Because Twitter's not just for twits ;)
Woo hoo! When I had nearly finished my book, “French Nouns: Masculine or Feminine?” I was really pleased with myself. However, it slowly dawned on me that writing the book was all very well, but how was I going to tell people about it? No website, no skills to design one and no money to pay someone else to do it….
Over the past few months I have noticed some over eager people, very often professionals, new to twitter making credibility damaging mistakes. So, I thought I would highlight some of these errors and explain why they are a turn off to people on twitter:
1. Hash tag spam
Klout is fast becoming the twitter application of choice for how influential someone is on twitter. Anything over 60, and this person is a major player on twitter. (I am normally over 60). Anything over 40 is fairly respectable.
Twitter grader awards you a grade out of 100 how influential you are on twitter. I personally find this grade is heavily based on the number of followers you have. However, it is very useful to see who are the major twitter players local to you on twitter.
By Suzan St Maur
People think I’m nuts to sell my books on an individual, 1-2-1 basis on Twitter. Although I use Tweetdeck which I find very helpful to target my audiences, with my current “serious” title, which is about writing non-fiction and getting it published, I find that the bland automated tweets aimed at all the right keywords do not work with anything like the same success as the personal touch. Hence I do not use any form of autoresponder tweet, pre-timed tweet, or anything else that I don’t generate myself in real time.
So am I nuts?
I regularly give talks for entrepreneurial businesses on how to make their marketing pay. Top of my list for most is to try social media as part of their marketing toolkit. And within that, I almost always recommend Twitter. Particularly if the business in question is one where authentic one-to-one relationships count.
CC License photo credit: _gee_
The original version of this post was at NikkiPilkington.com
It’s been coming for a while, but for most of us, New Twitter is here at last, and with it new restrictions on custom backgrounds.
We spoke at the weekend about the fact that a lot of custom backgrounds were going to look a little odd on New Twitter (ours included!) and we’ve been seeing quite a few that need changing on our travels today!
So, to answer the question: What size should the “New Twitter” background be?
We’ve got big plans for 2011, and we want YOU to be a part of it!
We’re looking for regular contributors to this blog, after some great guest posts have gone down really well.
Questions?
How many blogs a month will you want from me?
As many as you like, but a minimum of one per month
How many words?
400+ words – not as difficult as it sounds 
What can I write about?
I certainly don’t think so but I’ve listened my way into several conversations of folk that think it is. Those conversations tend to go like this
“What is the point of twitter, why would I want to know what someone had for breakfast/lunch, I don’t get it and it must be for sad people with nothing better to do”
I am often tempted to interject and “educate” such folk about the joys of twitter but have resisted the urge thus far.
So why do I disagree with the naysayers?
Image via CrunchBase
Well, according to a report from The Pew Center:
You can read more about this in Mashable’s coverage of the report.
I (Nikki) have to say that I use Twitter for all of the above activities – how about you?
I'm happy to use Increase Sociability.