Twitter Newbie Tip: Getting Past Stage Fright

[postlink]https://iamdaowner.blogspot.com/2012/06/twitter-newbie-tip-getting-past-stage.html[/postlink]

If you’re new to Twitter or know someone who is, you’ll want to read this post.

We hear a lot about folks being hesitant to tweet because they’re afraid they’ll look foolish in some way, so instead they just silently observe – yet inside they long to join the fray. Know this: Twitter stage fright is the same as public speaking – you have to get out there and do it. It’s the only way to conquer it.

And we have some advice that will ease your mind.
Twitter is its own social animal. Nothing like Facebook – or even MySpace, for those who supposedly frequent that site, Twitter has a look, feel and interaction etiquette all its own.

The pace of the public feed streaming by can be disconcerting to new tweople – and once they figure out how the whole thing works, the confusion quickly turns to dread for many, with two questions looming large: What should I say? Will anyone notice/talk to me? It’s like the first day of school.

Here’s a tip: If you’re entirely stuck and don’t know what to say, a quick way to both find a topic and find folks to interact with is by jumping on a trending topic. Yes, they can be either lame or rowdy depending on the topic, but if you want to jump right in with something silly, there you go. Take today, for instance – who couldn’t think of SOMETHING to say about McDonalds’ McWings or Lies I Told My Parents?

OR – if you want a more professional route, you can always join in a Twitter chat. There are so many chats happening every day and covering a pretty endless list of topics. You can find out all about them, from how to join one to a master list of available chats here.

And if you start off on the wrong foot and can’t scroll back far enough to see what you did, you can always view your old tweets using one of these services and see how damaging they really were (you worry too much). Note that this will only work until you reach 3,200 tweets – after that point, there’s no going back!

Worst case? You can always delete your profile and those embarrassing tweets will go away . . . eventually. It’s best to learn to laugh at yourself and go with the flow though – or just avoid online participation entirely, as missteps are inevitable.

So tell those wallflowers to get out there and start tweeting!

Have you ever tweeted something you regretted? Tell us about it, if you’re brave!

(Man peeking out photo from Shutterstock)

Twitter Newbie Tip: Getting Past Stage Fright

Twitter Tip: Don’t Auto-Connect Your Facebook And Twitter Accounts

[postlink]https://iamdaowner.blogspot.com/2012/06/twitter-tip-dont-auto-connect-your.html[/postlink]

Twitter has made it deceptively easy to connect your Twitter account to your Facebook account, but don’t be fooled. It’s usually not a good idea.

Twitter and Facebook are two distinct networks with two distinct sets of etiquette and norms. Posting all of your tweets to your Facebook wall may sound like a good idea at first (I can keep my friends updated oneverything going on in my life!), but believe me, neither your Facebook nor your Twitter friends will thank you.

How to do it

Before we get into the details of why it’s a bad idea to connect your Twitter to your Facebook account, here’s how to do it (for those who want to flout my advice):

As Twitter’s Help Center explains, you can post all of your tweets to your Facebook profile using an official application. You simply have to be logged in to your Twitter account and your Facebook account, and navigate to the app page: http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/. Then, just click “Allow” when asked if you want to connect your two accounts, and voila! you’re all hooked up.

After setting this up, all of your tweets will be simultaneously posted to your Facebook profile, with a little note at the bottom mentioning that it came from Twitter.

Why you shouldn’t

Now that you know how, here’s why you shouldn’t auto-tweet to your Facebook profile.

Twitter and Facebook are two very different networks. The people you’re connected to on Twitter expect different things than those you’re connected to on Facebook (even if most of them are the same group of people).

Twitter is a high-volume network, where you can tweet ten or twenty times a day and no one will say boo. Because you are encouraged to follow lots of different people – those you know and those you don’t – and because you don’t require their permission to do so, Twitter is a more informal and loosely connected network.

Facebook, on the other hand, is much more personal. You friend people who have to accept your friend request, implying some level of familiarity. The volume of updates on Facebook is much, much less than on Twitter! People expect one, maybe two status updates a day, maximum.

The culture of both networks is different, so if you combine them you risk alienating your audience. By posting your tweets to your Facebook profile, you’ll inundate your Facebook friends with status update after status update, taking over their newsfeed and appearing spammy. Those 10 tweets will fit perfectly within Twitter’s real-time home timeline, but they’ll clutter up your Facebook wall and may even result in a block or an unfriending.

The syntax of both networks is also different. Twitter relies on “#”s and “@”s to function and uses abbreviations like “RT”, while Facebook’s syntax is less niche. If your fill up your Facebook wall with status updates from Twitter like “@JustinBieber you #RockMyWorld RT @YourFriend Isn’t @JustinBieber so amazing?”, your Facebook friends will quickly become annoyed.

The exceptions

Of course, there are some exceptions to every rule.

If you don’t tweet very often (say, once or twice per day at the most, and not even every day at that), connecting Twitter to Facebook might not make much difference to your Facebook followers.

Still, the better way, in my opinion, to post a tweet to your Facebook wall is just by syncing both your Twitter account and your Facebook account to a dashboard like HootSuite, and selecting both networks for those tweets you feel also belong on Facebook. This way you can choose which Twitter messages to also post to Facebook, rather than being at the whim of an auto-updater.

Twitter Tip: Don’t Auto-Connect Your Facebook And Twitter Accounts

HOWTO: Send Tweets To Facebook

[postlink]https://iamdaowner.blogspot.com/2012/06/howto-send-tweets-to-facebook.html[/postlink]

Twitter has made it easier to send tweets to Facebook. All you have to do is click one single button. Here’s how:

First, log in to your Twitter account.

Next, click the “Profile” tab at the top of the screen, and then click “Edit Profile” just below your profile picture. Scroll down to the bottom of this page, and click the button that says “Post your Tweets to Facebook”. And that’s it!

(Note that you must also be signed in to Facebook for this to work. If you’re not, you’ll be asked to sign in and give your permission to the app before it will work)

In a smart move, Twitter will not send tweets that begin with an @mention to your Facebook wall, as these are usually meant for another, specific Twitter user and would likely be seen as spam by your Facebook friends.

Prior to this update, if you wanted to send a tweet to Facebook, you had to first find and authorize a Facebook app to access your Twitter account, and even then the functionality was spotty at best. This new functionality makes sending tweets to Facebook more of a native Twitter experience.

As a word of warning: Twitter and Facebook are two different networks with two different types of syntax and etiquette. It isn’t always advisable to connect one network to another, for fear of alienating your connections on both. You can read more about why connecting your Twitter and Facebook accounts might not be a good idea in our article here.

HOWTO: Send Tweets To Facebook

Add Twitter Updates On Blogger Using jQuery

[postlink]https://iamdaowner.blogspot.com/2012/06/add-twitter-updates-on-blogger-using.html[/postlink]

Twitter plugin on blogger, yet another must have plugin for bloggers. Unlike the normal plugin offered by Twitter, this uses jQuery script with easy to integrate and also easy to modify for any blogspot blogs. It is not just a twitter update plugin, you can also highlight reply and links, to make your Twitter updates more resourceful. Thanks to Philip for making tweetable script. So here are the steps to add Twitter updates on Blogger blogs.

Step 1: Before getting into the script section. We need to call jQuery within our blogger template. So inorder to do that, just paste the below code after <head>

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="http://sites.google.com/site/bloggermintcom/jquery.tweetable.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Step 2: Now navigate to Blogger dashboard > Layout > Page Elements. Click on Add a Gadget and select HTML / Javascript and enter the code which you find below

<div id="tweets">
<script type='text/javascript'>

$(function(){

$('#tweets').tweetable({username: 'bloggermint', time: true, limit: 5});
});
</script>
</div>

Now change the user name with your twitter user name and you can also change the number of updates to display, by just changing the limit value.Click here to see the live demo

Drop in your comments, if you need help in blogger integration.

Add Twitter Updates On Blogger Using jQuery

4 Reasons to Promote Your Blog on Facebook and Twitter

[postlink]https://iamdaowner.blogspot.com/2012/06/4-reasons-to-promote-your-blog-on.html[/postlink]
This may come as a surprise but a lot of people hesitate when it comes to blog promotion on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes it’s because they don’t want certain people to know about their blog, other times it’s because they don’t want to look like they’re spamming up their friends and followers feeds, and sometimes it just comes down to the fact that they don’t know how or even realize that they should be doing so. However not using Facebook and Twitter for your blog promotion is a massive mistake. Here are four reasons you need to use Facebook and Twitter for marketing your blog:
1. More exposure: It’s pretty simple really. You post your latest blog posts on Facebook and Twitter and more people are going to click on the link to read them. You can’t leave all of it to chance and people finding you through search engines because, unless you’re a mastermind with keywords and SEO, increased traffic just isn’t going to happen as quickly as when you’re promoting on these two sites.
2. New connections: Having a social media site to promote your blog gives you the opportunity to form new connections with readers and bloggers alike. You are able to interact with them in a way that your blog on its own doesn’t afford, which deepens the relationship and gives you a more loyal audience. Both of these are vital to the success of your blog.
3. Better search engine indexing: Tweeting out links to your new posts or sharing the links on Facebook means that your posts are in more places around the web. The more places there are linking to your posts, the more likely it is that the major search engines like Google or Yahoo are going to index your posts. Better indexing means more people finding your blog through searches. More people finding your blog equal more traffic. It’s an all-around win.
4. Both offer unique audiences: It’s unlikely that you have the exact same audience on both your Facebook and Twitter accounts, so promoting your blog in both places means that it will reach more people. Because Twitter allows you to include hashtags, you are going to reach a broader audience that extends past people that are already following you. And because people can share posts they like on Facebook it opens up the door for new people finding your blog all the time. Facebook and Twitter are two of the biggest social media websites available. Not taking advantage of them for promoting your blog is just passing up a free opportunity to reach more people. So use it! You’re only hurting your blog by not.

4 Reasons to Promote Your Blog on Facebook and Twitter

Keep Up With Changes to Your Twitter Friend Bios and Profile Images using Bio is Changed

[postlink]https://iamdaowner.blogspot.com/2012/05/keep-up-with-changes-to-your-twitter.html[/postlink]

Are you curious to know when the people you follow on Twitter have changed their Twitter bio or profile image? Some people may not care about a change so miniscule, but Bio is Changed is a new service that aims to make you care. Not only that, but it helps you to use this change to your advantage.

With Bio is Changed, you can get instant, daily, or weekly email summaries about your Twitter friends who have changed their bio and/or profile image.

Getting Started

It’s a Twitter service, so obviously you’ll need to sign in using your Twitter account. When you sign in, Bio is Changed will search for your friends and recent changes; this only takes a few seconds.

When done, you’ll see four different sections with thumbnails of your friends: friends bio changes, friends profile image image changes, latest bio changes, and latest profile image changes.

Also, don’t forget to change your settings so that you can enter your email address and choose how often to get updates from the service.

Viewing History of Changes

Clicking on a thumbnail will open up that friends Bio is Changed profile in the same tab/window. From there, you can view their history of changes.

You can see approximately when they last changed their bio and profile image (ie. 10 months ago or 15 minutes ago). Above, you can see the History for @Firefox.

Using This Service to Your Advantage

As you can see in the screenshot above, Bio is Changed provides you with social sharing links on each user’s profile. What you may not realize, is that using these could score you major brownie points with your Twitter friends.

Wondering how? Well, imagine sending out a quick tweet letting everyone know that you notice the new profile image of @Firefox (or any other user) or that you like their new bio. Now, imagine how impressed @Firefox (or any other user) would be to know that you are so observant and paying attention to them.

As you can see, using those social sharing links could definitely work to your advantage. Of course it’s up to you whether or not to leave a link to their Bio is Changed profile and/or via @BioIsChanged in your tweet. Doing this will let them know that you cheated a little because they’re bound to click on the link or check out @BioIsChanged on Twitter.

So what are your thoughts on Bio is Changed? Is this a service worth using and will you use it?

Keep Up With Changes to Your Twitter Friend Bios and Profile Images using Bio is Changed

Automatically Post Your Tweets to Google+ with TwooglePlus

[postlink]https://iamdaowner.blogspot.com/2012/05/automatically-post-your-tweets-to.html[/postlink]

TwooglePlus is a simple service that cross posts your tweets (from one or more Twitter accounts) to your Google+ account. On the homepage it states that the service is “currently” free, giving the idea that it may not be free in the future. So, now is the best time to sign up.

Using the service is easy. Let’s take a look.

Getting Started

There are 4 steps to getting started with TwooglePlus.

Login With Twitter

The first step is to login with your desired Twitter account. This is done via Google OAuth, so you won’t have to enter any credentials in this step.

Enter Google+ Credentials

Next you’ll have to provide your Google+ credentials. Unfortunately, I found two issues with this step.

• Issue #1 is that in order to connect your Google+ account, you have to manually enter your Google email and Google password (no OAuth). However, I do notice the page is ‘https’ as opposed to ‘http,’ for a little added security.
• Issue #2 is that TwooglePlus does not support Google accounts with 2 factor authentication enabled. I happen to have this security feature enabled on my main Google account, so I used my secondary account.

Choose Your Circles

Next you’ll get to choose which circles to post your tweets to. I do like this feature because you can easily create a TwooglePlus (or any other name) circle and only add the desired people that you want reading your tweets to it. If your tweets are already public though, then this really doesn’t matter.

Terms of Service

Lastly, you must accept the terms and conditions of TwooglePlus, which just take a single click.

View Your Profile

Now you should be all set as far as getting your tweets from Twitter to Google+. If you ever want to pause the service, add/change the circles being posted to, or unsubscribe from the service, you can do so from your TwooglePlus profile.

You’ll also have the option to add more Twitter accounts from your profile. This will take you through the same steps as above.

View on Google+

Posting to Google+ is almost flawless. I did notice that my post was shown as being posted from “mobile”. Also, my tweets with links in them did not show a preview (thumbnail and excerpt), as usually done when posted directly to Google+. Instead, it just displays the full link.

Note: If you want your links to remain shortene, you can enable this feature on your TwooglePlus profile.

Final Thoughts

TwooglePlus is simple, easy to use, and takes only a few minutes to set up. What more can you ask for? It will be interesting to see how the service grows, since it appears at though they could be adding a paid subscription plan in the near future.

Would you be willing to pay for a service like TwooglePlus?

Automatically Post Your Tweets to Google+ with TwooglePlus

Getting Twitter Traffic – Personal Experience

[postlink]https://iamdaowner.blogspot.com/2012/05/getting-twitter-traffic-personal.html[/postlink]

No, I am not going to tell you how successful I am with getting Twitter traffic; rather, I will tell how difficult it is to get any substantial traffic from Twitter.

Twitter is like this big thorn for my blog; a thorn I cannot do away with! Twitter is like King Solomon’s Treasure whom we wish to exist and it still remains as elusive as ever.

After reading about 15 e-books on Twitter tactics and employing about most of the methods, Twitter traffic on my blog is as pitiful as ever.

Google Analytics Statistics

Just to maintain accuracy, I just checked the GA figures and to my damnable surprise, G+ is giving me more traffic than Twitter…oh! I just hate this.

Where Am I Going Wrong?

I am sure most of you are thinking that it is me who is doing something wrong but let me tell you few things:

• My blog is not new, almost 7 months old.
• It’s PR 2 and has wonderful Alexa rank.
• I am very active on all major social media networks.
• I use the Tweet Old Post plugin to keep tweeting every one hour and I tweet daily manually too.
• I use Ping.fm.
• My Facebook and Twitter accounts are connected to get more link juice…What the heck? I am not getting any.

At the moment, Twitter just contributes 10% of the blog’s social media traffic; the best ones are Facebook and StumbleUpon.

Is My Situation Similar For You?

Can anyone here relate with my situation? I am sure many of you are nodding your head in uniform acceptance and thinking – why doesn’t Twitter give more traffic?

Twitter Traffic Issues

Unless you getting using paid traffic from Twitter, it is difficult, I dare say. Of course, I am not recommending that you buy Twitter traffic.

The problem with Twitter, I think, is that it has reached a saturation point. If you have an active twitter account, open it, give it 60 seconds and see the number of Twitter updates.

Surprised?

Now, honestly, are you inclined to even browse the updates and click on links? If you are enthusiastic, you will do it the first time, the second time….then start slacking at the third time and it goes on…and mind you, we are talking about the updates on per minute basis!

Then, is Twitter a Failure?

Every time I see my twitter account, there is this guy whose tweets come every 15 seconds (yes, I timed it!). The links in these tweets direct to some marketing related YouTube video and oh boy! I was just pleasantly surprised to see the number of views…..and I am happy that maybe not for me, twitter seems to work for this guy.

The reason it worked is because of frequency of his tweets. Some may find it overbearing and intrusive (I did!) but it works. I don’t know whether he is doing it manually or some automated script but it is working for him.

What’s the Solution?

Honestly, it is not possible for me to send tweet updates every 15 second. I can’t and I am accepting it. And those marketing experts out there who say getting twitter traffic is easy can just rethink what they are saying because it definitely misguides us. I am still going to try to better this situation but in practicality, there is not much hope.

Anyways, enough of my ranting L What do you think? Any success with getting Twitter traffic?

Getting Twitter Traffic – Personal Experience

4 Ways To Post Longer Tweets on Twitter

[postlink]https://iamdaowner.blogspot.com/2012/05/4-ways-to-post-longer-tweets-on-twitter.html[/postlink]

Do you often find it hard to say what you want to say on Twitter due to the character restriction? If 140 characters is sometimes just not enough for you, these Twitter tools for posting longer tweets will definitely come in handy for you.

Twitlonger lets you sign in via Twitter OAuth in order to post long blog-like posts on Twitter. It’s very simple, once you login you’ll get a large text area to write as much as you want. Even though there’s no character limits, there is a character counter in the top right corner. Once you finish your post and click the “post” button, it will automatically be posted on your Twitter account along with a link to view the full post.

ezTweets lets you post longer messages to both Twitter (via Twitter OAuth) and Facebook (via Facebook Connect). For Twitter, what it does is split your tweet up into parts. Each tweet will labeled with its appropriate order; for instance a total of 3 tweets would show 1/3 before tweet #1, 2/3 before tweet #2, and 3/3 before tweet #3. You can choose whether to post your tweets in ascending or descending order. Once again, there are no character limits.

With TwitterContd you can login using your Twitter credentials or vial Twitter OAuth. Unlike TwitLonger and ezTweets (mentioned above) there is a character limit of 1250 characters. There’s also an integrated URL shortener and a music search bar. The music search bar lets you search for an artist, song or album to include in your tweet. You can also upload numerous files (up to 100MB total) that will also be added to your tweet. Just like ezTweets, your tweets will be broken up into parts but you can also choose the type of separator that is used for each part.

RichTweets lets you post HTML tweets where you can change the color of your text and add images, links, videos and widgets. You can login via Twitter OAuth after which you’ll be presented with a rich text editor. You can also create a title for your post and add up to 4 tags if you desire. You can easily add YouTube videos by clicking on the YouTube button and then inserting the video URL. Alternately, you can embed other videos by entering the full code in the video embed box. The title that you use will be posted to your Twitter account along with a link to your post.

4 Ways To Post Longer Tweets on Twitter