in Twitter. It can be worldwide or you can change it through cities. Be updated.  Be aware.

7. Be connected with third-party apps

Third-party applications are great way to sync all your updates into one application without directly accessing your Twitter account. You may also post your tweets on other social networking sites using Twitter in Facebook, TweetDeck and Twittelator Pro.

8. Get Help

If you are stuck on exploring Twitter, be sure to click the Help menu under the username drop down menu. You’ll never get lost again.

That’s all you need to learn to get started in your tweeting experience.  Explore, have fun and stay connected. Just tweet and tweet and tweet. It is  now your time to share your thoughts. Happy tweeting!

These are some good ways to earn money using Twitter, but I suggest you don’t over do it as you would look like a spammer & no one likes to get spam not even on their Twitter Timeline. So use this method cautiously

Affiliate Advertisement

If you are connected with many affiliates to sell their product and services, you can use Twitter account to tweet your affiliate links to your followers & get paid for the selling product. Be cautious using this method, see that you are not breaking the terms of service agreement.

Increasing Traffic

Image: Source

This is indirect method of monetizing Twitter. Many people use this method effectively to send huge amount of traffic to their website which in turn generates revenue from the ads you post on your website.

Look For Leads

Image: Source

When I was working as an marketing executive I had used Twitter to find potential leads for the company. Twitter Advance Search offers some best method to find people who are looking for services & products. This is an indirect method but still you can try it.

Get Paid To Tweet

This is one of the easiest way of making money on Twitter. You Don’t need to have a website, product or services to earn money, It’s one of the direct way of earning money through Twitter. There are various sites that offers services where you can get paid-per-tweet. Following list of website that offers such services.

SponsoredTweets.com

Its one of the most used website that offers pay-per-tweets services. I have personally used this website to monetize my twitter account & found it to be working & useful. Even many of the celebrities are using Sponsored Tweets Services.

Ad.ly

Ad.ly is another website which offers similar services. Recently it has also included MySpace to its network. Ad.ly algorithm automatically calculates the amount that you will be paid per tweet. It depends on the factor like number of followers & how often you tweet.

Some Other Websites

• TwittAd.com
• AdCause.com
• MyLikes.com
• Be-A-Magpie.com

Sell Twitter Related Services

If you are designer you can offer services like creating custom professional twitter background you can use your own background to promote it as a service. Also if you know how to get mass follower & influence people on twitter account you can provide services like Twitter profile management & become  face of a brand in your local area.

Sell Your Product & Services

Image: Source

Selling your product & services through twitter is an also effective way of making money on twitter. You can use Twitter Advance Search option to find out people that are looking for product or services that you are offering & you can directly get in contact with them offering your services.

Some Related Post You Must Read

• How To Make 15,000.00 In 1 Month Just By Tweeting
• How to make money on Twitter ? Some ideas that work ( without screw ups ) !
• 77 ways Twitter could make money

If you have other method to share please do it in comment I would like to know.

Thumbnail: Source

What are we going to build?

The distance finder we created using the previous tutorials uses the google maps api to let you find the distance and route between two locations. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to share your search results with your twitter followers. I’ll also show you how to add hovercards and linkify usernames.

You can view the demo here. And also download the source code.

Prerequisites

The first thing we need to do in order to use @Anywhere is to registered a new twitter application. We can do this here. Once we fill in that form, we will be given an APIkey to use in the app.

Next, we’ll have to include the @Anywhere script. We’ll add the following code to your <head>section:

<script src="http://platform.twitter.com/anywhere.js?id=ADD_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE&v=1"></script>

Don’t forget to fill in the api key!

As some of the options from @Anywhere require jquery, we will have to include that too:

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"  type="text/javascript"></script>

Adding a comment box

Let’s see what we need to add to show a small comment box to help us share the search results with our friends.

We’ll have to add another div to the layout, where to show the comment box with the text to share with our friends.

<center><div style="width:100%; height:13%"></div></center>

In the javascript function that shows the route (called continueShowRoute) we will have to add some code to show the comment box.

//we have to create a div where @Anywhere will place the comment box; the div will be created inside the share div
var twitter = "<div class='comments'></div>";
document.getElementById("share").innerHTML = twitter;
// we’ll call the share_twitter function with the two addresses as parameters.
share_twitter(address1, address2);

The share_twitter function is used to create the link to share with our friends and show the comment box.

The code which uses @Anywhere to show the comment box is pretty simple. It looks like this:

twttr.anywhere(function(twitter) {
   twitter(".comments").tweetBox({
      label: 'Share with your twitter friends!',
      defaultContent: 'My search on distancefinder: '+url,
      height: 30
   });
});

It calls the anywhere function for the twttr object and passes the tweetBox function as a parameter.  The comment box will be shown in the div with the id given as parameter (“.comments”). We can set the following options for the comment box:

• Label: the text to be shown above the box
• DefaultContent: the content of the box
• Height, width: the boxes dimensions
• Counter: whether or not to show the counter for remaining characters
• OnTweet: a function to be called when the tweet button is pressed.

We will also have to share the link to the current page. We’ll also have to add the two address values to the url to be able to share a search result. This way, when the friend clicks on our link, they will be redirected to the application page with the addresses set and see our results. We will use PHP Get to pass the two addresses.

As the url might get too long for a tweet, we’ll have to shorten it. For this we can use tinyurl to obtain a shorter url address. To do this, we have to make a request to:

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=THE_LONG_URL">http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=THE_LONG_URL</a>

We’ll make a php script that receives an url address, sends a request to tinyurl.com and returns the result.  We’ll store it in the file called getShortURL.php. The script looks like this:

<?php
$url = $_GET['url'];
echo file_get_contents("http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=" . urlencode($url));
?>

We’ll have to call this script using ajax from our share_twitter function and, when we get the result from the script, show the comment box from @Anywhere.

Here’s how the code for this looks like:

var xmlhttp;
function share_twitter(a1, a2)
{
  var my_url = location.href;
  if (my_url.indexOf('?a1=') != -1)
  {
    my_url = my_url.substr(0, my_url.indexOf("?"));
  }
  my_url += "?a1="+a1+"&a2="+a2;

  xmlhttp=GetXmlHttpObject();
  if (xmlhttp==null)
  {
    alert ("Browser does not support HTTP Request");
    return;
  }
  var url="getShortURL.php";
  url=url+"?url="+encodeURIComponent(my_url);

  xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=stateChanged;
  xmlhttp.open("GET",url,true);
  xmlhttp.send(null);
}

function stateChanged()
{
  if (xmlhttp.readyState==4)
  {
    twttr.anywhere(function(twitter) {
      twitter(".comments").tweetBox({
         label: 'Share with your twitter friends!',
         defaultContent: 'My search on distancefinder: '+xmlhttp.responseText,
         height: 30
      });
    });
  }
}

Here’s what the share_twitter function does. It first get the url of the current page:

var my_url = location.href;

If there are already some variables set in PHP GET it erases them and adds the new values (a1 and a2, the functions parameters)

if (my_url.indexOf('?a1=') != -1)
{
  my_url = my_url.substr(0, my_url.indexOf("?"));
}
my_url += "?a1="+a1+"&a2="+a2;

The rest of the code is a bit more complicated (also, I’ve not shown here the GetXmlHttpObject function; you can see it in the source code), but you don’t have to worry if you don’t get it! All you need to do is that it is used to make the request to the getShortURL.php script and receive the result. When it gets the result (if (xmlhttp.readyState==4)) it calls the @anywhere code to show the comment box and sets the url value to the short url it received.

We will also have to add a few lines of code to our app, to be able to load our friends search results. As I said, we have sent the a1 and a2 parameters (the two addresses) through GET. We will have to add a script to check if the variables are set and if they are, to show the correct map.

We will add this php code before the </body> tag:

<?php
if (isset($_GET['a1']) && isset($_GET['a2']))
{
   echo "<script>start('".$_GET['a1']."', '".$_GET['a2']."');</script>";
}
?>

As you can see, the script will call the start function if the two parameters are set. Let’s see how the start function looks like:

function start(a1, a2)
{
   document.getElementById("address1").value = a1;
   document.getElementById("address2").value = a2;
   initialize();
}

All it has to do is set the address values in the textboxes and to call to initialize() function, the one that shows the map.

And that’s it! We now have a comment box in our app. Of course, the users will have to be logged in their twitter accounts and allow your app to connect to their accounts. But all this is taken care of by @Anywhere!

Let’s check out other features of @Anywhere:

Linkifying twitter usernames

With only a few javascript lines added to the head section of your site, @Anywhere will convert all twitter usernames on your page in links to the proper twitter profiles.

Here’s the script we need to add:

twttr.anywhere(function (T) {
   T.linkifyUsers();
});

You just have to call the linkifyUsers() function. This code will turn all twitter usernames found in the <body> section to links. You can also chose to only linkify the usernames in a section of your site. To do this, you will only need to specify the id of the element which has the usernames you want linkified.

twttr.anywhere(function (T) {
   T("#ELEMENT_ID").linkifyUsers();
});

Hovercards

Hovercards are small tooltips that show some data about a particular Twitter user. These will show up if you go with the mouse over a twitter username on you site. To add this option, you will have to add this script:

twttr.anywhere(function (T) {
   T.hovercards();
});

You can also limit the scope when the hovercards appear, just like with linkifying usenames.

Let’s add a twitter username to the site and test these features:

<center><div style="width:100%; height:4%">Demo App by @anirib</div></center>

@Anywhere seems pretty cool, eh?