Responsible Microblogging
Welcome back!
Please be a responsible microblogger
- Don’t spam.
- Don’t try to decoy people.
- Don’t spread viruses.
- Don’t spread hatred.
- Don’t load junk onto servers.
- Don’t try to sell like a hawker.
- Create a voluntary following before you start to offer something for sale.
- Put yourself in the shoes of your followers and tweet. Ask yourself if you would like to receive the post you are sending.
- Is this a post all your followers MUST see?
- Oh yes, we can always have fun. Share a joke or a quote instead of ‘I’m sleeping’, ‘I’m bored’ …
- Remember that you are being watched by search engines and your followers. Publishing great pieces like “I’m drunk” etc will only harm your reputation.
- Remember that your Twitter updates go to your followers, will be saved in your archive, and (unless you have a private profile) post to the Twitter public timeline.
Personally, I am guilty of automating my twitter a/c with an app which turned to be a spam site that sent endless stream of tweets. This not only ended in annoying my followers and friends but also hurt my tweet timeline.
Bottom line: Think twice before allowing third-party apps to use your twitter credentials.
What are your thoughts? How else can we improve twitter / microblogging?
Google Analytics For Twitter
Combine Your Google Analytics Data with Twitalyzer
Many tweeters have reported that Twitter is one of their primary traffic referrers to their sites/blogs. but have no idea who your referrers are? Do you wonder how influential these referrers are? You can now load your own Google Analytics data into Twitalyzer in less than two minutes.
How to see your own Twitter referrals from Google Analytics:
1. In Google Analytics, go to “Traffic Sources” then “Referring Sites
2. In Google Analytics, find the referrer “/twitter.com” and click on that link
3. In Google Analytics, change the “Show rows” value at the bottom of the page to “500″
4. In Google Analytics, click “Export” at the top of the page and select “CSV”
5. Go to Twitalyzer home page and click “Browse …” and find the resulting .CSV file on your hard-drive
6. Now click “Combine Data!” to send the file to the Twitalyzer!
Happy Tweeting,
ShriNagesh 
Twitter Small Business Solution
If you ever wondered how small businesses could benefit from Twitter, this might be the solution.
TwitterHawk is a start-up that aims to provide a targeted marketing solution for small businesses through twitter.
How does it work?
TwitterHawk says:
Let’s say you just opened a new coffee store in Queens and wanted to let people know about it. As part of your advertising efforts, you could setup TwitterHawk to search for things like “coffee near:Queens within:8mi” (of course you could simply search world wide if you are global).
TwitterHawk would then periodically (at a frequency determined by you) find twitter posts that mentioned coffee by users that are actually located within 8mi of Queens, and send them one of your pre-defined replies from you such as
‘@cracksh0t Have you seen our new Coffee Shop in Queens?’ or
‘@loxly What is your favourite blend? We’ve just opened a new store in Manhattan and would love to know what you think’
How Much Does This Cost?
Free.
Visit TwitterHawk site for more information.
What do you think about the service?
Enhance-Your-Twitter-Experience-With-Power-Twitter
Power Twitter, a plugin for Firefox web browser that greatly enhances twitter.
Twitter pages now include:
- Photo sharing with embedded flickr photos
- Video sharing with embedded youtube videos
- Shared tinyurls are unwound so you know where they link to
- All links are mapped to their web page titles
- Additional user information is mapped to twitter users thanks to data conduits via 30 Boxes (e.g. flickr accounts, blog posts, del.icio.us links, and tons of other social media!)
Download the plugin from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9591 and restart your browser.
Relevant articles:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/03/power-twitter-for-firefox-inline-media-integrated-search-and-a-lot-more/
http://mashable.com/2007/04/09/30boxes-power-twitter/
30 Alternative Tools To Twitter Search And Tracking Memes On Twitter
If you are as disappointed (annoyed) about twitter search as me, here are 30 alternatives to twitter search and to track memes on twitter.
Monitter lets you monitor the twitter world for a set of 3 keywords and watch what people are saying.
Tweet Grid you can create a Twitter Search Dashboard that updates in real time.
Hashtags : Real-time tracking of tagged tweets organized though hashtags (example: #twittertools)
Quotably : Type in any username and follow conversations in a threaded format
Twitter Search (Previously Summize): is a powerful twitter conversation tracker. Search for terms by user, language, attitude, tag, to and from user
Terraminds: allows you to search people or updates for specific words
Tw* Tool Tracker, A Twitter account tracking Twitter aficionados and tool developers
Tweet Scan : Find out who’s saying what, search for replies, words, whatever by user
Tweetburner allows you to “keep track of what happens to the links in tweets shared with you, by you, by your friends and every other twitterer.” The service shortens URLs and gives you statistics
Tweetmeme : Find out “what’s hot” on Twitter (Think Techmeme in Twitterland). Updates in real-time and looks spiffy! Shows some of the most popular memes on Twitter
TweetSpeak, TweetSpeak lets you listen to tweets
TweetVolume, Lets you compare words or phrases and see how often they have been mentioned on Twitter
Twemes, Twemes is another way to tag tweets
Twerp Scan, Twerp Scan helps you find people with high ratios that might be spammers on your follow list
Twist, This service creates charts that let you compare trends in Twitter. The charts can be embedded onto your blog.
Twistori, A social experiment tracking tweets using I love, hate, think, believe, feel and wish
Twitigg is listing of popular stories submitted on twitter.com sorted by number of submitters, updated constantly. (Like Digg it)
Twits Like Me, Returns a list of Twitterers (based on your tweets) who probably share your interests.
Twitstat offers real time Twitter analytics. You need to follow @twitstat for your tweets to be recorded. Includes the Tweitgeist of frequently twittered words
Twitter Blacklist, This website provides a list of known spammers of various kinds on Twitter
Twitter Quotient, Are you a Twitter hero or zero?
Twitter Troll : Find popular terms used on Twitter in real time
Twitterboard: Displays conversation analytics, links and feeds from Twitter
TwitterBuzz, Shows the most popular links posted on Twitter over the last day
Twitterment: allows you to search for specific terms to see who has written a post with that term. You can even see a graph that shows the hours of the day when that term is used most or compare terms
TwitterPoster, is a mashup created from Twitter that provides a visual representation of the degree of influence of Twitterers
Twittertale tracks the usage of naughty words in Twitter
Twitterverse shows the most popular words and phrases on Twitter
Twitturly is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter.
TwitterTroll is another Twitter search engine that searches tweets
12 Tools To Synchronize Wordpress And Twitter
If you are a blogger and a tweeter, chances are that you are looking for ways to synchronize these two powerful platforms to use them effectively. There is more to synchronizing wordpress and twitter than sending a auto-tweet when you publish a post. Here are a selection of 12 free tools to sync twitter + wordpress.
Anwanore’s Widget allows you to post latest tweets into your blog.
RSS to Twitter will convert PHP script to feed RSS to Twitter.
Sidebar Widget allows you to create a highly customizable widget for the sidebar. This will work if your wordpress theme is widget-enabled.
SimpleTwitter enables you to easily add Twitter messages to wordpress theme.
The Twitter Updater automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post. You can specify the text for the updates, and also have the option to turn the auto update on/off for the different post actions in the admin panel.
Twitter Badge is the official javascript code that allows display of badges showing your tweets.
Twitter Feed posts your blog updates to your twitter account. You must login to twitterfeed using your OpenID, provide the URL for your blog RSS feed, and how often to post to Twitter.
Twitter for Wordpress – Another plugin that creates a twitter widget.
Twitter Sharts – ‘Shart’ your twitter status anywhere within your wordpress blog posts or pages.
Twitter Tools – This plugin by Alex King allows you to archive your tweets, make blog posts out of them, send tweets from your sidebar and lots more.
TwitThis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their friends on Twitter.
Twitt-Twoo allows you to update your Twitter status right from your blog’s sidebar. It is AJAX powered and allows for quick and easy status updates. Stylish and easy to customize from the options page.
Keyword Monitoring With Tweetlater.com
30 Tools For Cross-platform microblogging And Social Media Sync
With the growing social networking platforms and microblogs, it is inevitable to signup for quite a few accounts. But we are most likely to use (effectively) only a few of them. The main reason being limited time. Here is my list of tools that help you to sync your social media profiles or enable cross-platform publishing.
Flotzam – A Mash Up of Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and blogs.
Twit4Live – A Messenger Plus! Live Script that adds twitter interaction to Windows Live Messenger
Twessenger — a Twitter add-in for Windows Live Messenger 8.1. Sets your personal message to your latest tweet!t
Twitter Sync Yahoo Messenger – Keeps your Yahoo! Messenger status and Twitter in synchronization. Update your Yahoo! Status to create a new tweet. Your new tweets update your Yahoo! status. Also keeps track of your twitter friends from the main messenger window with alerts, pop-ups + more
OutTwit – (Outlook + Twitter) Use Twitter from Outlook.
sociagami — allows you to manage your multiple social network statuses from one beautiful Windows application. sociagami currently supports Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter status
IdentiTwitch – A cross platform Twitter client written using Adobe Air. It combines your updates from Identi.ca and Twitter into a single timeline. Post to one or both services at the same time.
Posty – A microblogging application which allows updating twitter, jaiku, pownc, tumblr, friendfeed and identi.ca profiles with one click.
Twitter And Skype – Instructions on how to access your Twitter account in Skype.
Digsby – A multiprotocol IM client that lets you manage all your IM, email, and social network accounts from one easy-to-use application. For IM, it brings all your buddies into one merged contact list with support for AIM, MSN, Facebook Chat, Yahoo, ICQ, GTalk, and Jabber. For email, it offers notifications of new emails with message previews, as well as, the ability to perform actions such as “Mark as Read” and “Delete” right from the notification with support for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, POP, and IMAP. For social networks, it provides a newsfeed of events on the network and the ability to set status with support for Facebook, Twitter and MySpace
Brabblr is a mashup tool for microservices including Twitter
Flotzam is a download app where you can control and see what’s happening at Twitter, Facebook and Flickr networks.
Twitt.icio.us – import the link from a twitter timeline to your del.icio.us account
Twapper, Twapper is a mashup of 30Boxes and Twitter
Twitku – Twitter and jaiku mashup
Twittercal is a free service that connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar.
Twitter Sync Facebook: will make your Facebook Status match your TwitterStatus
TwitterSoap is a mashup of Mobypicture and Twitter
Twittervision is a Twitter and Google Maps mashup showing the latest tweets and where the twitterer is located
Twitthis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website.
Twitzer is a Firefox extension which lets you post text longer than 140 characters on Twitter.
Nitwit, the cross-platform microblogging client for Twitter, Jaiku and other platforms including Jabber and IRC
TwitterBox – a Twitter client for Second Life.
Mugshot for Windows and Linux — show friends’ updates from your favorite services, including Twitter on your desktop and the web.
Post to Twitter from Vim for Vim users.
Yoono – Receive alerts, update your status or message your friends in your browser sidebar. No need to switch from one site to another or from your browser to a desktop app anymore. The perfect tool to become a twitter heavy user without spending hours on it. Yoono also integrates many other services : facebook, flickr, friendfeed, major IM services
Gwibber – an open source microblogging client for GNOME developed with Python and GTK. It supports Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Facebook, and Digg (For Linux)
Twitterlights The easiest way to highlight web snippets and Twitter them. i-Lighter+Twitter=Twitterlights
Find & Manage Followers On Twitter With These 30 Tools
Twitter is all about contributing to the community there by gaining friends and followers. Here are 30+ ways to find and manage your friends and followers.
- Twitter’s Find people: This is the basic search facility provided by twitter to find people. You can find people from your aol, gmail, yahoo ID’s send invitations to people, or search tweeters by using a keyword. Ok, this is too basic and no secret. Read the rest of the tools.
- Twitter Search: Type in a search term and latest tweets related to the term will be displayed. Follow people who are providing interesting tweets.
- Alternatively, you can install twitter search plug-in. This will let you search without visiting twitter website. http://search.twitter.com/
- Twitter advanced search is cool tool. You can find tweets based on words, people, places, dates, attitude and links. http://search.twitter.com/advanced
- Twitter search operations: You could use the following Search Operators directly into the search box to find relevant tweets. Some Search operations:
twitter search containing both “twitter” and “search”. This is the default operator. “happy hour“ containing the exact phrase “happy hour”. obama OR hillary containing either “obama” or “hillary” (or both). beer -root containing “beer” but not “root”. #haiku containing the hashtag “haiku”. from:alexiskold sent from person “alexiskold”. to:techcrunch sent to person “techcrunch”. @mashable referencing person “mashable”. “happy hour” near:“san francisco” containing the exact phrase “happy hour” and sent near “san francisco”. near:NYC within:15mi sent within 15 miles of “NYC”. superhero since:2008-05-01 containing “superhero” and sent since date “2008-05-01″ (year-month-day). ftw until:2008-05-03 containing “ftw” and sent up to date “2008-05-03″. movie -scary containing “movie”, but not “scary”, and with a positive attitude. flight 
containing “flight” and with a negative attitude. traffic ? containing “traffic” and asking a question. hilarious filter:links containing “hilarious” and linking to URLs. - FOF: This is a flash application that shows tweeters who are following you and those you are following. You can manage your friends and followers easily.
- Tweetwheel is a very useful but takes time to load. Find out which of your twitter friends know each other.
- Twhither, Find out where your friends are and let them know where you are. This site is coming soon.
- TwitDir: Find everything from most-followed users, to top posters to top 100 followers – I wonder who that is?
- Twittearth brings the globe on your desktop and shows tweets all over the world
- TwitsLikeMe, Returns a list of Twitterers (based on your tweets) who probably share your interests.
- Twitter Ratio, Twitter Ratio returns your TFF Ratio (Twitter Follower-Friend Ratio)
- Odd Follow, Tracks Twitter folks that make you go hmmmm – they follow too many people or follow mostly all women
- TwitterAdder : Type in your account and randomly add 20 follows
- Twitterholic shows the twitterers with the most followers, friends and updates
- TwitterLocal lets you generate an RSS or XML Feed to filter out Tweets around a certain area
- TwitterMap: Find users in your area who are tweeting
- TwitterSearch: Type in the term your looking for and find out who is tweeting about it!
- TwitterVision: Worldwide tracking of Tweets in real time. You can even make this your desktop wallpaper background.
- Twitterwhere?: Nice app that let’s you find twitterers within 50 miles of you.
- Twitterwho?: Find Twitterers by email address. lets you make multiple queries on Twitter’s people search at one time.
- Twellow team adds tweeters into their directory based on the tweeter’s bio. If you haven’t been added already, you can Get Listed. You can add yourself to a maximum of 10 categories and provide website information and other social media profiles.
- Twubble: Find popular twitterers that your friends are following. It searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow
- Who Should I Follow? Helps you find other interesting people to follow on Twitter
- Twitter100, Twitter100 will let you see tweets from up to 100 followers one a single page.
- Twitter Karma, This is a Flash application, which helps you manage your followers.
- Verveearth is mapping the internet’s content onto a global map. Discover the voices of your world. Get started by exploring the map or registering to add your blog
- JustTweetIt is the tweeter directory. You can add yourself and find others in your niche.
- Micropersuasion’s Basic Twitter Search helps you search through Twitter blog posts and even search for people
- TwitSnap is a FREE widget that automatically provides Twitter status preview of a user. The widget will automatically parse your page and look for the @pattern, convert it into a link to user’s profile on Twitter and then provides a preview of the user’s most current status via a pop-up dhtml box.
- Want to spread a word beyond your followers? LazyTweet brings the lazyweb to twitter. Simply post a lazyweb request on twitter and LazyTweet will pick it up, expanding the potential number of people to answer it, going beyond your followers. Then come to the LazyTweet site to help answer other people’s questions. When a request gets an answer, we’ll let the questioner know.
The 7 Step Twitter Strategy
Did you hear all the buzz about twitter?
Twitter is perhaps the most popular microblogging service. It allows you to post brief and frequent posts through web, IM, SMS from mobile or from an app. It is ultimate way to network with people around the world.
If you are a beginner or just starting out on twitter or want to change your twitter strategy, here is a reference guide which will walk your through each step and reveals a 7 step twitter strategy.
Grab it immediately and grow your business and network like never before.