Laura Fitton, twitter pioneer, author of “Twitter for Dummies” and CEO of new startup oneforty, shares her #1 tip for success on twitter:

Be Selfless

Other tips that Laura offers for any social media platform are: listen, learn, care, and serve. If these rules are applied, she says, “You will absolutely have success.”

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 Michelle Maura is an Organizational Psychologist, singer and Yoga teacher. She practices Mantra Yoga Meditation and Hatha Yoga, while studying Yoga philosophy. Michelle shares her thoughts on her blog Thoughts Are Things, while also contributing at Intent.com. She focuses on the importance of looking at the positive side of every situation in life and always moving forward. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/michellemaura.

There are infinite uses one can give to Twitter- from online marketing, to sharing interesting information to filling in moments of boredom or loneliness. There are also varying degrees of Twitter usage- there’s the user that will go online for 20 minutes a day and check older tweets as mini emails, there’s the person who logs on after every break to update others and themselves on the day’s happenings, and there are the hard core users who use software like Tweet Deck or have apps on their mobiles to notify them of every tweet possible, audio alert and scheduled tweets included.

Whether you are new to the vast and still growing Twitterverse or already feel established your tweet space, you might have asked yourself this question just how much Twitter is good for you. Here are a few questions that might help you get your answer.

  How much Twitter is good for you?

• Are you using social media to establish your product or company on the market, and would like to enjoy the advantages Twitter offers?
• Are you aiming to promote yourself because you like the idea of being a microcelebity?
• Are you going through a lonely stage in real life and hoping to meet fellow tweeters and feel more connected?
• Are you engaged in your goals and activities and simply like the additional social advantages of Twitter?
• Are you only looking to share information with like minded people, or learn new things from those who think differently?

As you see, the uses of Twitter can be as diverse as the amount of personality types that exist.

There are also many reasons to enjoy tweeting. Twitter was intelligently designed to make you want more. Remember these programs are designed by people who study the psychology of social media and who wish to expand the amount of users as well as frequency of tweets. But everyone who was once a child knows that you can’t have all the candy you crave. Sometimes “no” can be a healthy addition to your Twitter vocabulary.

The idea is for you to find your own motivation and balance it out with fulfilling your responsibility, hobbies and aspirations in your own life. If you can do both things successfully, happily tweeting without feeling that it has a vacuum effect while taking away valuable time from your achievements, you are on the right track.

Can you manage to use Twitter productively without giving up your achievements in real life?

Here are some tips to make your Twitter experience more fruitful, while making sure you have time for yourself:

1. It’s OK to miss some of the action. Unless you have nothing to do with your life, chances are you’re going not going to be able to read every single tweet of everyone you’re following. That’s fine. Twitter conversations can be similar to chat rooms, but they can also be similar to email. You can check @replies and direct messages sent to you at a later time.

2. Use a Twitter application to enhance your tweet management. There are various applications that can offer a more organized experience of Twitter, rather than just using the web site. These applications, such as HootSuite and TweetDeck, separate the general stream of tweets from those mentioning you, into two categories: public @replies and direct messages.

3. Create a tweet bank. You don’t need to wait for some tweet time to come up with your tweets. There are things that you want to share in real time, but there are other things that you can decide in advance. Make a list of websites, blogs, pics, news, quotes and anything else you that is of interest to you and might be of interest to your followers.

4. Schedule some tweets in advance. If you don’t have the time to tweet as often as you’d like, there’s no reason why you can’t. There are a few sites like Twuffer and HootSuite that allow you to write your tweets in advance and schedule them to be posted later. For example, you can schedule a tweet to be posted every hour, or as often as you’d like, without needing to worry about it.

5. Take a Twitter break. Set a few times a day when you can check in with your tweeples. For example, a few minutes of your lunch break, while you’re resting. Update yourself with what’s going on, and share anything you’d like to comment on about your day/work/other. Be sure to be reasonable with the amount of time you set aside. It’s good as long as it doesn’t take away time from a more important/urgent matter.

These are just some ideas to get started. Feel free to add your own as you see fit. We can enjoy the benefits of Twitter while making the most out of our lives too.

The trick is to find a balance that works for us.

Post Author:  Michelle Maura  /  Web:  Thoughts Are Things  /  Twitter:  Follow Me!

This “How To Throw A Killer TweetUp” post written by Kim Redd (@RedSmitty) was originally published at Kim’s Blog: The Adventures of Reddsmitty, on August 31, 2009.  Kim is a charismatic Social Media Coach, Sales and Marketing Diva, Event Planner Extraordinaire, and Road Warrior who seeks out new business, opens doors and uncovers new opportunities.  A consultative problem solver, she analyzes business situations at a glance and offers strategic solutions.

Kim Redd

Have you ever wondered what your Tweeps are like in real life (IRL)?  Ever wondered if they really look like their avatars?   Why not host a TweetUp!  No matter where you live or what you do there are others on Twitter nearby and there’s nothing quite like meeting your favorite Tweeps in real life (IRL).    Just ask @RobinWalker or @MisterNoodle…I hugged them when I met them at a TweetUp.  Besides hugs you may also find job leads, sales leads, new connections, and folks with whom you can barter entrepreneurial services…I know I did.  So what’s stopping you?

 Here are 7 tips for hosting a successful TweetUp in your neck of the woods:

1. Select the Venue -  Choose a location that’s central and easy to navigate.   Find a spot with plenty of standing room as well as seating for those with “barking dogs”.  Convenient parking and/or public transportation is key.  Free WiFi is a consideration if the event is in the morning or midday when Tweeps are tethered to their laptops.  Be sure to talk to the owner/manager of the establishment prior to the event for their blessing and possible sponsorship.  Make sure you visit the venue before publicizing the event.

2. Choose the Date - These days it seems there are local social media events every night of the week.  Try your best to avoid scheduling conflicts.  Run some dates by a few of your local Tweeps before committing.

3. Tweet it Up -Spread the word via Twitter.  Invite local celebs, Twitter Elite, bloggers, entrepreneurs.  Use www.twtvite.com or www.meetup.com to collect RSVPs and share more details than a single tweet allows.

4. Invite the Media – Contact your community newspapers, business mags, etc via phone, email, or Twitter.  Tweet your local TV anchors and invite them to attend.  You may be pleasantly surprised at the attention you receive.

5. Feed the Tweeps - Find a Sponsor or see if your venue will “throw in” some food for your hungry mob.  Even if Tweeps have to pay for food individually make sure it’s available. If it’s an after-work event no-one’s probably eaten since lunch.  Fed Tweeps are happy Tweeps!

6. Wear Nametags - Not everyone is great at remembering names.  Providing nametags will save Tweeps from possible discomfort and/or embarrassment. Be sure to use 3M nametags (Yes splurge.  The adhesive will stick to all fabrics and the backing comes off easily).  Consider bringing sharpies in various colors, pens, a sign-in book (notebook, guestbook, sheets of paper, etc), a fishbowl for biz cards, and a stack of your own cards.

7.  Have Fun! - No matter how many or how few, how hot or how rainy, enjoy yourself and your TweetUp guests. Expect hugs!

So start planning your next TweetUp today…your future awaits!

Got a Tip, Comment or Question?  Please Comment below.

Follow Kim on twitter!

Kim Redd on LinkedIn

This ““Mad Men” vs. #Twitter – An Opinion on the Fortune 10” post written by Beth Frysztak (@bethfrysztak) was originally published at Beth’s Blog:  Network Your Life, on September 6th, 2009.  Beth is a cool twitterer, charismatic leader, successful marketer & Mom of 2 who thoroughly understands how to satisfy customers.  She is passionate about networking and “all things connected”.

Beth Frysztak

When I meet people IRL (in real life) – new acquaintances, peeps that I know well, friends, co-workers, and even family, there are only a handful of people who “get it” when I talk ‘Twitter’.

I speak so often to companies that I work with – as well as new corporations I am strategizing with – to talk about the value that their brand can receive through the right use of Twitter.  So, why is it when I ask a standard response is, “Yeah, we’re on Twitter”… I then ask them, “what does that mean?”.

DO LARGE CORPORATIONS REALLY GET IT?

Many large corporations do not.  They are struggling with the change from a world with ‘Mad Men’ media – to a world where messaging is cluttered, media is fast paced, multiple channels are available, and ‘Social Media’ is perceived to surpass other forms of media in short order.  So, what does this mean to your brand?

HOW DOES A BRAND BECOME EFFECTIVE IN 140 CHAR?

They don’t. A large corporation must understand that Twitter is not just here for them to promote themselves – PLEASE do not just promote.  People today want to have a personal relationship with your brand.  Twitter can help you to engage with your customers, potential customers and lapsed customers.  Just setting up a Twitter account is not enough.  Fortune companies that engage – are those that will make this change with ease.   The days of just “being there” are over.  ENGAGE!

TALK TO YOUR FOLLOWERS – DO NOT JUST PROMOTE YOUR COMPANY!

We do not care, nor really want to continual tweets about your product, service, offering or anything else.  We want to know YOU – the person behind the brand.  It does not matter if you have folks that support you in the US or other countries although, you need to engage and speak with those that follow you.  Realize that I am an extension of your brand – with the ability to promote you negatively or positively.

LOOK AT THE STATS BELOW OF THE FORTUNE 10 – AND THEIR FOLLOWINGS

Please note:  Some of these companies have more than one blog – if anyone has information on how to figure out WalMart – do let me know – I got tired of trying to find them – and what they did on Twitter!

Enjoy!!

The Fortune 10 on Twitter:

If you look above, you can see that most of the companies that engagement and involvement is extremely important to the number of people that are following a specific brand.

It would suffice to note that – those companies that are not engaged….or are just on Twitter to promote….will never have a following that will impact their brand.

It is time to realize that how consumers interact with your brand has definitely changed – specifically via Twitter.  In my humble opinion, Twitter is a media in which you engage, communicate, assist and as the individual behind the brand – you promote without being intrusive.  I would love your thoughts my followers!

Please feel free to comment!

Follow Beth on twitter!

• Beth Frysztak on Facebook
• Beth Frysztak on LinkedIn

This "Ode to Twitter" post written by Laura "@Pistachio" Fitton originally ran on Pistachio Consulting’s website in August 2007.   Laura has since helped explain Twitter to thousands, including Guy Kawasaki, Johnson & Johnson and Harvard Business School.  Most recently, she wrote Twitter for Dummies and founded www.oneforty.com to help people take advantage of all the Twitter ecosystem offers.

Laura Fitton

Let me come clean about my Twitter adoption “arc:”

The wise student hears of the Twitter & practices it diligently. The average student hears of the Twitter & gives it thought now & again. The foolish student hears of the Twitter and laughs aloud. If there were no laughter, the Twitter would not be what it is. -Lao Tzu (well, sorta)

I was foolish. If you think Twitter’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen, I hear you.

But I evolved.

I recently tweeted what Twitter is to me:

water cooler, colleagues, sanity check, ideas, advice, good tips, friends, company, connections, inspiration. oh ya & network.

I poo-poohed Twitter in March, grudgingly tried it on May 17, and 4 days later met my first real world Twitter friends (aka, drank the Kool Aid.)

I began to see how creative/productive Twitterers can inspire. I used it to surround myself with role models. I started getting to know people, and to enjoy the company, humor, conversation and great links. Just by way of writing, reading and responding to each other’s tweets, unbelievably valuable networking contacts have become familiar workday presences. I’ve met and hired 3 subcontractors for my business, met numerous potential collaborators and even found extraordinary new business leads. I’ve been to numerous networking and social events (lifesavers for a WAHM in a new city!). Interesting, creative, challenging, thoughtful and very deeply caring people have come into my life. New ones seem to appear every week. Twitter has served up answers, opinions and inspiration. It’s saved my sanity and yesterday, my dishwasher.

Hugh McLeod’s mentioned both flippantly (April) and seriously (June) that Twitter has slowed his blogging. I’d blame summer for my recent slowdown, but maybe it’s Twitter. But as a wise ninja pointed out, Twitter also improves blogging by absorbing your off-theme tidbits, good links, quotes, questions and other scraps of ideas. It ain’t called microblogging for nothing. But it’s true my blog posts are more detailed and thought out now, the quick cool stuff goes on Twitter.

Because it’s a business and personal tool for me, I Twitter about a LOT of different things. Great finds from my feed reader, impulsive ideas, replies both sassy and heartfelt. I tweet pointers to new blog posts when they go up. Twitter’s kept me company and has let me blow off steam, comfort a friend, and get exposed to completely opposite thinking from my own. On Twitter, we share and promote each others’ ideas and media. We celebrate birthdays, promotions, graduations and anniversaries. We look out for someone traveling or near the site of a disaster. We introduce and we randomly discover each other. Some I follow are just plain entertaining. Others I look up to and hope to meet.

We also combine the power of our collective news/intellectual interests. I get the “best of” ideas that various Twitter friends read or create, any given day. This magnifies the depth and breadth of information I consume. Imagine if your “water cooler” at work were also a wire service/editorial desk? Yeah. Something like that.

Sure, Twitter contains a huge % of “what I had for breakfast.” But the elegance is this: Everyone starts out with nobody listening to them and nobody to listen to. How and who you add determines what Twitter will become for you. Nobody can tweet at you without permission. You add people. People add you. You see interesting exchanges and add new people. Read the Twitterstream of anyone who adds you to decide whether you want to hear what they have to say. Meet someone at an event and you can connect on Twitter to get to know each other’s thoughts a little, over time.

If you used your TV or radio to listen to EVERYONE on your block broadcast their every random sound or video, you’d dismiss radio and TV as useless. If you look at everyone on Twitter at once and complain about futility, you’re missing the chance to find interesting connections and dig in slowly. Before you dismiss Twitter, find some bright, engaging, thoughtful tweeters* and follow them for a little while.

So there it is. I’m an addict. I’m a poster child for Twitter, and I couldn’t be happier about it. If you don’t”get” twitter yet, that’s ok. I’ve been there too.

* I’d have to write a whole separate post to shout out my Twitter favorites and what each one brings to the table. So please, post your suggested “Twitterers to follow” in the comments.

UPDATE: Annotated pic from today’s Tweeter-Q

UPDATES 08/28/2007: Chris Brogan on Twitter; Dave Davison on Twitter ROA; Guy Kawasaki joins Twitter.

Follow Laura on twitter

My friend @johnhaydon shows how to find a twitter user’s RSS feed:

RSS is a way to subscribe to a blog or twitter account, etc. so that it comes to you rather than you clicking on bookmarks or a link to go there.  Here’s a great one page explanation of RSS (Rich Site Summary).

You’ll need an RSS reader to use RSS feeds.  The quickest and easiest way to get started with RSS is get an account with google (if you use gmail you already have an account), go here to log into google reader and away you go!

Here’s a Beginner’s Guide to Google Reader

and here’s a quick look at my Google Reader Page:

How Twitter Search creates new opportunities for plugging in, tracking news in real time and discovering trends.

A kinder & gentler strategy for finding quality twitter follows & followers.

Note: The First Follow strategy posted here has been rendered ineffective due to changes by Twitter in how the following-follower page URL is generated.  Nuts Twitter! In the meantime this D.Cortesi tool,  [my first follow] is similar, well sort of.

Originally published at KentBeatty.com on 3.26.09, updated and improved for tweetvalley.com

If you have an established Twitter account and some interesting updates, here is a way of having some fun generating quality follows & followers.  This is NOT automated … just basic human psychology.  All legit twitter users need to be needed and want to follow “like minded” twitterees …

• 1.  Find a user you follow that you really dig, i.e. they are like minded, in the same line of work, interesting, etc. etc., whatever your criteria for judging a twitter user. Now, go to this user’s home page using the standard twitter web viewer.

http://twitter.com/KentBeatty

• 2.  Hit the person’s “following” link. (This displays the “last twenty-one people” this user decided to follow, in the order they followed.)

http://twitter.com/KentBeatty/following

• 3.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page, hit the “next” button. This displays the “second to last twenty-one people” the user has chosen to follow, in the order they followed.

http://twitter.com/KentBeatty/following?page=2

• 4.  Look at the user’s total following number, how many users is this user following, in this case 1,856. Divide 1,856 by 20, that equals 92.8.  Now, let’s go to the page that reveals the first users that this user decided to follow. Take the number you arrived at: (rounded up) in this case 93, and put that number at the end of the URL address in the command line of your browser.    …(cont’d)

http://twitter.com/KentBeatty/following?page=93

• 5.  A quick check … look at the bottom of the list, if the “next” button is visible, hit that until you do not see the “next” button, only the “previous” button. Now, what you see are the first follows of this user when they first set up their twitter account. The user first followed in the example is @logitron. In most cases, there is a strong probability the first 50 or so users that a user first follows are pretty similar. In some cases, these follows are why a user started a twitter account. Follow these yourself and see what happens.
• 6. Now, if you are really jacked up on twitter, do the same thing for this user’s “followers” list. These are the users early followers. Again, a strong probability that these first followers are similar to your interests. Follow these and see what happens. NOTE: The “First Follow” strategy doesn’t seem to work on really huge numbers of follows/followers, (anything above 10,000/20=500 as the URL page number ) not sure why …

Good luck!

David

By Kent Beatty of Talent Media Group – Follow him @kentbeatty

 Twitter’s new homepage as of July 28, 2009

Twitter has updated their homepage and made their search feature much more accessible and useable.  Gone is the cartoonish “What are you doing?” days.

Everyone knows how to use search and is familiar with searching, but still most people don’t know much about twitter (the few million people that use Twitter regularly represent a tiny fraction of the planet, geographically and demographically.)  Putting the search feature at center stage helps make new user’s feel more at home and helps the page look less “foreign” to them.

Twitter Co-founder, Biz Stone, said in a blog post about the new look: "The open and timely exchange of information will have a positive impact on the world and Twitter has a role to play."

By Kent Beatty of Talent Media Group – Follow him @kentbeatty

So when your friend says, “I just don’t get the twitter thing.”  Send them over to this blog post.  Lee and Sachi LeFever make excellent videos using a technique they call “paperworks.”  They use simple tools, a white board and paper cut outs, and plain English in their fight against complexity.  Although appearing deceptively simple, their videos have lurking under the surface lessons that have been crafted with great care.  Below is their simple explanation of Twitter.

Twitter in Plain English

Connect

Lee Lefever is @leelefever on Twitter

Sachi Lefever is @sachilefever on Twitter

Common Craft is @commoncraft

Become a Fan of Common Craft on Facebook

Common Craft Web Site

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By Kent Beatty of Talent Media Group – Follow him @kentbeatty

Jeremiah Owyang, in a post at Web Strategy, discussed how brands should position their persona on social media profiles.  He lists four types of Twitter Profiles from Corporate to Personal:

1. Pure Corporate Brand – 100% corporate branded – provides corporate news, deals and support with no indication of any individuals involved
2. Corporate with Persona – About 80% corporate brand and 20% personal.  A corporate or branded account with an individual participating.
3. Employee With Corporate Association – This one is about 20% corporate related and 80% personal information. Mostly personal content but obviously connected to a brand or business.
4. Pure Personal Account – 100% personal content with no tie in or mention of corporate or branded information.

Each of the four profile types serves a different purpose.  Jeremiah summarizes that Type 1 would be useful for sharing facts, Type 2 may be useful for support, and Type 3 for evangelism.

Source: Web Strategy.  Read the full post here.

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