Giving Value to Your Twitter Followers

Here are five ways to give value to your followers, in the hope that value is returned.

1. Retweet Messages

There's not many things on Twitter that grab the attention of somebody more than a retweet. A retweet instantly builds a relationship. It shows the person you're retweeting that you enjoy what they just wrote and you want to engage in conversation.

When someone retweets a Tweet by me, I'm much more excited, engaged and grateful than I am when I receive a normal reply. Retweets to Twitter are what StumbleUpon is to blogs and word of mouth recommendations are to offline businesses. Positive comments and feedback are great, but it's so much better to see people taking the time to share your message with others.

2. Build friendships by Replying

It's very easy to be one dimensional when using Twitter. You wake up in the morning and reach the office, open up Twhirl or Tweetdeck, write a couple of Tweets, minimise the program to the task bar, open the program again at lunch and write a few more Tweets, then minimise it again.

It's the people who take time to keep Twhirl or Tweetdeck open, and take the time to read their followers Tweets, and take the time to reply to those Tweets, that truly make the biggest impact on Twitter.

Even if it's just for 30 minutes a day, take time to actively read your followers Tweets and reply to them. Be two dimensional in your use of Twitter and you'll provide much more value to your new friends.

3. Treat Twitter Like a Party, Not a Show and Tell

Much like how at a party it would be classed as rude to walk up to every person and throw them a business card, it's rude to show off your blog address on a regular basis in front of people you haven't built a relationship with.

Parties and networking events are not meant to produce instant results, but rather meant to aid in the building of new relationships to ensure there is a return in the far future. Whether that return is a new customer for your business, or, possibly in Twitter's case, a visit to your Web site, the relationship should be built first and done so over an extended period.

Don't expect quick results from Twitter. You must build solid, honest relationships first.

4. Introduce New People

Twitter is a game of emotions and relationships. It's no surprise, then, that the key to Twitter is to make people smile and to stand out from the masses. Introducing new people is a fantastic way to do this.

Maybe you'll send a Tweet recommending to your other followers that they “follow John, he's a great guy!”. Or maybe you'll send a Tweet recommending several people at once. #FollowFriday, the weekly occurrence where users recommended other people to follow is exactly what this is.

You're making people feel special, while letting them know how much you appreciate their Tweets. Win win!

5. Start a Conversation and Share the Results

In the same way that bringing interactivity to your blog and letting your audience generate the content is a fantastic way to build relationships, using polls and starting questions for debate on Twitter are excellent methods to engage your audience and promote interaction within your circle of followers.

A poll or question for debate each day will go a long way in helping you establish relationships. Of course, you should always share the results of any poll or debate you manage. All too often, I see Twitter users ask a poll question and then never Tweet the results. What use is a community poll if the community can't see the results? Tweet your poll results, and retweet good answers to your questions.

Original Post @ TwiTip

Incredible Twitter Management Tools

Original Post @ Mashable

Various Twitter-related tools and plugins have been multiplying fast over since we did our big Twitter Toolbox and 8 awesome Firefox plugins for Twitter earlier. When we say fast, we "mean 140+ new tools" fast, and we probably missed some, too. You know what this means: now you have to arm yourself with dozens of shiny widgets you probably don't need, but you can't resist them anyway.

Posting Enhancement

Brabblr -- With Brabblr, you can post to all your micro blogging services including Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Tumblr, Jabber, Frazr, and more.



Autopostr - This service lets your friends in Twitter know when you post a new picture on Flickr.

EmailTwitter -- With this service, you can send tweets to Twitter from your cellphone without incurring SMS charges.

GroupTweet -- Allows you to post private message to a group of Twitter friends.

Hashtags -- You can add tags to your Twitter posts with this service.

HelloTxt -- This service enables you to update Twitter, a host of other micro blogging sites, and social networking sites with one click.

LinkBunch -- Need to share more than one link in a tweet? LinkBunch puts together all the links and provides you one link that you can share on Twitter. As you might have understood, this can be used not just with Twitter, but also with emails, IMs, SMS, etc.

LiveTwitting -- Helps you cover a conference live on Twitter. Similar to liveblogging, only cooler.

MicroRevie -- Post reviews on twitter accs and this service will turn them into microformats.

Mobypicture -- A service to post to your blog and micro-blogging sites like Twitter through your mobile phone.

OutTwit -- A tool for Outlook that will send the latest tweets from your friends as incoming email messages.

SecretTweet - Post to Twitter anonymously. If you really need to.

SnapTweet -- Allows you to post your Flickr pictures to Twitter.

Snitter -- an Adobe AIR based desktop client for Twitter compatible with Mac and Windows. The Linux version is in testing.

Twhirl -- Twhirl is a popular desktop client based on Adobe AIR. It has a lot of impressive features including multiple Twitter accounts, connect to Friendfeed, post image to Twitpic, post to Pownce and Jaiku simultaneously, and search using Tweetscan.

TweetCube -- This service allows you to post files on Twitter. Files that can be shared include .zip, .rar, .pdf, .jpg, .png, .gif, .mp3 and .txt.

Tweetr- an AIR based Twitter client for MAC and PC. You can use this to send files upto 100MB.

Twibler -- posts your ebay listings to Twitter automatically.

Twideeo -- You can post videos to Twitter using this service that lets you upload the vid to their site and then generates a link to your video.

Twit+ -- You can tweet pictures, videos, and files using this service publicly or privately among your friends on Twitter.

Twitxr -- Another neat way to post a picture on Twitter, Facebook, or Picassa.

TweetChannel -- You can add TweetChannel as your friend in Twitter to help you channel your various posts.

TweetLater -- An useful service to schedule your Twitter posts for the future.

Twitpic -- Share pictures on Twitter using Twitpic.

Twitsay -- You can tweet an audio recording to Twitter using this new and popular service.

Twits Like Me -- You can use this service to find people on Twitter who share your interests.

TwitterCal -- This service allows you to post events from your Google calendar to your Twitter accounts.

Twitter Feed -- This tool allows you to send your blog atom or RSS feed to Twitter.

TwitterGram -- Post an mp3 on Twitter using this service.

Twitteroo -- This is another popular desktop client for Twitter.

TwitterIM -- Using this tool, you can tweet from Windows Live Messenger and ICQ.

Twitterlights -- This tool allows you to highlight snippets of text from any webpage and send it to twitter. The url of the page also gets converted into a tinyurl and gets included in your tweet.

Twitter Reply -- With this tool, you can send your Twitter updates on a secret email address, or through Windows Live Messenger or ICQ.

Twittershare -- This desktop/web application also allows you to post pictures on Twitter. Works on Mac as well.

VisualTwitter -- Allow you to post pictures on Twitter.

Reading

TopTweet -- This site provides you updates from the top Twitter personalities. Yes, it took us a lot of tries to take a screenshot without Scoble in it.

TweetWire -- TweetWire grabs the freshest links posted on Twitter and displays them Yahoo News page style.

Twitter100 -- Just like in your personal start pages, this tool will allocate a box to each of the people you follow on a single page and display their latest tweets

Twitterator -- Twitterator enables you to follow a group of people at one go.

Twitter Digest -- This tool allows you to subscribe to a message stream from a Twitter user of a group of users on the web or through an atom feed.

Alpha Twitter -- This site provides you with the top links on Twitter.

Search

Summize -- A Twitter search engine, lately shaping into the leader of this space. You can run a RSS feed on your query too and filter tweets by language.

Flaptor Twitter Search -- A simple Twitter search engine. You can get an RSS feed out of your search query as well.

Terraminds - Another search tool for Twitter.

Tweet Scan -- This is a search engine for Twitter indexing all the public messages on Twitter.

Twits Like Me -- This tool helps you find people on Twitter who share your interests.

Twitterment -- A search engine for Twitter powered by Google search.

TwitterWho -- Using this, you can search for multiple queries on Twitter at one go.

Twubble -- This also helps find people who share your interests on Twitter. It brings our profiles who your current friends are already following.

TweetBeep -- Just like Google Alerts, this service will send you an alert whenever your set keyword is mentioned on Twitter or when somebody link to your site.

TwitGraph -- This service provides graphs of your Twitter usage -- tweets by day, top 5 words, top 5 links, and top replies.

Twitterlinkr -- Shows you the popular links that people are posting in Twitter.

24oclocks -- You can see your tweets displayed by the hour of the day.

GeoTwitterous -- Enter a Twitter ID and this tool will display from where the people that particular person is following are in a global map.

My Tweet Map -- This tool will show you the latest tweets from your friends on a map.

Quotably -- With Quotably, you can check out any Twitter user's conversations in a thread conversation style making it easier to follow. Extremely useful.

Sitevolume -- Just like Alexa, this site will allow to see how many time a particular term has been used on Twitter, Digg, MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr. You can add in multiple terms and see bar graphs comparing the terms.

Twetterboard -- An analytics service that provides information about popular Twitter users and popular links.

Tweetburner -- Tweetburner gives you click stats for the links you posted in Twitter.

Twittermeter -- You can use Twittermeter to see how frequently a word has been used on Twitter. You can also compare two or more words.

Twemes -- Twemes follows Twitter public messages with particular tags to build a meme around a topic.

TweetStats -- You can grab your Twitter stats including your tweet timeline, tweet per month, and tweet per hour.

TweetVolume -- With this, you can check how many time a particular word appear on Twitter. You can compare upto five words and see the results in bar graphs.

TwitterLocal -- This tool allows you to generate an RSS Feed of a filtered list of tweets from a certain area.

Tweetmeme -- Displays popular topics on Twitter and those people talking about that topic.

Twist -- This provides trends of what people are saying on Twitter just like Google Trends does for internet search words.

Twittermap -- This tool displays the most recent public updates in the last 12 hours.

Twittermeter -- Allows you to compare any keywords used on Twitter on through a graphical interface.

Twitt(url)y -- This service tracks the most linked to urls on Twitter and display them Digg-style

Wiiizzz -- This service lists the audio tracks that have been listed to and shared on Twitter.

iPhone and other mobile phone clients

Twitter for iPhone -- Another Twitter client for your iPhone.

iTwtr - This is an open source Twitter client for iphones.

Pocket Tweets -- A web based Twitter client for the iphone.

Twittai -- A Java-based Twitter client compatible with more than 200 kinds of mobile phones.

ceTwit -- Twitter client for Windows Mobile. Not as cool as the iPhone versions, but then again, what is?

Twapper - Send updates from your 30boxes calendar to your mobile phone using Twitter.

TwitterFone -- You can update Twitter from your mobile phone using this service.

Qik -- Stream videos from your mobile phone to Twitter using Qik. Surprisingly, it works really well -- try it out.

Fun/Utility

Crowd Status - View the status of your friends on Twitter in a start-up page style.

@answerme -- With this tool, you can track the questions you ask on Twitter.

Bkkeepr -- With this service, you can track the books you are reading on Twitter.

CommuterFeed -- You can share your traffic report on Commuterfeed using Twitter.

Foamee -- This is a fun site that allows you to track people who owes you beer or coffee using your Twitter account.

FoodFeed -- FoodFeed is a micro blogging site that you can use to post about your food habits through Twitter.

InnerTwitter -- Meditate by receiving chimes at regular intervals from InnerTwitter.

Notches -- Allows you to write reviews of certain items on Twitter.

Hahlo -- if you are not satisfied with your Twitter interface, you can check out Hahlo to manage your Twitter account. It gives you a separate profile page and the rest of the Twitter features in a new look.

LoudTwitter -- This tool posts your Twitter posts on your blog. Hey, isn't Twitter supposed to be some kind of a blog, too? Now I'm confused.

My Tweeple -- Manage your friends and followers in Twitter on a single web page.

Politweets -- You can check out your presidential candidate's popularity on Twitter here.

Post Like a Pirate -- This tool allow you to convert your post into pirate-speak before posting it to Twitter. I, however, don't need it, because I already speak like a pirate. Yarr!

Quitter -- Quitter will help you how to use Twitter to quit smoking. Bonus points for cool name.

Roll.The.Dice -- You can use this service to do all the silly things on Twitter like roll a dice, flip a coin, deal cards, or generate a random number.

StrawPoll -- Sends out polls on Twitter that you can participate on. As they say, you can never have too many polls.

TrackThis -- This is an useful service to get updates of your shipment using Twitter. It supports FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL tracking codes.

Twee60 -- You can tweet your Xbox live status with Twee60 automatically.

Twit2twit - Just like Facebook Wall to Wall, this service enables you to view any two Twitter users conversation via replies.

Twitimonials -- This service allows you to praise your friends in a special way on Twitter.

TwitResponse -- Set up your Twitter posts for the future.

TwittEarth -- This is a 3D model of the earth displaying the latest updates on Twitter across the globe. You can download the tool as a screensaver.

Twitterfeed -- Posts your blog posts automatically to Twitter.

TwitterMeThis -- When you follow TwitterMeThis, it will send you a question randomly. If you are the first to answer that question, then you get $5.

TwitterSpy -- TwitterSpy provides you a Google map on its site. when you hover your mouse above certain locations on that map, you get to see the latest public posts from that area. Strangely addicting.

Tweet140 -- This service tracks your Twitter messages and rates them according to how many characters you messages are. The closer to 140 characters they are, the higher you score.

Tweetclouds -- Create a word cloud from a public Twitter stream using this service.

Tweetgift -- Remember Facebook where you can poke, throw a sheep, or hug a friend? Tweetgift enables you to do the same on Twitter.

Twaction -- Another service that lets you do Facebook-style pokes and slaps at friends.

Twistori -- Based on Summize, this service collects Twitter messages with words such as love, hate, think, believe, wish, and feel and displays them on its site with automatic updates.

Tweet Clouds -- Make a tag cloud from your Twitter posts.

Tweetpeek -- You can create a group Twitter feed with Tweetpeek.

TweetWheel -- You can find out which of your Twitter friends know each other with this service.

Twitku -- Mashup of Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce public timelines. You can also post from its interface.

Twitpoll -- You can participate on polls using Twitter through Twitpoll.

Tweetshots -- this service allows you to take your Twitter posts to Tumblr, embed in websites, or send over email.

TwitterAnswers -- TwitterAnswers combines Twitter and Mosio, so that you can send questions over Twitter and have them answered by other people.

Twitter Census -- You can create surveys on Twitter using this service.

Twitter Comic Book -- Enter your Twitter name, and this tool will create a comic strip for you based on your latest tweets, using Flickr pictures.

TwittEarth -- A 3D globe of Twitter public timelines.

Twitter Karma -- This tool fetches your Twitter friends and followers and displays them for you, letting you paginate through them in a nicer way than you would on Twitter.

TwitterNotes -- You can create notes on TwitterNotes using Twitter and tagging your notes.

TwitterPoster -- This site generates a mosaic of user icons of those with a large number of followers on Twitter.

TwitterSnooze -- If you have friends on Twitter who are updating every 10 seconds and are irritating the hell out of you, you can simply now snooze them away using this tool.

TwitterSpectrum -- Based on Summize, this tool show you the associated words of two pair of words or names in a nice spectrum layout.

Twittertale -- Twittertale records all the swearing you do on Twitter and lists them down on its site. It also lists the top swearers and the top 5 naughty words.

Xpenser -- Record your expenses using Twitter. You can also use other mediums like email, SMS, IM, voice, etc.

Who Should I follow -- Find interesting people to follow on Twitter using this tool.

Popular Userscripts

Twitter Blacklist -- This Greasemonkey script displays a big red banner on Twitter profiles that are blacklisted at twitterblacklist.com.

Twitter Live Updater -- This one updates your Twitter pages without refreshing the webpage on your browser.

Friendfeed Filters -- Allows you to create filters and groups of friends on Friendfeed.

Friendfeed Twitter Client -- This create a ‘Also send this comment as an @reply twitter' option on the Friendfeed comment box.

Friendfeed Tiny URL Resolver -- Creates an inline preview of the Twitter tinyurls displayed on your Friendfeed page. Click the question mark displayed at the end of each tinyurl on the Friendfeed page.

Firefox Addons

Twitzer - This addon allows you to write more than 140 letters in your Twitter posts. The extra letters will be saved offsite and link to it will be placed on Twitter.

TwittyTunes -- You can post the songs that you are listening to currently on Twitter using this handy plugin. Don't be surprised if people start unfollowing you.

Twitterbook -- Tweet your favorite sites when you bookmark them on your browser using this addon. Don't use it if you're a heavy bookmarker, or else you'll annoy the hell out of everyone.

Twitterline -- Displays your friends' public timelines on your browser toolbar.

Twitkit -- A Twitter client for your Firefoxsidebar.

Twitturl -- This addon allows you to tweet the current url you are on on your browser.

Twixxer -- Twixxer is a Firefox addon that allows you to post Twitter updates.

Twitterratio -- This tool allows you to compare the ratio of the number of people you follow to those who follow you. The higher the ratio, the more Twitter heat you have.

Twitscoop-- This tool pulls out the words most used in Twitter every minute and displays on its site.

Twitter Movie Reviews -- You can review movies on Twitter using this service. It contributes to a handy list of graded movies, great when you need to quickly find something good at the video store.

Original Post @ Mashable: http://mashable.com/2008/05/24/14-more-twitter-tools/

Twitter Hummingbird Tool

http://www.twitterhummingbird.net - visit that link to purchase Hummingbird for Twitter.



Here's a quick recap of the video.

The 3 really good things about Hummingbird:

1. It completely automates your following. No need for outsourcing this.
2. Perfect at mass unfollows. You can say goodbye to using Twitter Karma, no matter what your follow count is.
3. Protected VIPs - if there's people you want to follow even though they don't follow you back (celebs, market leaders, etc) Hummingbird is smart enough to keep following them even when you run mass unfollows

Twitter Hummingbird Tool - DEMO

Social Media Trends 2009: Optimize

Client-side marketers are optimizing social-media efforts this year, says Karen O'Brien, Partner, Interactive Services, Crimson Consulting. I asked Karen to describe the social-media trends among her big-brand clients.

Optimization is a big trend, she says.

Companies are optimizing social media by:

• setting standards and goals about how many members, RSS subscribers, friends, etc. they'd like to have on social-media channels

• setting standards and goals about conversations they want to target on social networks

• consolidating multiple presences on social networks, such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace (often, big companies have several profiles on various social networks, each profile representing a different product line, brand, or service)

"From a customer standpoint, it's confusing to see a bunch of different [presences] unless they're clearly labeled," Karen says.

About 70% of consumers consider social-media sites to be sources of information that will influence purchasing decisions, according to research data in MarketingSherpa's 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide.

Now is more important than ever to optimize. Make sure your brand is not only meeting its goals, but also consolidating its social-media presence and clearly labeling each one.

FREE EXCERPT - MARKETING SHERPA - SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2009 - CLICK HERE!

By Natalie Myers, Reporter - MarketingSherpa.com

Time Management and Social Media

Ways you can make Facebook and Twitter work for you on the job

These days I'm asked frequently about the role of social media in personal and organizational productivity. The question is timely, as the major social media applications have millions of users and are still growing fast. Also, the phenomenon is closely tied to e-mail, which itself has presented major challenges to professionals in time management and keeping an appropriate focus in their work and life.

The most obvious issue about social media: Is this a useful way to spend your time, or is it a sinkhole of attractive distraction? It could very easily be one of those one minute, and the other the next! It all depends on why you're doing it, and this must be evaluated moment to moment. It's an important distinction to make for yourself, because focus is probably your greatest asset that you can control. You must be judicious about where you place it and what you let grab it, thus reducing your effectiveness.

Bear in mind that the most potentially productive activities (e.g. meetings) can undermine your control and focus if they're not carefully managed. And some pursuits that are commonly viewed as "time-wasting," such as random Web surfing or Facebook socializing can be productive, if you use that term in the broadest sense of achieving something you want.

Someone noticed that I was now on Twitter and said: "How can you be productive on Twitter?" My simple answer: "If I want to have Twittered, then it's productive!" I wasn't trying to be facetious. The truth is, if you're taking a vacation to relax and you don't relax, then it's an unproductive vacation.

Why would I (or anyone) want to "have Twittered," or be involved with any of the social media at all? There is inherently some sort of magic between the lines in much of it that seems to have struck a chord in so many of us. I attribute this to the transparency, connectedness, and immediacy that social media offer, which are key attributes of quality relationships--something humans crave at a basic level.

Looking at if from a more tactical, practical perspective, it seems there are three main reasons that it can serve people well:

You're an incorrigible extrovert, and you just love to schmooze.

If so, social media may be right up your alley. You simply need to be careful with balance, and whether your virtual social life is detracting from your physical one, or from your other responsibilities. You may need a prenuptial agreement that it's O.K. to disappear for hours away from your real-life partner to chat with people you'll never see. But if you're wired to get inspirational juice from multiple relationships in that way, it can be productive.

You have an agenda that is supported by this kind of connection.

If you need to know what's new and what's happening, moment to moment, social media can provide a competitive advantage. If you are building a global brand, as I am, and leveraging your personality and having a following is part of that strategy, playing in this arena is smart. I've only been on Twitter for a couple of weeks, but already it has invigorated lots of great discussions and a sense of connectedness with thousands of people in and around my network.

If having some sort of immediate communication from me helps reinforce the best practices that my methods represent for people's work and life, then there's lots of goodwill as well as good ideas spreading virally and quickly. Or, if you're in a business that excels with its "now-ness" in the market and culture, such as entertainment or consumer high tech, you'd better be on board. Or if you're out of a job, this hugely expanded Rolodex may be your best resource for your next opportunity.

You're researching.

You're intrigued, maybe a little intimidated by the early adopters and the popularity in the media about these media, and you're curious about what all this is about and want to find out whether and how you should engage. That's probably the majority of us, and I think there is still much to know about this world. You'll be in testing, trying-out mode. I'm still very much in this space, attempting to not miss out on whatever opportunities might lie waiting while at the same time not letting myself get too sidetracked along lines that start to require more energy than they deliver back.

It's not an easy call, because I've discovered that the proof is in the pudding. That is, I've got to participate in order to really know what's going to pay off and what isn't. The experience in Twitter was unexpected; and it took quite a bit of experimentation to get a feel for what was going on, and how to find a groove there.

The big key is to stay very clear about what your agreements with yourself are, relative to your engagement with such things as LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, and the like. The opportunity that the various social media offer is the ability to quickly communicate, collaborate, and get feedback from a large and previously inaccessible number of people, with varying degrees of filtering capabilities.

The challenge is that each of those social media involvements can represent another virtual in box, with an implicit assumption that you should think about and deal with what lands there. If "processing" those additional streams of input is simply a matter of scanning to see what's of interest to you, that may not take much time; and you can simply drop in and out on a whim. That's no different than channel surfing, other than the added seductiveness of interactive rabbit trails to pursue.

But if you are expected--by yourself or others--to be more familiar with the content, or to contribute and respond to content directly, you're going to have to be judicious in how you manage your social media commitments. It's not as innocuous as another cable station, unless you have specifically downgraded your expectations of how you're going to be involved.

Depending on your personal and professional interests, you can choose from the variety of social media the ones that fit for you. If the productivity best practice is to target your social media very precisely to attain your goals, then the productivity worst practice would be to indiscriminately hook into multiple sources of poorly defined static. To use social media effectively, just be sure that you aren't putting more effort in than the result you're getting.

By David Allen is the internationally bestselling author of Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything, and Making It All Work. He is the chairman and founder of the David Allen Company and is a leading authority on developing personal and organization capacity.

Using Ping.fm to Update Your Status

Ping.fm () has become a standby one-stop notification service for all of your favorite social networks. You can send and receive notifications from almost anywhere.

And recently they added the ability to ping your Facebook Pages, a necessity for page admins who manage multiple social media sites. Ping.fm has risen to the challenge, so now you can automatically ping any of the Facebook Pages you administer with updates and photos.

To setup Ping.fm for Facebook Pages, follow their instruction guide. Essentially, you'll need to add the Ping.fm Facebook application to the pages you administer. It's a bit of a tricky setup process, so make sure you follow the instructions carefully.

Once the Facebook () setup is complete, and you grant permissions for the appropriate pages, you can return to Ping.fm and adjust the Facebook Pages settings. Your options include posting status updates, notes, and photos to pages.

Even though the setup process is more complicated than we'd like, having the functionality to post updates via Ping.fm to Facebook Pages is worth it. And, it's just another reason why brands should really love the new look and feel of Facebook.

Repost from Mashable.com