“New Twitter vs. Old Twitter – “Who to Follow” Feature”

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The absolute best thing about Twitter is the connections you make with other people. The new version of Twitter has a new menu item called “Who To Follow”.

 

Old Twitter

Old Twitter included the following options under “Find Friends”.

New Twitter

The new version of Twitter now calls this “Who To Follow” and it does not include the option to “Find on Twitter” or “Invite By Email”.

In the new version, click on Who to Follow.

You are given three options: View Suggestions, Browse Interests, and Find Friends.

Let’s look at “View Suggestions” first. Click on the link that says “interesting accounts” to see some suggestions from Twitter.

The next “Who To Follow” option is “Browse Interests”. As you can see in the screenshot below, there are categories to choose from and Twitter will also suggest certain twitter accounts.

The final option under “Who To Follow” is “Find Friends”. This option allows you to connect to various email accounts you own as well as LinkedIn. When you click on one of the choices, you will be presented with a screen to enter your login information. For example, if you choose Gmail, you’ll need to enter your Gmail login to access that account. Only those people who have agreed to be found by email address will be shown.

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Twitter Launches "Promoted Tweets"

Twitter is an awesome micro-blogging tool that I personally love. Since their launch in 2007 they've been hard pressed to come up with ways to generate income. Let's face it, they're not in this because they want to give something away for free. Like the rest of us the goal is to make Twitter start paying off.

Enter "Promoted Tweets" - Similar to Google Adwords advertisers will bid on keywords and when someone conducts a search on Twitter for those keywords the Tweet (Ad) would be shown. This is the plan for the first stage of the roll out. In the second stage, ads will appear in the twitter "stream" itself. 

Don't worry, the ads will be clearly marked as such, and when hovered over turn a bright yellow color. That way they'll be easy to distinguish from regular Tweets. But that's power for the course as anyone who posts ads on Twitter need to mark them as advertising in order to be in compliance with the FTC.

Twitter's plan to measure how well the ads are performing is something they call "Resonance Score". It includes numerous factors a few of which are, how many clicks it receives, the number who viewed the ad, those who replied or forwarded it. If scores are too low, ads will stop running and advertisers will no longer pay for those ads.

Two initial customers of the service are Starbucks, and Bravo along with a few others. But I'm sure it won't take long for other big companies with deep pockets to jump on the Promoted Ad bandwagon.

No matter if you like it or not, ads are coming to Twitter. Myself, I don't mind. I use Twitter daily to post interesting links and keep up on current trends in the industry so a few ads won't bother me. What do you think?

Related Posts:

Twitter Reveals Ad Platform: Promoted Tweets

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362555,00.asp

Twitter Blog

http://blog.twitter.com/

Twitter Starts 'Promoted Tweets' Ad System

"Essential Link Building"

It's vitally important that you increase the number of websites that link to your website. Doing this helps you steadily increase traffic and generate more sales. However, if you are to be successful, you must be sure that your website is good enough for someone to link to you.

So, how do you do that?

There is an old cliche that always rings true in the Internet world - "Content is king". And this is absolutely spot on.

You may be wondering how your content is related to our current topic of building link building, but there is a perfectly sound connection...

It is important that you have quality content on your website or other webmasters will most likely not want to trade links. Your website also needs to be informative and interesting, as this will increase the chance of getting a link from someone else.

Remember, links to your website are the building blocks to success, so it's worth the effort to acquire them.

Now, let's go over a small checklist of websites that would be good candidates for good link building:

* Websites with quality, related content.

* Websites that have higher PageRank than you currently have.

* Online directories like Yahoo and other business directories.

* Web 2.0 websites like Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com.

It's no secret that Google (and other search engines) will list you higher in the search results for having a lot of quality inbound links. So, you should really concentrate on building quality links, which will do more for you than tinkering with Alt tags or any other onsite optimization.

The only downside is that building link popularity is not always easy to do. It tends to be a bit boring and tedious. Plus, it usually takes a big chunk of your time, which is probably why most people don't like to do it.

Luckily for you, there is a solution!

A brand new search engine optimization tool just came out called SEO Equalizer. Not only is this software super easy to use, but it is also extremely affordable. I do suggest you pop over to the website and read all about it...

You can do so by going here now.

“The origin of Twitter”

(Guest article)

The Twitter venture first started in 2006 and has its head office in the San Francisco Bay area. What was essentially seen as a fun challenge for the staff of private business soon grew into one of most utilized social messaging services all over America and soon spreading the world over.

Many twitter members choose to use the social media site to read up to date tweets about breaking news or see what their contacts are doing. The concept began when its creator Jack Dorsey took an interest in the search for all the daily actions of his mates. He saw an opportunity in the simple concept, he had envisioned and was quick to discuss it with his workplace buddies. The potential was clearly visible to all so they sought to try and develop a proto-type of this system.

The early history of twitter was due to the complex amalgamation of a few internet companies including the organization, 'Odea' which later turned in 'Obvious Corp' which helped bankroll the investment required for the initial Twitter project. In March 2006, the twitter prototype was operational after only two weeks of development. But it was not until August in 2006, when Twitter was first released online for use by the public. Later, as the service started to gain recognition, the people behind its creation separated again from the original Obvious name to form a stand alone company named Twitter Inc.

Other private web development organizations who were also trying to provide similar short message applications were left quizzing how Twitter grew into such a massive success. I guess the answer to that question was quite obvious at time when web savvy audiences were looking to technology to provide a way for people to keep connection with any person in any locality. Twitter allows messages from the net, SMS, instant messaging, mobile phone, internet and other application programming interfaces (API) and all this array of features were appealing to different people short on spare time.

The massive amount of information transfer from more traditionally means of communication on the web could be seen as providing oversupply of stimulus that was difficult for the human mind to cope with. With Twitter this problem was resolved because it gave each user more control of how, what and when to communicate. After a tweet message is published, an reply straight away is not expected by the sender. News and alerts from your friends, loved-ones and family are sent to your own site, instant messaging, or cell but the user has the choice of when they read that information in which they can reply to the tweets or simply ignore it all together. The information that you receive on Twitter can be set up and changed from your own unique account profile.

"Ruby on Rails (RoR)” is the programming code framework used to make Twitter run. Daily, many code level changes are made to keep improving the application easily and new add-on options are released quickly with no bugs. Their large team of specialist software programmers and networking engineers always use Macintosh computer hardware with the only exception being in the initial testing phase. The twitter graphic user interface (GUI) on their site was designed using the 'Photoshop' and 'Omni graffle' programs. Twitters creators continue to reinvest resources into further development and providing excellent service to the millions of members from all over the globe.

Twitter still puts a big priority on the behavior of their users and any new suggestions they receive. In May 2007 twitter decided to launch the mobile interface version after getting a high number of requests from its users. Despite the rapid rise and spectacular fame achieved by Twitter Inc. they still stay true to their original operating ethos – keeping all things intuitive & simple.

“Succeeding in Business on Twitter”

Every twitter user at some stage or another has at least asked themselves how they could utilize the web site more efficaciously for social networking. Some people would like to make fresh friends and relationships while the biggest majority wants to advertise their own products and services. Often lauded as the latest opportunity to make easy income from tweeting to their followers, users will be soon surprised because it often involves much work before getting results from a target market.

The Twitter community is very large at 10 million regular monthly users which originate from various backgrounds and interests. The greatest obstacle to overcome for any budding internet marketer is the difficulty of promoting your business with a 140 character limit for tweets.

Once you register and become a member of Twitter, do not fall into the trap of tweeting about your business right at the beginning. Just tread carefully and see how others are very subtly going about online marketing. If you can find other members in your niche you can follow them and even learn from them new knowledge and skills if you want. In doing so, you can obtain vital information about how to promote your business using Twitter.

Be prepared to invest time during this initial stage of induction. Find a group that helps new novice users. There are different Twitter groups that help others with the promotion of different types of businesses. Join the group. This is a method of increasing your contacts and gaining a list of followers. Try to initiate communication with other individuals who work in related niches to your own like employees or business owners. This exchange of ideas, questions and answers may seem boring but is very helpful. It will all be worth the effort even if it resulted in just one new business client, lead or sale.

The tweets from your account no matter what your purpose should be updated regularly. Also just as importantly, do not promote your business all the time. Try to write something more appealing than your business competition. Taking note of what users are saying is also essential, it is a practice that makes them feel that they are valued. People appreciate this empathy and it can build reputation and that belief is the key to winning over new customers. This ability to build good relations is a basic principle that should not be overlooked by any operator, if they are to succeed in any business.

For the most part the people who fail on Twitter, it is because they tend to promote their business rather than give more attention to the needs of the market. Remember to learn from the feedback from clients to determine their needs and wishes. Once you have researched this information it will also highlight any other existing micro niche that is available to be filled.

Twitter is also titled a form of micro-blogging. With the restriction of the short message length, use your words wisely to try to make unique and interesting posts. As tweets are updated for friends, potential clients will also see your human side, further building trust that your business will be able to deliver what it promises. Business success on Twitter is only guaranteed if you are prepared to put in the effort and come to know how to use the site the smart way.

“Increasing your traffic with Twitter”

It seems every business these days is placing priority on marketing at online social networking websites in attempt get their own slice of an ever expanding pie. Internet marketing campaigns at twitter and other such sites can be a very cost effective way to reach a world wide audience in a targeted manner. Virtually by signing up there and successfully making friends, you have already been able to create a list of potential sale leads. This article will attempt to provide hints and tips on increasing the amount of visitors you get to your site by using twitter.

Three years after its initial creation, Twitter has gradually increased to what is now extreme global popularity. Twitter has the flexibility to allow people to talk about any topic they desire. Some talk about their personal concerns and there are also those who primarily promote their own business. Ordinary people seeking social interaction and communication with peers use Twitter to send  tweets to each other. Then there are the many online merchants who place serious resources into Twitter, seeking to generate traffic to their web sites. Right now twitter is regarded as one of the easiest methods for increasing traffic and build a brand.

Firstly, you need to spread the word of your presence on Twitter. If you are an experienced online marketer then traditionally you will have used email campaigns or niche related blog posts. When you do this style of promotion now, include your Twitter account on all your messages, blog posts, and even on your site. In this way everybody will know that you use Twitter. Another good idea is to be active in the use of Twitter and to send tweets out regularly. When your fans see that you are active, it may lead to them visiting your Web site.

Regular tweet updates can attract active followers from your tweets. However, you must make sure that you post personal tweets as well because sending too many business related tweets can result in losing your followers. There are tools that you are able to use to help publish your tweets automatically, but you must be very careful not to misuse such tools.

By building good relations and trust with your fans will help gain sales of your products or services. But bombard your followers with sales promotions and you may lose them. Alternatively, try to post helpful messages occasionally because the social community will appreciate it more. By investing a little of your time and effort in sending informative tweets and responding to those sent to you, it will increase the profitability of your company in the time to come.

Utilizing Twitter is easy and fun. Many online merchants now use Twitter to build targeted traffic on their site, so why don't you try it? But Honestly it is obvious to say not every twitter member who uses it as a marketing tool is going to have success. You see, it requires time, effort and patience to see results that equate to a big reward. Increasing Twitter traffic for your business organization can be done effectively if you know how to tweet correctly.

“How to Cash in on Twitter”

Due to the popularity of Twitter many business owners are now trying to cash in on the medium by marketing their businesses. An easy to use interface and the convenience of this online networking community has turned many twitter users into twittering addicts. This in combination with mainstream media attention worldwide has lead to the growth of an estimated 10 million regular tweeters. These tweets are best described as equivalent to a short message service (sms) of 140 characters or less that is published to your own custom list of contacts online or via cell phone. With the restriction to this small number of characters, you'll need to communicate your thoughts, feelings or answers with intelligence. Overcoming this hurdle and learning the art of the tweet will go a long way to extracting financial benefit from its die hard fans.

Twitter Search is a very effective tool to research the current state of play for your business industry. Find out what others in your business industry are saying and learn from them. Look out for feedback from its customers, especially negative comments can be invaluable. With this information you may be able to make some adjustments to your companies products or service if necessary and find new markets that will ensure profitability.

Once you build your own list of subscribers known as followers, put in the work to keep them updated on new developments both personal and business related. This activity is essential if you are going to gain heaps of followers and convince them to hang on every word you say. Also take the time to carefully select the people that you choose to follow on Twitter. They do not all have to be related to your industry profession. There may be those users that are also using Twitter for online promotion and this will give you the opportunity to watch what they are doing and learn new skills from observing them.

Making sure the people that you follow also follow back is another vital task. Once you develop a big group of followers, you will be able to now send tweets promoting your organization but try to mix up the content as much possible, by also sending useful topical information on current events or general social chit chat. Don't forget, Twitter is designed to be a social networking site and is not strictly a promotional tool.

Sending out just a few too many tweets promoting your business will soon result in a sharp reduction the number of followers. Gathering and keeping a large number of twitter followers will give you a higher number of successful conversions because like any form of marketing its a numbers game.

Trying to cash in on the success of Twitter can be rewarding, but only if you bother to develop the right skills and know how to do so. The more you invest and try to learn about this social networking phenomenon the larger the return. Follow the gurus and learn from their experience. If you can keep up to date with the latest occurrences and trends at twitter you will giving yourself the best chance at being successful using twitter for marketing purposes.

“Twitter, good or bad?”

There is little doubt the internet has drastically and permanently affected how the communication sector operates. There are now more methods for people to keep in touch through services on the net than was ever offered in the past. The number web sites based on this social networking model is always growing. Such is the success and affect these social internet communities have on people, they have become a necessity to the functioning of their daily lives. How up to date and knowledgeable are you with sites like Twitter?

This social networking dependency has seen many people wanting to share their lives with anyone prepared to be their audience. Twitter fantastically provides  quick and easy communication with friends and family members.

Before anyone can make use of Twitter, intending members need to make a personal profile for their account. Twitter was designed to publish and alert others of updates or short messages quickly. These twitter alerts are called "tweets" and  are text based of 140 characters in length. Not many people know you can even use a cell phone to send these updates. The updates are sent to followers from  your account user name who choose to subscribe to that Twitter member just as you can choose who you subscribe too and follow.

But is twitter a good to bad thing? Well, that is the question partly answered by its millions of users from all the world who dedicate their time and energy to the site. For the first half of 2009, Twitter ranked third among the most beloved and most visited social network websites, MySpace and Facebook who have been massive successes in their own right. In March 09, after many previous months of increasing traffic, unique hits to Twitter accelerated to grow 131 percent to 9.3 million unique visitors. Success thanks to hollywood celeb “tweeters” and more widespread offline media focus, the site ranked as the fastest expanding web property overall online.

The simplicity of Twitter is the reason for its extreme appeal among people of all different age groups. Users are free to choose how they can receive tweets - by means of RSS, SMS, mobile Web, etc. Specialist web tools such as Twitterific and Tweetie are also popular in helping users keep track of their twittering activities. By means of application programming interface (APIs), you can easily update your profile page without the need to enter the actual Twitter site.

Multiple people use Twitter – actors, musicians, professionals and even political identities. Just about everyone knows that American President Barack Obama used Twitter for his campaigns. Well, in addition to the President,other celebrities such as Oprah, Lance Armstrong, 50 cent and the Jonas Brothers are avid fans of the site. Large companies use the site to promote their products, information updates and client support such as Dell, Starbucks, TheHomeDepot, Ford and Samsung. Even Microsoft, although belatedly, have decided to establish a big presence on Twitter with at last count some 18 genuine accounts which allow consumers and staff to communicate.

Twitter maybe far from a perfect all in one solution but it has many good things to offer at absolutely no cost to its members. No doubt twitters creators will also continue to further develop this social medium which can only further enhance its value for everyone. Go on over to Twitter, try it out now and create your own profile page.

If You Tweet- You Need TweetDeck

Do you Twitter? I have to admit I'm addicted. As soon as I log in online one of the first places I check is Twitter. But I don't log into their site and use the online interface, I use a third party free software called Tweetdeck.

With Tweetdeck I can see everyone's tweets, retweet other people's tweet, send direct messages and more. Tweetdeck makes it so easy to interact with those I follow and those following me. Another nice feature is being able to see my friends updates on Facebook from within the same interface and I can post my messages to Twitter and, if I want, send them to Facebook all at the same time. This is a real time saver. I love it.

So if you're a Twitter user and not using a third party solution for monitoring and posting I'd strongly suggest you download Tweetdeck http://tweetdeck.com/beta/

Understanding the Scope of Twitter's Reach

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Twitter Resources

Here are some excellent Twitter toosl to add to your "Twittering Toolbox"-

SocialToo at http://www.socialtoo.com/ is a useful automated tool for Twitter. At Social Too, you can set your account up to do some autopilot things for you.

First of all, you can set SocialToo up to automatically follow everyone who follows you. This can take the drudgery out of checking all your new followers and then going and adding them to your own list in order to reciprocate.

You can also set up SocialToo to send an automatic Direct Message to people who follow you. Don't do it! Automatic Direct Messages are absolutely hated by most of the Twitter community, particularly experienced users because they can pick them a mile off. It's a sterile and rude way of starting out a relationship with new followers.

The backlash against this has largely been caused because many newbies, and some old hands too, were setting up an auto Direct Message that basically said, “Hello, thanks for following me. Now go and visit my sales page at http://..... “. I'm sure you get the picture. I can't think of any worse way to start a relationship with a new follower on Twitter. In any sort of business, you build relationships before you try and sell someone something and this is even more relevant in the social media space.

SocialToo will also provide you with an email every day of all your new followers and those that have unfollowed you as well.

Another function of SocialToo is that it will automatically unfollow anyone who unfollows you. Personally I don't think this is a bad thing. If people aren't interested in you any longer, then are you really interested in them? If you really want to keep the updates from someone, just go and follow them back when you see their name on your unfollows email each day.

Tweetlater at http://www.tweetlater.com/ is a fantastic tool to use with Twitter. It allows you to schedule tweets for various times of the day. So how can this be of use to you?

Well you need to remember that the Twitter audience is constantly changing and the tweetstream occurs quite fast. The more people someone follows, the greater the number of tweets appearing and they won't read them all, I promise you. It just isn't possible. By using Tweetlater, you have a much greater chance of catching people's attention throughout the day and in different time zones.

Let's say you have written a post on your blog and you want to drive some traffic there. Rather than tweeting the link and subject once, you can do it every hour for 24 hours if you like using Tweetlater. I'm sure you can see the power of this in terms of driving traffic or getting noticed.
There is a free and a professional version of Tweetlater. Start out with the free version and then if you need it, upgrade to the professional version when you are ready.

Twitterfeed at http://www.twitterfeed.com/ is also a very handy tool. It is far more secure to log into than the other sites I have mentioned as it uses Open ID which is a bit of a pain. However, it is worth persisting with in the absence of an alternative tool.

What Twitterfeed does is that you can set up your blog to feed directly via RSS to your Twitter account. So every time you make a blog post, it gets tweeted automatically on your behalf. You can use this in conjunction with Tweetlater with the first post coming through Twitterfeed and then subsequent ones at times you specify via Tweetlater.

SplitTweet at http://splitweet.com/ is a great tool if you have a number of accounts on Twitter. Rather than switching between them from time to time in order to Tweet, you can set an account up her for free and bring all of your accounts under the one roof.

Splitweet will display the Twitter feed from all your accounts at once, or you can turn individual accounts off and on. When actually tweeting, you can pick an account to tweet to, or you can do a broadcast message across all your accounts at once.

Twitdom at http://twitdom.com/ would have to be the greatest site relating to Twitter. It is a repository for all Twitter related applications and it is just absolutely amazing what there is in there.

At the time of writing, Twitdom had nearly 500 Twitter related applications in its database. Quite amazing when you think about it that there has been so many third party applications written and is a pretty powerful indication as to the value of Twitter. It also indicates the confidence of the market in that Twitter will become very much the mainstream.

Post Pictures to Your Twitter Followers

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. With Twitter's limitation of 140 characters sometimes all that talk can leave you wanting a bit more. Check out http://twitgoo.com - With TwitGoo you can upload pictures from your hard drive and share them with all of your Twitter followers with just a click. Sound like fun? It is. To see what a link looks like, here's a picture I uploaded and posted to Twitter http://twitgoo.com/2xiu

Free to sign up. So what are you waiting for? Start adding more visuals to your Twitter posts. But please, leave your clothing on

Free Download- Twitter Power

Joel Comm is a very successful online entrepreneur who has written several excellent ebooks. His latest is "Twitter Power". Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows you to post short 140 character messages to your "followers". When used correctly it's a very powerful social marketing tool.

Joel is offering up an instant download, free sample featuring two chapters from Twitter Power for free! There’s no form to fill out and no fee to pay. It's in PDF format so grab yours now before he changes his mind.

The Right and Wrong Way to use Twitter

An interesting video that covers what you should and should not be doing on Twitter. Watch it now and share your thoughts by leaving comments below.

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Twitter Handbooks and Guides- Just For You

Everyone and their dog is talking about Twitter lately. There's even a rumor running around the net that Google may purchase them. I could see something like that happening. Anything that's good seems to end up in Google's hands. If it did happen I'm sure they would only take a great service and make it better. But like I said right now it's just a rumor.

Anyway, if you use Twitter, and you should, you may need some guidance getting started. You know, learning the ins and outs of what you should and shouldn't do. This website is loaded with helpful Twitter guides and handbooks that will teach you how to use Twitter more effectively. So what are you waiting for? Twit yourself right over there and then start becoming the Twitter Rock Star you were always meant to be. Go to http://www.bookmarket.com/twitter-guide.htm

Get Your Twitter Mosaic

How fun is this? A visual image, mosaic of your Twitter followers/friends. Just type in your user name and it creates the code to paste on your webpage or blog.

Get your twitter mosaic here.