A guest article by Elena Vakhromova. You too can be part of this great knowledge sharing community. Take a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

Why do people guest-blog? For self- or product promotion, for traffic, money or just for interest’s sake. Indeed, guest blogging has become a marketing goldmine and all self-respecting online business owners tend to create a discourse around their product or service in blogosphere. Not all of them have the ability to write excellent posts which make the readers beg for more. Still any writing skills aren’t inherent or intuitive. Instead, good writing is a learned skill and it may be easily developed through practice.

If you’re preparing to plunge into guest-posting, you will need not only a knack for writing but a bunch of good tools to aid you in daily chores. Here is a roundup of handy web and PC-based applications which I find indispensable for everyone aiming at comfortable and effective guest-posting.

Evernote

Those who get tired of MS Word and OpenOffice, will definitely love this free note-taking app. Evernote is an ideal solution for drafting a guest post. Its main asset is being perfectly cross-platform: notes are easily accessible from a PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android phone and from the Web. Beside text notes, Evernote can keep whole web pages or excerpts, images, HTML code, PDFs, music, business cards, etc. Everything added to Evernote is automatically synchronized and made searchable. Evernote is also remarkable for its auto-saving, absence of cumbersome editing tools and ability to email notes.

FastStone Capture

Flickr

NoDoFollow

Bufferapp

WordWeb

It’s needless to say how grammar and spelling are important for a guest blogger, especially for a non-native speaker. Here WordWeb comes to the aid. This is a free powerful dictionary and thesaurus program that provides the definition, synonyms, antonyms of any given word without requiring you to go online. It has about 150,000 words in its database and allows you to look up a word in online reference sites. The app is also notable for its hot key support: you simply use a hot key combo when the cursor is pointed over any word, and WordWeb will pop up onscreen with all pertinent information. The Pro version ($19.50) includes more word definitions, advanced Web search options and other features.

Freemake Video Converter

Guest posts may get better coverage due to multimedia addons. If you’d like to put a video into a post, you can’t do without Freemake Video Converter. This is a free Windows-based software that lets turn any offline video into web-compatible format (Flash FVL or SWF) or easily upload it to YouTube. You can also cut unnecessary video parts, choose a custom video resolution and even create video out of photos and music.

7 Must Have Tools for Guest Bloggers is a post from: Blog Godown

Twitter is much more than a fun service that lets people say whatever they want in 140 characters or less. It also a powerful marketing tool that offers some incredible opportunities for businesses. Twitter is not only great for generating exposure, but also making connections. There are many tools available to create these connections, and email marketing is one that does not get nearly enough attention. This article will go into detail about how email marketing services can be used to increase your Twitter following.

Get the Word Out

Social networking is a worldwide trend and with more than 200 million users, Twitter is one of the biggest parts of the phenomenon. However, even with such a large number of people around the world sending out tweets on a daily basis, your profile will do nothing but collect dust if you do not let people know you’re there. You need to draw attention to yourself, and email marketing is more than up for the job. Whether it’s dropping a mention in your newsletter or building an entire campaign around your Twitter presence, there are plenty of ways it can be used to get the word out and convert your subscribers to followers.

Give ‘Em a Reason to Follow

Some marketers flop with their Twitter efforts because they do not commit to spreading the word and essentially give up before really getting started. Others flounder because they are doing social networking all wrong, mainly by failing to make a notable presence. If you want people to follow, you must give them a reason to connect. Create a compelling profile, and whatever Twitter content you decide to share in your email campaigns, make sure that it is relevant and interesting. The more intriguing your presence and content, the more people will want to keep up with you on the network.

Use Social Sharing

Would you like for your email campaigns to travel further? If the answer is yes, then both Twitter and your email marketing services can help. Many companies now offer social sharing buttons that can be easily incorporated into your campaigns. This is a convenient luxury that allows readers to share your messages with their friends in a single click. When it comes to email marketing, social sharing has two perks. First it gives your message the chance to reach more people than it would have been able to otherwise. Second, it gives you an opportunity to increase your number of followers. If your content is relevant and useful to them, why wouldn’t people want to follow you?

Conclusion

Email marketing services can serve as a complement to any social media strategy, but especially one that involves Twitter. The platform is huge, and continues to show what a great tool it can be when used correctly. Choose the right service provider, and email marketing will help you get more out of your efforts on Twitter.

How Can You Increase Your Twitter Following by Utilizing Email Marketing Services? is a post from: Blog Godown

A guest article by (@filos). You too can be part of this great knowledge sharing community. Take a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

On February 2012, I will be on Twitter for 5 years. Five long years during which I slowly learnt how to get the most out of this wonderful platform and how to leverage it from both a personal and business standpoint. No doubt about it, Twitter is where it is thanks to the incredible group of third party developers who designed new great twitter tools to get the most out of that, way more than what you can get from the standard Twitter interface.

Twitter’s growth over the past 5 year has been incredible, going from a few thousands to a few hundred millions registered users. For this reason, the typical Twitter user changed over time, moving from the typical early adopter to what I use to call the “average” internet user. I laso know a lot of people who discovered internet just a few months ago (from no-techies to seniors) who are on Twitter already.

Today, I would like to share with you three web-based twitter tools I use everyday that really make the difference when it comes to use Twitter at its best.

Twimbow

Together with a few other tools my company developed, Twimbow was born first of all as a way to satisfy my needs of power Twitter user. Today, I wouldn’t recommend anything different in order to focus on what is really important for you and to get rid of the “twitter noise”. Tons of innovative features like Gmail-like colored labels, rich tags, the monitor, the profile browser and much more help you keep track on what’s going on that really matters for you, helping you save valuable time. Twimbow is a web based social media dashboard that helps you organize your online conversations thanks to a truly innovative set of features and a stunning user interface.

ManageFlitter

ManageFlitter Logo

ManageFlitter is definitely the best way to manage your Twitter followers and friends. It helps you filter the users you follow according to different criteria and lets you quickly identify users who are not tweeting anymore or that, depending on your personal criteria, are not offering more value to you. Through ManageFitter you can easily clean the list of people you follow and find new people worth following. If you want to get the most out of ManageFitter, I recommend to use it on Chrome together with the “Check All” extension, that lets you automatically check multiple items at the same time (it helps you save a lot of time).

Commun.it

Last but not least, Commun.it is another incredible tool that helps you manage your Twitter community from a different standpoint. In a certain time slot (3 hours, 3 days or always) It identifies the users who are supporting you the most (for ex. by retweeting your stuff), users you should consider to follow, new leads based on the fact they mentioned something you care of and so on. You can also decide to unfollow a list of selected users that Commun.it “thinks” are not worth following anymore, helping you to clean up your “following” list. Definitely a must-have for any Twitter user.

What do you think? Are you using these tools everyday to improve your Twitter “efficiency”? Please leave your feedback in the comment section and feel free to drop me a tweet anytime (I am @filos). Thanks!

3 Tools To Manage Your Twitter Community Everyone Should Use is a post from: Blog Godown

Nothing is more frustrating than unpredictable or evasive prospects! Having you ever been so close to closing a sale, then your soon-to-become-a-customer vanished from the face of the earth?

I had been there! And it feels BITTER! Who would want to invest their time and effort in vain?

Lucky for us, social media came to rescue! If leveraged intelligently, your stubborn prospects can become loyal customers. Here is how…

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1. Tweak Your Communication Channel(s)

Sometimes the problem may be as simple as fishing in the wrong sea! In other words, your prospect maybe very active on Twitter, while you keep wasting your time sending him Facebook messages or emails!

The solution is simple: fish where the fish are which brings us to the tip number 2…

2. Track Them Down!

Finding prospects and “eavesdropping” on them is easier than ever thanks to social media. By doing a simple Twitter and/or Facebook search, you can easily spot your prospect and see what s/he has been up to. This will help you plant your next move on a solid ground.

3. Be Subtle Yet Persistent!

Now that you know where your prospect hangs in the most, time to show up wearing the “subtle” hat! The last thing you want is that s/he realizes that you are hunting him/ her down to close a sale. That’s exactly what I mean by being subtle in your approach.

For example you can tweet about content that is interesting to your prospect and @Mention his/her Twitter name
(among others) to remind him/her of yourself in a soft, non-intrusive way.

Here is a good example of what I call subtle attention-grabbing tweets:
Hi @UserName1, @ProspectName, @UserName2 I know you will love this video! <Link comes here>.

4. Are You Making The Wrong Assumptions?

Many people fall into the deadly trap of generalizing: Couple of your customers may have liked certain features in your product. So, you go ahead and make a false assumption the rest of the world will love it for the same reasons!

The point I am making here is that prospects vary a great deal in their needs and expectations. So, you must grow bigger ears and master the art of empathic listening in order to present your product as a viable solution to their unique problems. If you do, closing a sale will be effortless. Again, thanks social media!

5. Offer Genuine Help

Let’s say that your evasive prospect tweeted about a problem/question that you can solve/answer. Go ahead! Do it and do it fast and, even more importantly, do it selflessly WITHOUT bringing up your past interactions.

You never know! Your kind gesture may refresh his/her memory. If not, your prospect will be grateful and may reward you in ways much greater than you expected.

What If Nothing Worked?

If all your sincere efforts didn’t pay off, do not despair and turn this unfortunate situation into a learning experience. Understand where you went wrong and how you can avoid it in the future and on to the next sales adventure.

Being in business is no smooth sailing: it requires a special breed of people who know how to smile in the face of obstacles and turn them into opportunities. I invite YOU to be one of them. Are you willing to accept my invitation?

Turn “Evasive” Prospects Into Loyal Customers In 5 Easy Steps. Thanks Social Media! is a post from: Blog Godown

There has been lots of talk about how a user’s Twitter page is ranked very similarly to a website PageRank in Google’s algorithm. The more authority you have on Twitter, the higher value Google gives to your links and ultimately your site. The content your share on Twitter, even though majority of the links are “nofollow” likely play a significant role in search indexing. Optimizing your content for Twitter isn’t difficult, all it takes is learning about practices that work, and repeating.

Twitter SEO for Dummies

Catchy Headers

Catchy headers that illustrate value will stand out in the Twitter sea. Make sure your article header puts a unique spin on something, or inspires curiosity. Spend a bit of time on your title to make sure that it will provide SEO value, and will grab a user’s attention. For example, don’t simply say “Twitter Basics”, be specific, “ 5 Tips to Optimize Your Twitter Content For SEO.” According to Clickz, “Consider scanning Twitter’s Trending Topics and Promoted Trends periodically to identify any matches for stories you have in production. The most effective results will probably be multiple word phrases, which will drive lower volume and thus push your tweets below the fold at a slower rate. Once identified, headlines can be written to accommodate exact phrase-matches for those topics and ads.”

Great Content

No surprise here. The better your content is, the more people will share your ideas. Try to put a unique spin on an old topic, or bring up a question on a popular topic. Don’t simply re-purpose articles just to get articles on the web. Your Twitter followers will begin to notice the quality of your content, and will unfollow or not click on your links. One the biggest SEO benefits to Twitter is the traffic driven, don’t cut that lifeline by creating crappy content.

Eye Catching Picture

The first picture a person sees when landing on your content is worth much than a thousand words. A picture plays a big part in whether a person will stay or leave your site. Try pictures that capture the emotional tone of your content. Whether it is directly connected to your content or not emotional pictures work well to keep your readers on their toes.

URL Shorteners

For SEO purposes make sure that the links you are sharing are being redirected to your site with a 301 redirect. Services like bit.ly and goo.gl are great URL shortening services because they pass keyword link juice to your site every time something is shared.

Keywords

Keyword stuffing is a thing of the past. Heck, even exact match keywords may be soon out. Make sure that within your content you are linking to relevant ideas and pages to give readers more insight. When you are sharing on Twitter, put your keywords as hash tags and try to put keywords in the title of your article.

Optimizing your Twitter content isn’t a grueling process; it is about understanding what works and what doesn’t. Impacting search results with content sharing on Twitter is easier than ever and your site shouldn’t ignore optimizing content for Twitter.



5 Tips to Optimize Your Twitter Content For SEO is a post from: Blog Godown

Early on as a blogger I learnt that it is key to create amazing headlines and compelling copy in combination with high quality content. As Twitter continues to add a staggering amount of 560,000 users each day this is more true than ever for Twitter too.

Creating great content on Twitter in a consistent manner is something I have always struggled with. To partly solve this I have started using a new Twitter Tool very heavily in recent times. It is called Buffer and it allows me to easily write lots of great tweets at one point without overwhelming my followers with these updates at once.

How does Buffer work?

With Buffer you simply put tweets into your Buffer and the App in return schedules these tweets for you throughout the day. That’s it.

The best part

What I like best about Buffer is that you can add tweets into your Buffer from any page you are on. Via one of the browser extensions you simply give it one click on the Buffer icon, edit the tweet if you wish and then add it to your Buffer. Here is how I did this with one of Gautam’s posts:

Get shortened link and title by default

How does this help me?

With Buffer you are able to add many tweets at once without having them sent out back to back flooding your followers with all these updates. So whenever I browse the news I can add all these great articles with one click on the icon and they will be tweeted well spread out over the day.

This helps me to tweet consistently and also create better quality of my tweets. I can do this when I am in “content-production” mode and don’t have to worry about it for the rest of the day. I can then jump in and focus on the interaction and engagement on Twitter. My content is already there.

When will your tweets be sent?

By default Buffer has set times of Twitter Peak times during the day at which your tweets will be sent out. Of course you can always go to your home account and change these times very easily. You can add more daily times or delete some. At each of these times one tweet will be sent. Here are mine:

Choose your daily tweeting times

Make your tweets better

Buffer also gives you detailed analytics for all your tweets sent via Buffer. For every tweet you can see a table of Clicks, Retweets, Avatars of who retweeted you and Reach of your tweets. Here is how this looks like for some of my recent tweets:

What is not so great about Buffer?

One of the things Buffer doesn’t have is a mobile version of the App. Would this be available it would be even simpler to add tweets to your Buffer whilst you are on the commute or waiting in a queue somewhere.

Conclusion

If you think you could step up your Twitter game to match the awesomeness of your blog a little better, give Buffer a go. With Buffer you can easily create a consistency of updates even when you are too busy to be around.

The App currently comes with a decent free version and can be upgraded to a pro plan (5$/mo) at any time.

What do you think about Buffer? Would love to hear your views below.

How To: Create great content on Twitter without spamming is a post from: Blog Godown

I’m an active twitter user and I follow all the twitter articles being shared online. This is a list of the best twitter articles which were published in 2010.

This list is really huge and that is why I have created content navigation, so that you can jump directly to the topic that interests you.

Content Navigation

• Starter’s Guide
• General Twitter Tips for Effective Tweeting
• Twitter Search
• Twitter Marketing
• Managing Followers
• Twitter Tools & Apps
• Niche Tweeting
• Twitter Lists
• Twitter Branding & Design
• Twitter for Businesses
• Advertising on Twitter
• Twitter Tutorial
• Twitter Fun
• Best Twitter Articles of Blog Godown

Starter’s Guide

mom, this is how twitter works

This is one of the best guides for twitter beginners. It is a step by step learning material for people who are not able to understand the concept of twitter. This guide was intended for moms, but anybody can use this guide, because the language is simple and the guide is full of helpful illustrations. In short, it is a really beautiful twitter guide book. This guide is full html, therefore, it can be easily translated to many languages using google translate.

General Twitter Tips for Effective Tweeting

Which Type of Twitter Account Should You Create?

There’s nothing difficult about heading to Twitter and creating an account to represent your business. What is difficult is knowing what kind of account you want to create and the voice you’ll be using with it. A twitter account can be used to promote products or build reputation or maybe only for personal reasons. What we want to do depends on what we want to get from this twitter account.

26 Twitter Tips for Enhancing Your Tweets

Tweeting is really easy – Just 140 characters and you’re done. But, to get the most of it, you have to enhance it and produce content which is worthy of being retweeted.

How to make most of the Twitter #tags

Twitter hashtags are extensively used for a number of reasons. There are so many hashtags on twitter. How to make the most of it? This article will help you.

Twitter SEO Tips From The Experts

Twitter has made all the links as nofollow, so that people don’t get any link juice from google in order to prevent excessive spamming. But, according to experts, Tweeting can help you in seo!

21 Twitter Conversation Tips

Many Twitter users are not able to gain reputation because they are not able to build trust. Engaging in intelligent conversations is the best way to build trust, gain followers and establish yourself as a guru online.

7 Tips for Becoming a Twitter Badass

If you want to be a twitter badass, you got to follow these 7 tips. There are no fixed rules, but these 7 tips have worked really well for Twitter Badass.

6 Tools to Nurture and Engage Your Twitter Followers

6 tools which can build a healthy twitter community. These are tools which are useful and effective for starting to really engage people on Twitter.

Twitter: Be Gentle with the Giants

Twitter Giants are but human. You cannot expect them to be super heros and read all the tweets in seconds. They have to filter their tweets and read only a selected number. So, don’t stalk them or attack them because they haven’t paid attention to your tweets. It is not because they don’t care, it is because they don’t have enough time.

9 Ways to Use Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists can be used for a host of things other than following who you like. It can be about monitoring your competition or making better connections with experts in your field.

9 Ways To Build A Twitter Community With Substance

Everybody talks about “followers” or “retweets”, but, only a few of them talk about engagement and conversation. Building followers and retweets can be easy. But, building a community is a whole other thing. It revolves around building better relations with your followers.

Twitter Search

How to search old tweets: 10 tools, 20 features

A comprehensive guide to search old tweets. A very good comparison of 10 twitter search tools based on their functionalities.

6 Quick Tips to Search Twitter Like an Expert

Didn’t find what you were looking for? 6 Quick Tips which will effectively reduce the time you spend on searching for tweets on twitter and it will also give you relevant results.

USING TWITTER SEARCH FOR BUSINESS

Chris Brogan shares the different techniques to make the most of twitter search. He uses these techniques when he is working for his business clients.

3 Absolutely Cool Twitter Search Tricks to Help You Save Money!

Twitter status are great information pieces. Each and every status can be important to a certain person. Similarly, you can get feedback on products you want to buy through some cool twitter search tricks. If you monitor these tweets, you will be able to find the best deals and products.

Twitter Marketing

7 Tips for Effective Marketing with Twitter

Marketing on Twitter requires a bit of a shift in your mindset. Twitter is all about simple conversations; you can’t use press releases, marketing copy and other one-way communication tactics and expect results. Customers want interaction—with you and with each other. Tweeting is one-to-one, with the benefit of being in a public space where other customers may overhear your conversation and interact with each other on your behalf.

Why Facebook Marketing Slaps Twitter Marketing In the Face

Facebook vs Twitter: The war is still going. But, this time facebook is winning hands on. According to the stats, twitter marketing has become less effective and the tweets have become more spammy. Do you agree?

7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing

You can create some very powerful searches and alerts combining Google and Twitter to reduce the spam and get the filtered data which can be really helpful for marketing.

How to Use Twitter in a Marketing Campaign

A 5 point technique to incorporate twitter in your marketing campaign.

5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy

Measuring success on Twitter has everything to do with goals. This article will show you how to create a potential Twitter marketing strategy that will help you become more productive and successful using Twitter for business.

R.I.P Twitter as a Marketing Platform

A very interesting article about how twitter’s marketing will become less effective in the days to come because of the increasing number of users following multiple twitter accounts. So, will Twitter die as a marketing platform in the near future. I hope it doesn’t.

Twitter Marketing from A to Z

The Dictionary of twitter marketing – From Always Be Listening to Zip it. A good resource of twitter marketing tips.

The Social Psychology of Twitter Marketing

In order to create an effective twitter marketing campaign, you need to understand the social psychology. You have to become a social media expert and build a community. Making a more intimate connection through twitter will help you build better customer relations and increase sales (because as a customer, you would always prefer buying from a person you already know).

70% of Companies Plan to Spend More on Twitter & Facebook Marketing

40% of those surveyed simply don’t have the budget to spend more on marketing this year. If they somehow manage to get some money, it would be really good for twitter as a marketing platform.

Managing Followers

5 Ways To Find Out Who Unfollowed You on Twitter

Being Unfollowed is not a good thing. But, you can prevent future unfollows, if you know the ones who are unfollowing you, then you can ask them as to why they unfollowed you and learn something from the conversation.

5 (Free) Twitter Tools to Help You Manage Followers

Whether you have a few or many followers, you should be managing them to ensure that your list is full of active, interesting, and relevant accounts. These 5 Tools will help you manage your followers.

Nobody has a million twitter followers

A person can have a million followers, but they are not really followers. They are composed of people who are following but not interacting and people who  are actually taking part in the conversation. The number of organic followers is a very small percentage of your actual followers. The actual influence of a twitter user should be measured by the number of organic followers, because they are the ones that retweet and interact. So, twitter follower count is of no use, but the important peice is of data is the number of organic followers.

10 Ways to Increase your Twitter Followers & 10 Essential Tools to do it

Most of the articles about twitter tools just mention the tools. This one mentions 10 tools and also gives tips to use them effectively to increase targeted followers.

On Twitter, Followers Don’t Equal Influence

A research paper published by known as the “The Million Follower Fallacy,” a term that comes from work by Adi Avnit. According to her paper – influence is not proportional to the number of followers. A higher follower count doesn’t guarantee higher influence. Retweets and mentions, which measure the audience responsiveness to a user’s tweets, do not correlate strongly with number of followers.

Twitter Tools & Apps

15 Easy-to-Use Apps for Adding Multimedia to Twitter

The only thing that twitter lacks is the ability to add multimedia in its tweets. Though, there is a workaround for adding multimedia tweets using these twitter apps and tools.

6 Tools That Allow You To Write Longer Twitter Tweets

There are occasions when you simply need a paragraph or two to express what you really need to say. Here are 6 possibilities you should check out, which allow you to write longer Tweets on Twitter.

20 Top Twitter Monitoring and Analytics Tools

Social media is much more than a way to stay connected and to have fun: it’s a way to market yourself, your business, and your products and services. By establishing a presence on the social Web, you can gain virtually unlimited exposure to your target audience without incurring the higher costs associated with traditional marketing campaigns

55 Must Know Twitter Tools and Applications

A great list of twitter tools and applicants you should be aware of. The applications and tools are segregated into Twitter General Apps, Twitter Mobile Apps, Twitter Adobe AIR Platform Apps, Twitter Search Apps, Twitter Statistics Apps, Real Time Tweets Interface Apps and Twitter Browser Add-ons. These Twitter Apps are websites which have built-in scripts that complement Twitter and also some other social networking sites. These are the best applications that could prove really handy to anyone who wants to get benefited by twitter.

8 Top Twitter Track Tools to Organize the People You Follow

Manage your twitter followers friends and and find out who are actually adding value to your stream. The ones who are not adding value can be removed from your follow lists using these tools.

111 Twitter Tools

This article is more of a reference guide. It has 111 twitter tools categorized according to their use. Whenever you are not able to find a suitable twitter app, you can always refer to this article.

10 Twitter Apps for Nonprofits

Many apps on twitter are totally free and have a host of features to offer (improving website, e-newsletter, blogging, and social media campaigns) which are suitable for non profit organizations.

17 Essential Twitter Apps for Your Health and Happiness

There are a number of applications designed to take your tweets and turn them into information you can use to support better health and increased happiness. These 17 apps can really bring happiness and health to your life.

Twitter for Android: the best apps reviewed

The best apps for Android reviewed by engadget. The feature comparison will help you find the most suitable android app for twitter that fits your requirements.

The Ultimate List of Twitter Software for Mac (50+ Apps)

A complete list of twitter software for mac users.

Niche Tweeting

How To Get Targeted Niche Followers

Having Twitter followers that share your interest and passion for the same niche is important in creating a community and promoting your content and driving traffic.

40 Twitter Hashtags for Writers

A good list of twitter hashtags for writers who are either seeking help or want to expand their influence on twitter.

35 Big Twitter Hashtags for PR Pros

The key to optimizing your Twitter experience is to take advantage of its hashtag resource which links related topics together with a simple # at the beginning of a word, acronym or phrase. For those who are just starting out, here are 35 twitter hashtags for PR Pros.

10 Great Tips for Using Twitter as a Designer

10 tips for using Twitter to help designers network, find jobs, and/or build their business.

10 Practical Twitter Tips for Publishers

Twitter is an important part of most publishers’ audience development and content promotion efforts. It can used for grabbing some really good opportunities.

Twitter Lists

65 History Twitter feeds

Learning History couldn’t have been easier. Follow these twitter accounts to expand your knowledge about history.

100 Marketers You MUST Follow on Twitter

A list of some hot shot marketers on twitter plus some up and coming twitter marketers who engage on twitter effectively.

50 Special Ed Teachers and Experts Worth Following on Twitter

50 special ed teachers and experts on Twitter who may be worth your while. The list is sorted into teachers, advocates and groups and tools, all geared toward education, support and special needs kids.

100 Business Experts You Should Follow on Twitter

100 great feeds to follow from business leaders, CEOs, technology experts and more that will give you a fresh perspective and a great education on the latest in the field.

140 tech experts to follow on Twitter

140 of the top technology experts, journalists, and thought leaders you can find on Twitter.

30 PR Experts You Should Follow on Twitter

People on Twitter who provide valuable information you can use and learn from.

Twitter Branding & Design

Twitter Background Design – Great Tips and Gorgeous Examples

A comprehensive guide to create the twitter background design of your choice. Depending of what you want to highlight in your twitter page, you can design your twitter background accordingly.

40 Tools To Spice Up Your Twitter Background

If you don’t want any fuss and just want a good background, then you can use these tools which can assist you in creating a beautiful twitter background.

50 Beautiful Backgrounds for Your Twitter Account

A really cool collection of backgrounds which can be used for your twitter backgrounds.

How to Make Twitter Backgrounds for the new Twitter.com

Due to the new twitter.com design, the visible portion of the background has decreased considerably. Only 41px is visible on both sides at all times. Rest spaces are visible on higher resolutions.

How To Brand Your Tweets With Your URL And Why You Should

Branding your tweets is important because it helps in brand awareness. This is a simple how to article, where you will understand how you can brand your tweets using a very popular paid twitter tool named MarketMeTweet.

Some really cool twitter backgrounds for inspiration:

A great set of beautifully and artistically crafted twitter background designs that might inspire you to create one of your own.

60 Creative Illustrated Twitter Backgrounds

115 Cool Twitter Backgrounds

50 Creatively Designed Twitter Backgrounds

Twitter for Businesses

7 Sneaky Ways to Use Twitter to Spy on Your Competition

Stalking your competition couldn’t have been easier without twitter. With the help of twitter, you can get a lot of information about the daily activities of your competition. Maybe, if you dig deeper, you might get hold of some trade secrets which may help you in developing an edge over your competition.

25 Case Studies Using Twitter to Increase Business and Sales

Some amazing case studies of renowned brands such as Dell, Pepsi, Levi’s and Intel which gives some interesting insight as how to use twitter for business marketing. It will help you bring business to your company and increase sales.

6 Quick Tricks To Grow Your Business Using Twitter

You can easily track people’s activities using twitter. But without the right resources, those conversations will fall through the cracks. Maximize your Twitter account’s klout and use contests, directories, and monitoring services to make sure your tweets reach as many people as possible.

21 Twitter Tips From Socially Savvy Companies

A list of suggestions to help businesses learn how to engage customers on Twitter through the examples of those companies, from Dell to Zappos, already successfully building online communities.

10+ Tips For Using Twitter To Grow Your Freelance Business

Like it or not, social media is here to stay — at least for a while. More importantly, if you are not using the various social media tools that are available to grow your freelance business, you are missing out on a prime opportunity. Some of these tips might open doors for you and your online business.

10 Indicators Your Business Should Rethink Its Twitter Strategy

Is your twitter strategy failing? It’s time to think over and see where you are going wrong. Some simple things if left out can make a huge difference to your twitter campaign. Engaging and making a connection with your readers is very important for your twitter campaign to succeed.

Advertising on Twitter

Twitter offers 3 types of advertising – Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. Twitter Advertising has the potential to become a very useful and targeted advertising for advertisers

Is Twitter Advertising a Threat to PPC?

Can Advertising on twitter beat Pay Per Click Advertising: the answer is hard to get because only time can tell which one is better. But, twitter advertising is showing better results than the banner ads displayed on the web.

Twitter Advertising: A Complete Guide

A really useful and constantly updated guide on twitter advertising. It gives an in-depth explanation about each product that twitter has to offer. The Start Advertising section will also allow you to set a budget, choose run dates and even target locations.

Twitter Tutorial

Complete Tutorial: How To Use Twitter API

A collection of good resources to use Twitter API for programmers and developers.

Building a Windows Phone 7 Twitter Application using Silverlight

A really detailed tutorial to create a twitter application for Windows Phone 7 using Silverlight.

Twitter Fun

How addicted to twitter are you?

Don’t know whether you are addicted to twitter or not? This quiz will tell you exactly how much addicted you are?

9 Cool Things To Do with Your Twitter Account

Twitter is used for sharing information and blabbering. But, that is just a small part of what twitter can be used for. There are 9 very cool things you can do with your twitter accounts.

Twitter chats and Twitter parties for brands

This is a blend of having fun and learning. Twitter chats can be used for networking, sharing knowledge as well as talking about topics you like. Twitter Parties are best for having fun and doing some networking along with it.

Best Twitter Articles of Blog Godown

List of the best twitter articles of Blog Godown published in 2010

8 Traits of a Twitter Champion
Twitter Champions are the most influential lot, they are trendsetters and it would not be wrong to say that they control the way twitter is being used. So, if you know what they do, you might also reach where they are now.

How Should You Treat Your Twitter Followers

You should treat your twitter followers well. Even if you have many followers, you should reply to your followers and tweet properly!

The Great Social Media Debate : Scheduling Tweets, Good or Bad

Interesting debate on scheduling tweets. Whether scheduling is a good thing or a bad thing, it is for you to decide.

8 Twitter Mistakes that can Destroy your Twitter Reputation

Everybody makes mistakes. But, if you keep on repeating them, then they will not be excused. Don’t make these 8 mistakes or else, you will lose your reputation.

4 Easy Ways to Engage Your Followers On Twitter

Your schedule is busy and so, you are not able to engage properly with your twitter followers. This article shows you how to engage in four easy ways

Badges

If your article is included, show off by adding the following badges to your blog:

<a href = “http://www.bloggodown.com/2011/02/best-twitter-articles-of-2010.html”><img src = “http://www.bloggodown.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/best-of-twitter-2010.png”/></a><br />

<a href = “http://www.bloggodown.com/2011/02/best-twitter-articles-of-2010.html”><img src = “http://www.bloggodown.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/best-of-2010.png”/></a><br />

<a href = “http://www.bloggodown.com/2011/02/best-twitter-articles-of-2010.html”><img src = “http://www.bloggodown.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/best-of-2010-mini-icon.png”/></a><br />

Best Twitter Articles of 2010 is a post from: Blog Godown

Travelers that use Twitter already know the micro blogging site’s power when it comes to sharing information and getting tips from other tweeting travellers.

Now, with the growing number of travellers taking mobile phones and iPhones on their travels, there are even more ways to get benefits from Twitter while travelling.

Using Twitter in conjunction with Twitter tools to communicate on the go can be a life saver for any tweeting traveller. Find yourself stranded at the airport? Need a quick flight status check on the way to the airport?  Twitter has got you covered!

Here are seven of the best twitter tools for travellers to communicate on the go.

Trottr

Trottr – lets you send voice messages to your twitter friends. Whether you are out and about or disconnected from the Internet, you can still keep your twitter friends and everyone else is updated with voice messages.

Trottr even lets you reply to your friend’s audio messages and even listen to all the audio messages your friends have tweeted.

Tweet What You Spend

Tweet What You Spend – makes it easy to manage your travelling budget. All you need to do is send a direct message, with a note and the amount spent, and the tool does the remembering for you. For example, if you buy a pair shoes for $35, you simply type “d twys shoes 35? into your Twitter status box and send.

Tweet What You Spend receives that information and puts it into an online database that you can later log into to inspect and sort out, or you can choose to export all the data as an Excel spreadsheet.

Boarding

Boarding –Boarding is a Twitter tool that will help you find other stranded Twitter travellers to pass the time with. Finding others is as simple as tweeting “#Boarding” along with the airport code. In just a few short moments, you will receive a follow up tweet with the names of people stuck in the same airport that are also looking to meet, until it is time to take off. Boarding is a great twitter tool if you’re stranded in the airport for a long period of time.

Localyte

Localyte – provides access to local guides in over 160 countries worldwide. You can also use this service to find answers to any of your location specific questions via Twitter. So, if you’re wondering what the finest restaurants in Spain are, just send a tweet to @localyte with your enquiry and location. They will then pass on this to the local guides who can respond with some of their recommendations direct to your Twitter account.

TwtTRIP

TwtTRIP – allows you to connect with other Twitter travellers going the same way, list your travel details, gain accommodation or meet locals willing to meet for a coffee, give a tour or even provide a free to sleep on, all while using your Twitter account as the means of contact.

Twaller

Twaller, is a service designed for travellers to connect with local people and the tweets they’re sending that are relevant to you in your current location.

While you’re travelling, the people who might have the most relevant information for you aren’t essentially the people you follow, but rather the local people on Twitter who already know the area.

Twaller uses a keyword based search engine to identify tweets related to major metro areas: weather, places to dine, things to see and do, entertainment and shopping.

I have mentioned seven useful twitter tools for tweeting travellers to communicate on the go. Can Twitter be harnessed to be more useful to tweeting travellers, let me know what you think?

The Tweeting Traveller – Tools to communicate on the Go is a post from: Blog Godown

If you carefully observe the look and feel of the browser, it looks more like google chrome because it is based on chromium. Chromium is the open source web browser project from which Google Chrome draws its source code. The project’s hourly Chromium snapshots appear essentially similar to the latest builds of Google Chrome aside from the omission of certain Google additions.

A preview of the new social media browser – RockMelt

As you can see from the preview, it has additional features or edges (as they call it) which increases the social media capabilities of the browser.

First, in order to login to your accounts, it requires your facebook credentials.

Social Networking made real easy

Social Networking has become real easy with RockMelt. The left edge contains all your facebook contacts, so that you can easily chat and interact with them, On the right side, you can add twitter accounts and rss feeds and keep updated with the latest happenings.

Organizing Multiple Twitter Accounts

Twitter integration in browsers is not a very unique concept. I have used the twitter plugin for mozilla and it has worked fine. But, the way RockMelt has seamlessly integrated twitter into it’s browser, is an achievement.

You can check the latest twitter updates just by clicking on the particular twitter account. You can reply, retweet and tweet using the browser. Also, you can watch youtube videos shared by your twitter friends in the twitter box.

Each shortened link is converted back to source link, so that you know beforehand, what type of link you are clicking on and you don’t end up getting tricked.

For a blogger and social media marketer like me, there is always a need to update more than one twitter account. RockMelt makes it really easy to add multiple accounts to your browser.

Easy Sharing

If you closely time your sharing activity, you will notice that most of the time is consumed in copying the link and sharing it. The one click share button offers you the ability to share the link you are viewing to your facebook and twitter accounts in a matter of seconds!

Networking with facebook friends

A blogger has to do other stuff than blogging, in order to increase his viewership. He has to network with people. Facebook is used to network and collaborate with people and friends. If you could chat from your browser, wouldn’t it be great. Yes, it would!

RockMelt adds all your friends on the left edge of the browser, where you can chat with them, post on their wall and also, check their profile for updates. Amazing, Isn’t it?

What about the Search?

Search is an essential tool for bloggers because it helps them gather more information and acquire knowledge which helps them in creating quality content.

I suppose search has one additional functionality that it also searches through your facebook friend list and the results appear as a pop under box. You can click on a particular search result and it will direct you to the website.

Easy Feed Subscription

The Easy RSS Feed subscription button is a really good addition which will benefit bloggers because it makes it real easy for readers to subscribe and keep updated with the latest news about the websites of their choice. This addon will encourage online users to subscribe to their favourite blogs and websites.

Gmail Chats Integration

I expected RockMelt to integrate gmail contacts for chats so that you could chat with your gmail and facebook friends in a single window. But i suppose that they will add this feature in the near future.

Security Point of View

Remember, RockMelt uses your facebook credentials and then it logs into all your twitter accounts . So, don’t ever give it to anybody, or else you will expose all your sensitive social media accounts to a stranger.

Take a Sneak Peek

At this point of time, RockMelt is invite only  So, you might have to wait for a little while before you get access to this great new browser.

The New Social Media Browser RockMelt – What it has in store for us? is a post from: Blog Godown

The problem with the #Followfriday used nowadays is that people don’t care whom to give recommendation or not. They list a bunch of people and they add a #FF hashtag, so that people could follow them. As these #ff tags are usually devoid of any information and careful reasoning, the total value of a followfriday recommendation gets nullified.

Recommend Selectively

Your recommendations should be selected by careful thought and reasoning. These recommendations should include people you actually like and the ones that deserve your recommendation

If you recommend people just for the sake of it or if you have an ulterior motive of making a bond with that person, then you would not be doing the right thing. If the person you recommend is not good, then the people who follow him/her will also have to suffer, which in turn will decrease your reputation in twitterville.

Also, try to use one tweet for one person. As there are only 140 characters in each tweet, there is huge scarcity of space for recommendations. And if you add more and more people to the recommendation, then there will be very little space left for your reasoning.

If you want to give followfriday recommendations to many people, then you can use your website as a medium to do that. Below is an example of one such recommendation:

33 super engagers to follow

Be Precise and Effective

Your followfriday recommendation should be constructed in such a way that you are able to convince your readers to follow them. The words used should be similar to that in a text ad.

In text ads published in newspapers and magazines, you are literally paying per character. Each character occupies a definite amount of space and if the number of characters is more, then the space required for it will be more and therefore, the cost of ad will increase proportionally.

Professionals who create these ads, use methods to convey their point in minimum words. Your recommendation should be made on the same lines. In 140 character space, you should be able to give a compelling reason to your followers, so that they are convinced to follow the people you are recommending.

The best method to do that is by listing the qualities of the person and also the type of tweets. For eg. if somebody recommends me as a good blogger on twitter. Then, some bloggers might get interested in following me for networking and knowledge sharing purposes.

Some Good Examples of FollowFriday Recommendations:

1. #FF @2morrowknight: An Opinionated Blogger, A social media champ. A very kind hearted person and a very engaging tweeter
2. #FF @TweetSmarter: Originally @Twitter_Tips. The ultimate destination to find the best tweets related to twitter and other social media
3. #FF @2cre8 Kathy’s stream is full of informative tweets. She is a technology enthusiast and a great blogger.
4. #FF @anddjournal Aditya is one of the young gunes. Full of enthusiasm, his tweets speak of his youth and love for technology
5. #FF @arkarthick: Karthick’s tweets are the like the summary of best tweets. They are loaded with info and mixed with a little bit of humor
6. #FF @AskAaronLee: If you are not following Lee, you are missing out on something. Lee is an influential blogger and a truly interesting tweeter.
7. #FF @v_shakthi: Shakthi is a awesome blogger and a great writer. A positive personality with an infectious charm
8. #FF @HowellMarketing: Amy is a loving person. She spreads happiness around her. Also she is one of the social media-holics
9. #FF @douglasi: Douglas is a thought provoking blogger. His articles and tweets have a twist to the conventional social media
10. #FF @xanpearson: She promotes happiness and Joy. Her optimism makes you want to engage in more and more conversations with her.

Now you might have got an idea of how to use #FollowFriday recomendations effectively. So, go ahead and try it and share your experiences and opinions on it. (P.S. All these 10 twitter users are a must follow)

The Art of using #FollowFriday Effectively is a post from: Blog Godown

Then came the social media marketers who wanted to maximize their traffic with minimum efforts. This resulted in apps that could automate twitter status updates and also gain many followers in a few minutes time. You could update using twitterfeed and you could also schedule updates. (Using Scheduling tweets or not is a debatable concept).

New apps can automate a host of things but they still can’t automate some things which makes twitter such a nice and warm place to be a part of. Here are some I think are the most awesome things that you can’t automate on twitter:

Amazing Conversation

Twitter is all about conversation and if you don’t follow a regime to talk to your followers on twitter, you will not be known. Replying to your followers can result in some of the most amazing conversations. I have had many debates with my twitter followers on various different subjects.
Even if our opinions were different, we were still able to broaden our horizon by presenting our thoughts in front of each other.

If you are not replying, then you are not tweeting! If you feel that you don’t have enough time to engage, there are always techniques that will be able to cut down on your time to engage.

Learning

When I first started tweeting, I had little knowledge on many subjects like social media marketing, internet marketing, etc. I thought twitter was totally useless and it was a total time waste. But, when I started using it like a pro tweeter, I was able to grasp many topics in a small period of time. This knowledge helped me in improving my blogging and writing skills and it also gave me many ideas which I could blog about. Now, if you are automating, then you are not reading the tweets and hence, you are losing on an amazing learning opportunity.

Reputation

Reputation is not built in minutes. It takes months of hard work to build a high reputation twitter account where people love what you tweet. So, automation cannot build reputation as you are not spending enough time to build good relationships with people.

Also, a myth among many twitter users is that a high twitter following equals a higher reputation. This is not at all true. A person who got 20000 followers may have zero reputation because he got all the followers using automated methods. Whereas a person with 1000 followers can have a very high reputation if he had worked hard for it.

Influence

Becoming a twitter champ is not a piece of cake. You have to do a lot more than just following people. You have to make really good relationships with twitter users who have a high influence. Once you become a part of their influence circle, your influence will increase on its own.

A high influence can be achieved with the lower follower count if you are able to develop great relationships with other highly influential twitter champions.

Friends

This is the part that I cherish the most. On twitter, I have made really good friends who I am able to interact with freely and also I am able to share my thoughts with. Friends are needed for moral and emotional support. When you have hit rock bottom, these friends will be there for you. I wouldn’t have made any twitter friends if I hadn’t interacted with them in the first place.

So, if you are planning to automate twitter, then you are missing out on making some really amazing friends.

Business Opportunity

Twitter has many opportunities for the growth of your business. But, customers will believe in your product if you are genuine on twitter and you treat your followers in the right way.

Building a business starts with building trust and that too cannot be automated!

Can you think of any other things that cannot be automated on twitter?

What you can’t Automate on Twitter is a post from: Blog Godown

You need a list first

Before we get into the simple ways to engage, the first thing you need to do is make a list. How to do this varies depending on if you are using the website or a third party client.

• On the website:
  You will see “Lists” on the right hand side of your homepage. In that area there is a “new list” link. When you click on that, it gives you a window to name your list, add a description and set it to public or private. You can then add people to the list by going to your following or followers page. I would use the followers list for this particular list (note: it can NOT be called following).
• There are so many clients out there, I won’t go into any of them for the sake of brevity.

Once you have created this list, you can use it to filter down to just those you added. You can click on the link to this list on the website or added it to your client as a separate column. Now on to the easy stuff!

Engage!

1. @replies
   When you see that a follower has tweeted an great blog post, quote, etc send them an @reply to compliment them on that tweet. You can tell them how it helped you out, made you smile…something with VALUE. I’d not send a simple “great tweet”. That’s about as engaging as getting a blog comment that says only “great post”!
2. RT
   When a follower tweets something that you believe other followers might find interesting, retweet it! Its pretty exciting to see retweets when they first start coming. If you can add a comment or reaction to the retweet, do so. This will let the original poster know you actually read what they put up.
3. Follow Friday
   A lot of people say Follow Friday is dying, but it seems to simply be evolving. This is where each Friday, you send a list of people you recommend others follow. However, lets do this is a better way! Give a comment on each one if you are doing this via Twitter and don’t forget to add #FF, #followfriday or any other variation of this hash tag.
   If you blog, you could also do your recommendations in a blog post and then tweet it with the hash tags. This will give you plenty of room to extol each persons greatness.  Its also good for a list post, which we all know tend to be popular with readers.
4. Thank them.
   The easiest way to let your followers know you value them is when you catch them retweeting something from you or adding you to their Follow Friday lists. Thank them. Seriously, Direct Message or @reply with a simple thank you. It will make an impression on them. Just be consistent with this. You can make it a once a week round up, or do several at a time a few times a day. No matter how you chose to thank them, they will remember you (in a good way).

There you have it–four very simple ways to engage with your readers that you can do in a 10 or 15 minute time span. You may even want to set aside a few 15 minute time blocks to work these points so its not so overwhelming.

What do you do to engage your Twitter followers? Is there an awesome way you find works every time? Share your tips in the comments

This article is a part of the guest blogging contest. If you liked this article, then help in supporting this author by retweeting and commenting on it, which will enable the author to win this contest. By the way, you can be a part of the contest, it is still not late

Image Credit

4 Easy Ways to Engage Your Followers On Twitter is a post from: Blog Godown

Finally, weekend has arrived and it is the best time to take a break and relax for some time and pump in some inspiration. This article is just for pumping the creative juice in you. A resource of the best articles that are shared in the community.

To be included in this roundup, you just need to participate in the discussions by commenting on the articles at Blog Godown and also you can start interacting to me at twitter and I may go to your blog and link to your article in the next link roundup.

Blogging Tips From Community

Following articles share a different perspective on blogging and these articles can help you be an improved blogger.

An Untraditional Look at Blog Commenting

A different approach towards blog commenting. Comments are often seen as a sense of validation of their work. It just explains why there is a need of discussions, why should one leave a comment. Why commenting for the reasons of links is not a very good thing.

How NOT to lose your mind blogging – what to do when you have a block

An insightful article on what to do when you face a writer’s block, i.e when you don’t know what to write or you are just out of ideas. Writer’s block is faced by many bloggers and one just has to face it. This article shows you how to do it.

Is your blog a failure or a success?

This article answers questions like What are your thoughts on blog success and blog failure? How do you define a successful blog? How do you determine whether your blog is successful or not? How do you make failing blog a success?. It talks about being consistent, taking breaks and inviting guest bloggers in order to succeed.

Blogging Jobs – 7 ways to find one

As a blogger, you would like to make money from your writing experience. This article gives 7 tips to find a writing job as a freelance blogger.

Social Media Articles From The Community

8 Ways Businesses Should Use Social Media

This article presents 8 ways that businesses can use social media to learn more about themselves and their industry as well as get more involved with their clients and communities interested in what they have to offer. A must read if you want to grow your business through social media.

How to Get Targeted Twitter Followers Fast

Building a quality following is hard. This post explains how to build a following and how to maintain it. An important point to note is that it gives importance to conversation to build a relationship.

How to Optimize Google Buzz for Social Network Benefits

An article on how to make the most of google buzz for blog marketing and social media marketing purposes.

Blog Godown – Blog Post Rewind

A weekend capsule of the articles published in the previous week at Blog Godown.

How To Use Email Marketing To Draw More People To Your Website

An article that talks about how to run a successful email marketing campaign if you are starting a business. Some tips that will increase the click through rate of your email marketing campaign.

5 Conversion Rate Optimization Tips for Bloggers

Bloggers are always thinking about ways to increase the level of engagement in their blogs. The article focuses on tips that help in decreasing the bounce rate and in increasing discussion in blogs. These tips are very important for a design that wants to attract the attention of the reader.

Additional SEO Tips to Gain More Organic Traffic

Each and every blogger tries to maximize their traffic. To improve their organic traffic they use search engine optimization techniques. They don’t target image search, which can be a good source of traffic. Also an important tip on nofollowing links to prevent penalization by google.

The Great Social Media Debate : Twitter Monetization. Is it Ethical?

It is the second dose of the popular social media debate series. It starts a discussion on the most debated matter, making money via twitter. It lists the pros and cons of making money via twitter. A lot of people have shared their experiences in comments.

5 steps to building a power blog

Millions of blogs are launched each year and making an impact in such a competitive online world is very difficult. This post lists 5 important steps that should be performed if you want to develop a power blog of your own.

8 Twitter Mistakes that can Destroy your Twitter Reputation

Many Twitter users are unaware of the things they do that tick off people. Twitter is considered in terms of quantity instead of quality and that is what is considered to be there biggest mistake. Some of these twitter mistakes, if repeated can totally demolish your twitter influence

Articles Shared on Social Media

These are links that were shared on my twitter stream and were often retweeted.

• How to Create a Facebook Fan Page Editorial Guide
• 4 Things That Are Getting Me Rankings, Right Now
• How to Get an Influencer’s Attention
• 10 Free Twitter Tools I Will Use Today
• 11 Smart Tips for Brilliant Writing

What you have in mind?

What do you think of the articles shared above. Has it inspired you to do something good or to blog better. What are your plans for the weekend? For me it is a little promotion for our blog and also some work regarding the guest blogging competition.

PHOTO by baratunde

The Best Blogging and Social Media Articles Around the Community – Weekend Love is a post from: Blog Godown

A lot of twitter users want to become twitter champs, but they actually become dumb twitter users. This happens because they make a lot of mistakes and yet make no effort to prevent further damage to their twitter reputation.
When people enter into the twitterverse, they aren’t aware of the rules and they also don’t study any twitter guide and they end up making many mistakes. Like real life, if you make mistakes in twitter, you are forgiven once or twice, but if you try to repeat it over and over again, then nobody would be ready to forgive you and you will surely end up losing respect among your followers.

These are some of twitter mistakes that you should be aware of and should not make if you want to become a powerful twitter user:

1. Auto DM

This is, by far, the most annoying habit that some bloggers and businesses use to promote their links. These links usually include affiliate links and links to their products. The problem is that though earlier auto DMs were a good facility to promote stuff, but now it has become a gateway to annoyance (and is usually full of spam). Auto DMs make you appear as bots and spammers. People don’t like following bots and they would instantly unfollow you, if you send them Auto DMs.

It would be better if you use a personalized DM to introduce yourself and then maybe build a relationship with them.

2. Promoting links via @

As a blogger, I know that some links may need promotion and you may like your twitter followers to help you out. But if you start asking for retweets and using @ replies to promote links you would perceived as a needy tweeter who is always asking for retweets. Instead of using @s use DMs to request your friends to promote your links. It is personal and is a better medium to promote.

3. No Conversation

Twitter is a platform to share useful information and also to interact and share experiences. If you are thinking of only sharing links, then you would never succeed. Conversation is a prerequisite and if don’t try to interact with people, they will start ignoring your tweets.

4. Bulk Following

A lot of people think that bulk following is sure-shot method to become a twitter hotshot. But they are highly mistaken, because quality following is better than quantity following. A person having 1000 followers can have more influence than a person having 10000 followers. Once you bulk follow, your closing the gate to a network, which could have increased your twitter influence.

5. Over Monetization

According to twitter users, making money from twitter is not very bad, if it is done in moderation. But if you are thinking of bombarding the twitter stream with a number of sponsored tweets, then you will be unfollowed immediately. Make sure you don’t cross the limit.

6. Revealing passwords

Revealing password is one of the worst things you can do to your account. Once you use your password on a twitter app, it gets stored there and then anybody can hack your twitter account. This has been my personal experience that once your twitter account gets hacked, then you start to see some offensive and inappropriate tweets being tweeted directly form your account. This can be really bad for your reputation and if action is not taken immediately, then you are bound to lose respect.

7. Not giving back love

Shameless self promotion does not work in any social media. It should be a give and take relationship and you need to retweet and thank people in order to protect your authority. Treat your twitter followers as if they are your family.

8. Being Offensive and Rude

Do you want to make enemies on twitter?. If yes is the answer, then start using bad language and point your fingers at others. Make them lose their mind and start spreading hatred.

In all, I would recommend that you don’t make these mistakes and try to show some twitter etiquette. If you don’t make these mistakes, you can be rest assured that you don’t lose your reputation on twitter.

Discussion

What mistakes have you made? Are there other types mistakes commonly made by twitter users?

Image credit: Ithemes

8 Twitter Mistakes that can Destroy your Twitter Reputation is a post from: Blog Godown

One such issue is Twitter Monetization (Making Money via Twitter). Let’s start with a little story:

Twitter started as a medium to communicate with friends. Soon, it became popular among web enthusiasts and bloggers. People started sharing links they liked and soon twitter became a really powerful blog marketing tool. Bloggers used it to gather traffic and to get more retweets.

Seeing the potential in twitter, people started thinking about monetizing twitter (after all advertisers are looking for easy traffic).

The first one to start it was magpie. It payed twitter users on the basis of the number of sales made or number of clicks made on a specific link. This monetization scheme received a very good response from people who were interested in making an extra buck while doing the thing they love. A number of such monetization schemes started as a result of the great response they got from the users. To name a few:

• Sponsoredtweets – It is the leading in this field and is used by many celebrities.
• Ad.ly – Another Popular sponsored tweets program.
• MyLikes – It is basically a sponsored likes program, where you can monetize your tweets as well as posts by sharing your likes.

Now, as you’ve got a basic picture about twitter monetization. Let’s talk about the pros and cons of twitter monetization.

Making Money via Twitter is the Way to Go

• It is the easiest way to make money online. Even a blog takes 1-2 months to start earning and requires a lot of hard work. But here, you just need to type the 140 chars and viola! you are minting money.
• Huge Earning Potential -  Sponsored Tweets can fetch you huge amounts of cash in a little span of time. John Chow makes thousand of dollars via sponsored tweets.

Tweeting for Money is Unethical!

• Spamming – As people have a greedy nature. They will be willing to tweet anything for money, even if it’s irrelevant or obscene. This will lead to excessive spamming in twitter stream and it will defeat the whole point of using twitter.
• Shift of Focus – As people will treat twitter as a money making medium, their focus will be only on making money and not on sharing useful content.

People who are for twitter monetization say that twitter monetization will not lead to spamming, if the  twitter users make sure that only the best tweets gets published (even if it is a sponsored one).

I have presented to you both sides of the coin. What is your take on twitter monetization? Is it ethical or is counted as bad twitter manners?

Have you made any money through twitter? Share your experiences here.

The Great Social Media Debate : Twitter Monetization. Is it Ethical? is a post from: Blog Godown

I’ve read the past few articles written about Twitter here on Blog Godown and I wanted to toss my hat into the ring as well with another perspective on Twitter. The articles I’m referring to include the debate over scheduling tweets or not and how to treat your Twitter followers. I don’t agree with everything that’s been said in these articles and wanted to provide my opinion as well to see what you think.

Why I won’t follow everyone on Twitter

I have a small number of followers at just over 100 as of this posting and I follow even less people at just 25 right now. The reason why I don’t follow everyone that follows me is not because I don’t feel grateful that they’ve cared enough to follow me, but because I don’t believe it’s possible to have a relationship with everyone of my followers. So rather than attempt to do it by following the 100 people that follow me I’d rather just set the precedence now that I won’t be able to follow everyone. Perhaps I’m not the best example because I only have 100 followers, but I believe my point still stands. Facebook sets a limit of 5,000 friends and although this is more likely due to a technical limitation I think it’s because they also believe you can’t truly have a personal connection to more than 5,000 people. Yes you might write a blog read by thousands and thousands of people but do you read their blogs too? Do you meet up with them at conferences and eat meals together? What can you truly do to maintain connection to your 1,000 followers? 10,000 followers? 100,000 followers? I don’t believe you can and in fact I know that the users with accounts like these do not.

The reason why utilities like Tweet Deck cropped up in the first place was that users needed a way to be able to manage the huge influx of information on Twitter. One of these problems was an inability to sort out which people you want to read updates from and which you don’t ever want to see. Now of course you can simply NOT follow everyone, but people don’t want to do this because they believe it’s not possible to get a very large group of followers if they don’t. So instead they create lists of people that they actually care to see updates from and the rest of their followers are just there to pad their stats. If you were to follow me on Twitter than I may follow you back, but I’d need to interact with you in some way or be connected to the stories that you write and share to consider following you. Otherwise what’s the point except to add another digit to my follower count?

Why I won’t follow everyone on Twitter is a post from: Blog Godown

This is a guest post by Anita Nelson. Check out our guest posting guidelines

People ask all the time, “How do I get more followers?” and the answer is right in front of them. It is very simple, but not necessarily easy to do. Twitter is like a Sadie Hawkins dance! According to Wikipedia, Sadie Hawkins is an American folk event. Sadie Hawkins Day is a pseudo-holiday that originated in Al Capp‘s classic hillbilly comic strip, Li’l Abner (1934 to 1977). The event is still observed in the form of dances at which girls approach (or chase after) boys.

Follow first. – Since a Sadie Hawkins Dance is where the girl asks the boy to the dance instead of the traditional “boy asks girl” arrangement, it represents a sort of backward way of doing things. Anything goes! No hard and fast rules! Twitter works much in the same way. If you are newer to Twitter and have grown tired of “waitin’ for the boys to come acallin’, it just makes sense to follow someone who can show you the way. Whenever you are about to ask someone you are NOT following, “Why won’t you follow me?!” stop and realize that someone has to make the first move and it may as well be you, tweep! Especially with large accounts that follow back in bulk; there is really no reason to ask! Just follow them and if you are not spamming or exhibiting obnoxious behavior, you will very likely get followed back. It is not a good idea to press these accounts since they are held to follow limits by Twitter just like anyone else, but it is an excellent place to start. Also, being followed by accounts with large followings does wonders for your “klout”! Don’t be upset if you are the one who follows first. In a reciprocal Twitter relationship, no one is keeping track of these things. If you are connected, you are connected. Just don’t go crazy following more than follow you back. It can make you look desperate, tweep. And don’t unfollow the person after they have followed you back. It is nonsensical. They will unfollow you in return, rest assured. Why did you want to follow at all?

Space Your Tweets – This is one that I struggle with personally, but tweets work best when they are in balance like the give and take of two dancers stepping excitedly through a jig. The best Twitter accounts tweet steadily and with give and take. They have an almost equal amount of @replies, #Quotes, links, news and conversation. They do not flood and rarely land in Twitter jail for breaking the #TPH (“tweets per hour” tag inspired by @OliviaWilder). If you tweet more or faster than the 100 tweets per hour or 1000 tweets per day rate, Twitter puts up a sign that says “Whoa! That’s a lot of twittering! Why don’t you take a break for a while and come back later.” You may wonder who on earth could tweet that much, but you may also be a person who likes their tweets to be answered. It is quite the challenge for some accounts, mine included. Scheduling some tweets is the answer for many people. See Gautams’s post.

Work on your Technique – We are all works in progress and if you are active on Twitter, you probably love to learn! Just like dancing, there are techniques you can learn, implement and perfect on Twitter. Be sure to always follow the correct format for RTing, use the “reply” button when answering someone, check links before you send them out, fill out your bio, add an avatar, give a bio link to more of you, make lists and add them to Listorious.com, tweet relevant content, and read lots of articles about Twitter to find even more techniques to make you a better tweeter.

Take the Lead! – Don’t be afraid to jump into a conversation or make a comment to “anyone”. Hopefully, your comment will be meaningful and kind-spirited, but no one is above a tweet! No matter how many followers the person has, whether they are a star in Hollywood or online, or if their avatar leaves your knees weak, take the initiative to strike up a conversation. Make it more interesting than “Hi, how are you?” Can you imagine the tweet stream of a giant account that answers each time someone asks, “How are you”? Act as if there is no day and night with these accounts, like the dance began last year and will last forever. Others will see your style of tweeting and join in. They will be magnetically drawn to you and they will follow you. If they don’t, it’s simple: just follow first!

Change Partners! – Don’t be afraid to mix it up a bit! Be adventurous and reach out to others. You can even speak to people in different languages by using translators such as freetranslation.com or Google Translate. If you always talk to the same 10 people, you may as well follow 10 people and have 10 people follow you. Meet someone new, take a chance on love, and mix it up a bit! You will be surprised at the quality of people in the Twitterverse you have not even met yet!

Implement these very simple “steps” and I promise your Twitter account will bring you questions that will make your business grow by leaps and bounds! You will begin to get questions about your business that will keep you very busy answering! Everyone in sales and marketing knows that questions = interest = sales. The more questions, the more conversion is likely. Answer these questions in your Twitter stream and you will get even more questions from new people! You will never be at a loss for words to tweet. And it will scarcely show that you are marketing. You will never run around yelling, “Follow me! Follow me! Buy my stuff!” because you will have already followed and listed who you want to follow you, first. Your impression will be made correctly from the very first step of the dance.

by Anita Nelson @ModelSupplies

Twitter Is Like A Sadie Hawkins Dance – Somebody Has to Follow 1st is a post from: Blog Godown

This is a guest post by Gagan. Check out our guest posting guidelines

Few days back Gautam has written a good post about “Scheduling tweets” to which Tim made a following comment

“There are some people who follow no one & interact w/ no-one, there are others that follow tens of thousands and reply to many of them. “

Actually Tim raised a great point. There are two types of People (mainly with huge following) –

1. One who are using Twitter as a broadcast media. They are only interested only in tweeting (Scheduled tweets) about their content (of course they share great content) but they don’t participate in any kind of conversations. In fact, they’ve put twitter on autopilot mode. Their account automatically tweets whenever their blog or their favorite blogs get updated.
2. The second type comprises of people who have thousands of following but they still try to reply to as many of them as possible.

I’m obviously on the second side. But here are the few tips which I think every Twitterer should follow while treating their followers-

Give them respect – Every follower is a human being (obviously most of them) so give them the respect they deserve. Okay. I agree that once you’ve a huge following, it is not feasible to reply to every person. But at least try to reply as many as possible. With huge following comes huge responsibilities.

Follow them back – Okay. It’s not possible to follow everyone back. Please don’t give the excuse of spam on your timeline. If Mr.Obama (@BARACKOBAMA) can follow 734,818 persons and Guy Kawasaki (@Guykawasaki) can follow 242,903 persons on twitter then why can’t you follow back few of your followers?

Conversation is Important – Social media is for CONVERSATION. Okay, you might be a celebrity or a great source of information but, if you are not interested in talking with others, then what you are doing on twitter? Just for promoting your content and getting some traffic to your website? Sorry, I’m not interested in following you.

Be Generous – If your follower sends you a link to his work/article for your feedback then have some decency to reply to it. Even a one word reply like “good” can do wonders. Don’t feel shy in RTing their tweets if they like them. Not only it will boost the motivation of your follower but will also help you to improve your credibility amongst your followers.

Don’t tweet inanities – Your followers are following you just to learn something from you. They are not interested (or most of them) in what you ate for your lunch or which party you are going to. So please don’t tweet inanities and maintain a proper balance between your personal and informational tweets.

So, these were the five things which I think every Twitter user should care of. Do you know of more points which you feel should be added to this list? Feel free to share them in comments below

Image Credit

How Should You Treat Your Twitter Followers is a post from: Blog Godown

The problem lies with the fact that social networking is an endless task and so if a person starts his day with twitter, then he/she is bound to lose time which was required for doing an important job.  It has been a problem faced by many and the solution came in the form of scheduling tweets. Through scheduling tweets one can schedule a tweet at a time, when he can do some other job. So is it ethical to schedule tweets?  I would like to point some pros and cons of scheduling tweets and then it is your verdict.

Pros of Scheduling Tweets

1. Scheduling saves time spent on social media which can be utilized for some other work
2. By scheduling tweets at a time when you are usually asleep, you can connect with a large number of twitter followers compared to what you can without scheduling tweets.
3. Users that tweet a lot have a habit of tweeting at frequency of 1 tweet/min or even higher which is very harmful for your twitter reputation. So Scheduling can help in spacing out the tweets and maintaining a lower frequency (for eg 1tweet/5mins)
4. Scheduling can give you more time to engage. Once you have scheduled the tweets, then you can easily engage with twitter users.

Cons of Scheduling Tweets

1. Scheduling tweets can result in low conversation which is bad for twitter as there will be lesser social networking.
2. Scheduling tweets can be annoying for some as they cannot interact with people, because they are not present at that time.
3. As scheduled tweets are a little old, so there are chances that the tweets are little old and may not make sense in the present context.

That’s just some of the points I could think of. What  is your opinion on scheduling tweets?? Is it Good or Bad

Image Credit

The Great Social Media Debate : Scheduling Tweets, Good or Bad is a post from: Blog Godown

Twitter Champions have some really good characteristics, which make them successful. Some of the characteristics that I have noticed in this brief span of time I have used twitter are as follows:

1. Quality Comes First

The champions know that they are powerful, but with great power comes greater responsibility.  Quality is the first and the foremost priority for every twitter champion. So they work hard to get quality tweets on board. Quality tweets ensure readability and also help in gaining heights in twitterverse.

2. Building Bonds

Public relations and good interpersonal skills  are prerequisite qualities for a twitter champion. Twitter is all about making connections and building relationships, but the twitter champions take it to the next level. They make bonds with their followers, bonds which are cemented and unbreakable and bonds which are very valuable.

3. Being Human

Nobody wants to be flooded tweets which are just content. The twitter champions are not bots who just spew tweets about their products. They are the ones that respond, communicate and make a mark on our hearts. And for them it’s not all about me me, but about you too! They are conversationalists, they interact, engage and take interest in what you say and reply appropriately.

4. Consistency

Matching up to the needs of a huge following is not very easy. It can take up all their time, the time which was meant for their job or other important work. They are “champs” because they are able to juggle through their work and still manage to be consistent on twitter. It is about making tough choices, prioritizing and being productive. It is the months of hard work that actually pays off in the end.

5. Niche

An important trait is being professional. Professionals are to the point and focused. In the same way, the twitter champions send tweets that are centered around their niche. This makes them look like specialists in their respective niche areas. ( For eg. @twitter_tips tweets centered around twitter tips and articles )

6. Entertaining

Seeing the same types of tweets, again and again can be a bit boring, but that is not the case with our twitter champions. They mix tweets like the bartender mixes drinks, and a little bit of entertainment to it. They jazz it up thoughtful quotes, add a pinch of humor and viola!,  the twitter super drink is served.

7. Be Polite

They will not shout at you, even if you have shouted at them. They are very polite, and this the quality makes them even more follow worthy. (Because anger only spreads hatred, and being polite may help in spreading joy)

8. Connecting with Other Champs

Building a network of influential twitter users makes the network even more influential. That’s what the champions do, they join hands and tweet in harmony. They retweet each other’s tweets and hence multiply their audience.

Here are some twitter champs that you must follow

@TweetSmarter
@Alyssa_Milano
@AskAaronLee
@bkmacdaddy
@cheth
@dudeman718
@Flipbooks
@iamkhayyam
@Jason_Pollock
@kim
@mayhemstudios
@Minervity
@mistygirlph
@ShellyKramer
@TrendTracker
@zaibatsu
@sharonhayes
@RuhaniRabin
@the_gman
@BuzzEdition

Wanna be a twitter champion? Yes you can do that. Just follow these guys, learn from them and inculcate these values and you will reach the top. But if you are a beginner then you may start with the beginner twitter tips.

Who is a twitter champion according to you? Do you follow a twitter champ?

Image credit

8 Traits of a Twitter Champion is a post from: Blog Godown

The only way to be more secure is to use manual methods to increase the security.  I, like many other twitter users have suffered from an attack which was may be due to the reason that I didn’t take the security of my account very seriously.  The hacker made use of my reputation and started posting x-rated and controversial tweets via my account. I got to know about it, when i got angry and weird responses from my followers. With the help of my friends on twitter, I was able to revive my account in minutes and i tried to  salvage my reputation, but some damage had already been done to it. The main question is that how can you prevent yourself from this mess? The answer is by following some simple steps, which although does not guarantee total security, but it does decrease the probability of being attacked by a hacker.

1. Strong Password

Most of the hackers, are able to determine a password easily if it is very short or if it contains the date of birth, or your favorite actor or any other favorite. So, in order to increase the security, the password should be really strong. Passwords that contain letters (in caps as well as in small case) and numbers and special symbols are considered to be very strong.  Twitter displays the password strength on the right hand side of the password. You can use it to check whether your password is strong enough. Another good technique would be to change your password regularly.

2. OAuth

OAuth is the authentication which twitter uses to authenticate third party apps. Twitter gives this feature only to trusted apps. Make sure you use apps which are using OAuth service for authentication. If you have unintentionally approved an application, then you can always revoke access, by going to the Settings>Connections and then clicking on Revoke Access for that particular app.

3. Trusted Apps

It is preferable, if you use trusted applications. Applications like:

1. Hootsuite
2. Cotweet
3. Tweetie
4. TweetDeck
5. Seesmic

and many more applications which are very popular among twitter users.

4. Don’t use Office Networks

Login to your twitter account, only when you are using it on your home computer. Don’t use it on your office or college network. These networks are prone to harmful attacks and you may end up in getting your account hacked.

5. Protect Your Password

Don’t ever give your password to anyone. This applies to apps which require to fill your username and password every time. These apps try to lure you into giving them the key to your account. Then they would use your account for their website or product promotion.

In the end, I would like to conclude that twitter is not a very safe website, but if you are careful and keep your account shielded, it can serve a great purpose for you and your organization.

How to prevent your twitter account from being hacked is a post from: Blog Godown

The effectiveness of the marketing  strategy determines the amount of traffic you get from it. In twitter it is important to get more retweets because it increases exposure and hence builds traffic. In twitter if  you are able to start a “Retweet Train” then you can easily get a huge chunk of traffic in a very small amount of time.

A “Retweet Train” means a situation in which if one tweets about a post, and the other likes it and retweets the post and it gets further retweeted and further retweeted and it goes on to make a chain.

But most of the times not all the articles get equal amounts of traffic and are not able to start a “Retweet Train”. It depends on various factors such as the type of audience, who all retweet your post etc.

I would like to enumerate a number of tips to increase the number of retweets which will in turn increase the amount of traffic and which have helped me a lot while getting retweets.

1. Eye Catching Title

In twitter, the updates are in the form of pure text and contain no images or any other form of media (Though you can put links to the media). When somebody retweets your article, the only thing one can see in the update, is the title of the post and the link to it. So it becomes really important that the title attracts a lot of people’s attention and compels them to read your article. A good tip is to use Adjectives like “Kickass”, “Motherlode”, “Amazing” etc. This just makes the reader think that the article contains really useful information.

Another way to attract attention is to use controversial titles, which work like a charm. For example title like “Problogger sucks” may attract a lot of supporters of problogger to comment.  But the only downside of using controversial titles is that they can decrease your reputation, if you don’t back it up by good reasoning and facts.

2. Good Content

If you have a really awesome title of the post, but the content of the article is not upto the mark, then there is very little chance that somebody will retweet your post. In order to get your post retweeted, the content should be liked by the reader. The content should be well written and easy to comprehend. Posts like roundups, have a really good response, because users on twitter are bombarded with a lot of articles each day, and so they prefer reading articles which are condensed (i.e. A lot of info in a single post).

3. Time of Tweet

Timing of the tweet is very important. People from various diffent nations are using twitter. Not everybody is online at the same time. So it is really important for you to tweet at the time of peak usage so that your post gets maximum exposure and hence get more retweets.

Many twitter clients like Hootsuite have really good analytics features which help in figuring out the peak usage time. Following is a chart of traffic versus the Pacific Time

(courtesy: garymccaffrey)

The Graph shows the number of visits on an hourly basis. It also shows that the best time to tweet is between 7:00 and 14:00 hrs Pacific Time. Tweeting between this time can help you get more traffic than tweetng at any other time.

4. Repeat tweets

As previously mentioned, not everyone is online at the same time. In order to get more exposure to your post, it is advisable to repeat tweets 2-4 times a day at a fixed time interval.

5. Quality Following

Having a huge number of followers doesn’t mean that the person is an influential twitterer. A person with say  100 followers may get more retweets than a person having a 10000 followers. That is why quality following is better than quantity following. To gain a quality following you have to tweet quality content. It helps in gaining a reputation in twitter and also helps build a quality following.

6. Increase your Influence

Once you have gained a reputation on twitter, it is important to find and befriend influential people on twitter, this helps increase your retweets and also helps you in getting the “Retweet Train” started.

7. Add the Retweet button

It is very important to add a retweet button to your blog, because it makes retweeting easier and faster and hence doubles the amount retweets a post should get.

How to get more retweets for your post is a post from: Blog Godown

Good Habits to inculcate:

1. Always bring something to the party (good content). Share something unique and interesting. Something which you think will be liked by others and would be worth getting retweets.
2. Always respect others and tweet others like the way you want to be tweeted.
3. Be polite, humble, generous & gracious – same as you should be in your life. Be yourself!. This will make you stand out from the crowd.
4. It’s good etiquette to thank someone for a RT or RTs. You can thank them through @replies or DMs. Which media is better is quite debatable.
5. Introduce yourself (good avatar, crisp bio, and say “hello” and “thank you” to others). If you don’t have an Avatar, you might be considered a spammer or a person who tweets infrequently.
6. Don’t follow then unfollow people just to get your follower number up.. its the quality not the quantity that matters.
7. Be a good listener, Check links before tweeting them. Make sure the tweet is worth sharing and then only retweet the tweet.
8. When you tweet a dead link, fix it, send it again and delete the tweet with the bad link.Also if possible let your followers know that the previous link was tweeted by mistake.
9. Avoid the Auto-DM Fail – Don’t use Auto DMs. Auto DM’s are extremely annoying and you may get unfollowed to this sole reason. It is better to DM people personally to introduce yourself.
10. It’s not polite to twit-fight. Arguing your point is one thing, but fighting is different, just unfollow and be on your way. Don’t make it a place to attack on other people. Focus on the good things.
11. Share your thoughts and ideas – and engage others about theirs. After it is not just about sharing links right?. Answer @replies and DMs, this will make sure, that your followers know that you are not a bot.
12. Help whenever you can. Help others and you might see your reputation among followers shoot up.
13. Don’t just tweet about your products/websites/organization, tweet other stuff too.
14. Don’t post at very quick intervals (like 10-15 tweets per minute or so). It can be very annoying for your readers. A possible way to remove the problem is by scheduling tweets at a regular interval of time.
15. Don’t just copy tweets, it is a form of plagiarism, always mention the person who tweeted it originally.

Thanks to @mistygirlph @rmilana @bkmacdaddy @Kellyolexa @the_gman @Trendtracker @aravindajith @modelsupplies @KeithDriscoll @rahuljrark @iamkhayyam and others for sparing time to share their views

The question is still open to discussion. What according to you is Twitter Etiquette? Do you agree with the habits listed out?

Twitter Etiquette | Do you have any? is a post from: Blog Godown

@webaddict – Joel Mackey
Bio: Internet Marketer, Blogger, SEO, Partial Hippie, Techie, News and Idea Syndication

@SharonHayes – Sharon Hayes
Bio: Entrepreneur, Motivator, Domains Domainate.com, Email Marketing Listcast.com, @reply 4 follow ♥ music news tech fitness coffee green REI travel sushi smiles.

@LoriMoreno – LoriMoreno
Bio: Escaped Corp World as Attorney. Now Enjoy Life all Over World w/ Laptop/Phone. Love♥You Culture*Film*Plays*Art*Music*Dance ·**•.♥ #LOVE ♥.•** Success Muse.

@Beebow – Lauren Litwinka
Bio: SEO/SMO blogger trying to be social in cyberspace. Social media specialist @hudsonhorizons. Likes: good music, good movies, good wine, and gummy worms.

@FlipBooks – Blair Semenoff
Bio: Red Bull drinking, UFC watching, Entrepreneur/CEO interested in unique marketing ideas, Laws of Attraction, promotional products, Neuromarketing and FLIPBOOKS

@Kim – Kim Sherrell
Bio: Filmmaker, educator ﹠ independent media passionista. Founder of #Artwalk. I tweet about art, design, film, music, social media, culture, tech, twitter, #humor.

@Iconic88 – Iconic88
Bio: Chief Happiness Officer on Twitter, Friend, Ideas Evangelist, Relationships Engineer & Foodie. Inspiring YOU through Social Media & Business.

@ShellyKramer – Shelly Kramer
Bio: Marketing strategist,idea generator,creator of buzz ‘n awareness,scribbler,social media lovah+information junkie.Wife+mom+friend to many.Luv MilkDuds+Beer

@livetorque – Arun Charles
Bio: Mechanical engg student, Part time teacher, liverpool football fan..I love Cars, quotes and green earth..Feel the world of LOVE..♥

@dudeman718 – Joseph Cannizzaro
Bio: Ask no questions, find no answers, live with problems.

@TrendyDc – @tFarkas
Bio: I am the golf Fashion & Events Director at WOC, I love to shop for WOC and others. A spiritual seeker 24/7__lover of wine, beaches, travel, and hiking.

@purplehayz – purplehayz
Bio: Husband, father, have a schipperke, love to travel, write music and read. Make computers do things. Oh, I manage a software development team #hashtagmafia

@dpbkmb – FunDave
Bio: Married Christian. Prior; Systems Analyst, Attorney, Daytrader, Programmer, Deacon, MENSA. Love; Jesus, Fun Wife, Church, Dogs, Dining out, iPhone, HDTV, Movies

@ModelSupplies – Anita Nelson
Bio: Twitter obsessed mad scientist creating the fountain of youth available on Etsy + eBay PowerSeller. xNewspaper. Blogger. Radio Host, Law of Attraction Newb

@gaksdesigns – Gerrel Saunders
Bio: Freelance Graphic Designer, Illustrator // gamer, into fine arts,student, Laid back dude, Cool Guy ..Contact me for anything

@writer_sheri – sheri strykowski
Bio: Just hangin . Kiva – Support our troops- artists/cReAtiVes Learnin CSS, Photoshop, WordPress, DW, Internet Marketing – White Pineapple healthy lifestyle concept

@piervix – Piervincenzo Madeo
Bio: I’m a student of engineering and a web designer. I play the bass and love blues, jazz and rock music… I play football in a little team of my city.

@nymphont – Lauren Thompson
Bio: dweeb. font geek. freelance designer. single mommie. coolest person i know. humble too. silly. lover not a fighter.

@gopalraju – Gopal Raju
Bio: A web designer and developer from India who loves blogging! Owner of ProductiveDreams.com

@charleslau – Internet Reviewer
Bio: I review about products and services published on websites.

@pliggs – Pliggs
Bio: Blogger, web designer, social networker. When I’m not designing a theme I’m reading blogs. I would love to check out your blog, DM me your URL.

@tycoonblogger – Tycoon Blogger
A really informative and generous blogger.

@extremejohn – extremejohn
Bio: CEO Extreme Tan and Smoothies, Inc., Insane Limos, Inc. and a very outspoken personal blogger. HUGE MMA Fan.

@ditesco – Francisco Perez
Bio: Business Consultant, Entrepreneur, Internet Marketer, Blogger

@bbrian017 – Brian
Bio: SEO Marketing

@Rembeatz – Remergence
Bio: Official Twitter for electronica duo Remergence, release updates, music downloads and blog posts from Remergence & Blazing Minds plus the usually erratic tweets.

@HappySoul – Mx
Bio: Global citizen & wandering soul. Dabbler in project mgmt & chaotic domestics. Infinite quest for humour espoused by uncontrolled bursts of mad sanity.

@Konfigmaster – Mats Eivind Karlsen
Bio: mac tech geek, computer technician, like technology

@Gloson – Gloson
Bio: Blogger, student, kid, bookworm, pianist, funny poet. My funny poetry – PoetryTalents.com | I will follow you if: – http://bit.ly/iwillfollowif

@MonaEveDF – Erika Martinez
Bio: Erika writes, designs and teaches in Miami, Florida. Written and visual communication are two of her greatest passions.

@MaheshKukreja – Mahesh Kukreja
Bio: Webmaster, SEO, SEM, Traffic, Marketing Tricks & Tips, Computer Tricks, Technology News, Make Money Online

@HNatarajan – H.Natarajan
Bio: Passionate Writer, Researcher, Entrepreneur, Global citizen, Networker, Twitterholic, Sports Nut, Dreamer, Inspirer, Humorist, Humanist and Optimist. Phew!

@wpbulk – wpbulk
Bio: RT good tech, design, photoshop tweets…. IM: red.gold786@gmail.com

@vasuwrath – Vasudevan M
Bio: A techfreak,opensource enthusiast,gamer and a metalhead

@Element321 – Element321
Bio: Novice Web Design and SEO Consultant. I also enjoy organic gardening as one of my hobbies.

Not Included? Don’t worry add a comment below with your twitter username and Bio.

36 Quality Tweeps to Follow is a post from: Blog Godown

Backtype Retweet Button

Backtype button has the following advantages over tweetmeme:
1. The design is customizable (You can easily change the color and border of the button).
2. Backtype tracks retweets via twitter search and it’s tracking is more reliable than tweetmeme.
3. The starting text of each retweet is editable, i.e you can use text other than Rt @virtuosoblogger like #coffeeclub, via @virtuosoblogger etc.

The Advantages of Backtype button make it a probable choice for a retweet button.

Previously i wrote about How to add Retweet button to blogger

Here’s how you can add a backtype retweet button to blogger:

Follow these easy steps:
1. Go to Layout->Edit Html
2. Download Full Template (For backup purposes)
3. Check the Expand Widget Templates
4. Search for the code below:

<div class=’post-header-line-1′/>

Note: you can always look for a place to put your code that gives you the best results in terms of the look and the position of the button.

5. The backtype button has the following options to customize:

tweetcount_url: The URL to measure tweets for (Default: Current URL)
tweetcount_title: The title of the page for retweets (Default: Title of current page)
tweetcount_src: Leading text for retweets
tweetcount_via: If tweets contain ‘(via @BackType)’ (Default: true)
tweetcount_links: If links should be opened in new windows (Default: false)
tweetcount_size: Size of button (“large” or “small”) (Default: “large”)
tweetcount_api_key: Awe.sm API Key for custom URL shortener
tweetcount_short_url: Specify the pre-shortened URL that you would like to use (Default: Generated (bt.io))
tweetcount_background: Button background color (e.g. ‘FFFFFF’)
tweetcount_border: Button border color (e.g. ‘CCCCCC’)
tweetcount_text: Button text color (e.g. ’000000′)

6. paste the following code below the previous line of code:

<div style=’float:right; padding: 5px 5px 5px 5px’>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
tweetcount_url = ‘<data:post.url/>’;
tweetcount_title = ‘<data:post.title/>’;
tweetcount_src = ‘RT @virtuosoblogger‘;
tweetcount_via = false;
tweetcount_links = true;
tweetcount_size = ‘small’;
tweetcount_background = ‘FFFFFF’;
tweetcount_border = ‘CCCCCC’;
tweetcount_api_key = ’5c3bba3f5d77a46a13453091e36dc1cde4335e9299a1edeeaa3c31d193b33fda’;
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://widgets.backtype.com/tweetcount.js”></script>
</div>

This code will display the button on the right of the post. You can replace float:right to float:left to display the button n the left side of the post.

You also have to change Rt @virtuosoblogger: with the text of your choice.

7. After all the customizations, save the Template and see for yourself, the result is a sweet retweet button added to your blog.

Any problems? Comment!!

How to add a Backtype retweet button to Blogger is a post from: Blog Godown