Alliance Blog Reviews

So I probably should’ve posted this yesterday, but here’s a recap of some of our most popular posts from 2009. Happy New Year, everyone! 7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence 8 Characters to Make Your Tweets Sparkle Who to Follow, and Not to Follow, on Twitter – That is the Question #followfriday Revolution What Did You Do The Day Twitter Almost Died? The Proper Way to Pitch on Twitter Why You Should Start Over On Twitter With A BRAND NEW Account What’s Your Biggest Twitter User Peeve? How to Grow an Interested Following on Twitter using RSS Should You Send an Autoresponse Direct Message to New Followers? 3 Ways to Recognize Bots and Spammers on Twitter How To Unfollow On Twitter With Class 10 Ways To Be Useful on Twitter 10 Reasons To Use Your Real Name As Your Twitter @Name Get More Followers by Spending Less Time on Twitter There’s a Better Way to ReTweet! The 90-10 Rule for Successful Twitter Networking To Follow or Not to Follow; that is the Question A Full-Time Job, a Wife, a Kid and Dial-up Internet: How to Keep up with the ‘Big Boys and Girls’ on Twitter Follow Me and Win a Prize – The Merit of Twitter Competitions 7 Ways to Be Worth Following on Twitter 8 Sure-Fire Ways To Tick Off the Twitterverse © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Happy 2010! Here’s Your 2009 TwiTip Recap

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Happy 2010! Here’s Your 2009 TwiTip Recap

When I first started tweeting I would post randomly throughout the day about something that had caught my attention at that minute. The problem I found was that my tweets lacked bite and were in danger of all sounding the same. It was also taking up a huge chunk of my time, flitting in and out of the twittersphere. So, I took an afternoon out a couple of weeks ago and set up a content plan. Much recommended for bloggers, I found that planning ahead really helped to provide posts which were useful and informative for followers. I did this by collecting and researching useful content – e.g. seo tips, geek jokes, quotes – and then sitting down and using a spreadsheet to book a time to tweet the info and to then pre-load the posts into my software. The benefit of doing this is that I now take time to seek out relevant information, knowing that I don’t have to tweet right now. Instead I make notes, add the tweet to the content plan and then schedule the tweet. I’m also able to add spontaneity when it feels right instead of posting lots one day and little the next, keeping a steady stream of interesting content running for my Followers. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Content Planning to Add Value to Your Tweets

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Content Planning to Add Value to Your Tweets

Twitter contests can be a great way of getting you or your brand noticed in the Twittersphere. Yes, they can be annoying when everyone is spamming retweets left and right, but who doesn’t love having the chance of winning a Macbook Pro or an LCD TV for 2 seconds of work? Explosive Twitter contest campaigns like the one launched by site builder Moonfruit (@moontweet) rocked the twitter world (the UK company used twitter to give out 10 macbooks over the course of 10 days). In fact, there was even evidence that Twitter censored the #moonfruit hashtag used for the contest because it was getting too popular for its own good! Till this day (months after the contest has been over), people are still adding #moonfruit into their tweets.  Trying to emulate Moonfruit’s success, many other twitter users have launched similar contests. Let’s look at one of them right now: Business phone service provider OnSIP (@onsip) launched their own twitter contest a few hours ago, pledging to give out 2 Netbooks to those who retweeted about the contest. How many more followers have they gotten? I count 5. Not 5000. Not 500. Not 50. Just 5. Wait, are you telling me that only 5 people in the twitter world want a free netbook? That’s pretty hard to swallow… Well if that’s not the case, then what could they have done differently? Here are some suggestions and observations for their twitter campaign and any future twitter contests you may plan on holding. 1) Twitter contests rely on momentum. If you tweet something and its retweeted by active followers who also have active followers, then great–you’re already halfway there. If that’s not the case, then your contest can die extremely quickly, and you’re left in an awkward position wondering what went wrong. If you currently, don’t have a very active twitter follower base, then try to see if you can host your contest on the site of a friend who does have one. On twitter, one really popular tweeter makes all the difference. 2) Recognizable prizes. Moonfruit was a phenomenal success. Why? Well partially because they said they were going to give away 10 Macbooks. Pretty much everyone in the Twitterverse without one wants one. One misstep OnSIP might have committed is the decision to go with netbooks. A lot of the population may still be unfamiliar with the term. If you don’t have the funds to offer such lavish prizes, then I would suggest giving away something else you know your followers will value. For example, discounts or special offers for followers. A lot of contests also pledge to give out a bigger prize once a certain follower count has been reached. For example, @onsip pledges to give away another Netbook if they reach 1000 followers. 3) KISS. No–don’t offer kisses. KISS stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. Don’t make people jump through hoops to enter your contest. Moonfruit’s contest essentially consisted of asking people to follow their twitter, and add “#moonfruit” to their tweets. That’s it. Asking people to tweet you their social security number, mother’s date of birth, and favorite color is a no-no. So there you have it. 3 basic rules to follow. I’m not promising you you’ll get 100000 followers if you do just those things, but at least it will get you started in the right direction. And good luck to @onsip . Right now if you enter their twitter contest , you have around a 40% chance of winning a Netbook. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Do’s and Don’ts of Twitter Contests — The Moonfruits and the non

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Do’s and Don’ts of Twitter Contests — The Moonfruits and the non

When I first started using Twitter earlier in the year, I didn’t really understand #hashtags. As a result, I didn’t utilize them. However, I’ve now started using at least one hashtag in all my tweets and my Twitter experience has improved drastically as a result. Hashtags as Keywords One simple way of thinking of hashtags is as keyword tags that help label your tweets. If you use a blogging platform like WordPress or social media sites like Flickr , you’re probably already familiar with the idea of using keywords to help tag your blog posts or photos. Keyword tags allow people to more easily find related content of interest. This is EXACTLY why you want to use hashtags — more people are likely to find your Twitter account as a result. How Hashtags Help People Find You on Twitter There at least a couple ways that hashtags help people find you on Twitter. The most basic is that in the Twitter interface, hashtags are hyperlinks. When people click a hashtag that interests them, say #twitter, they receive real-time search results of other tweets that have utilized that hashtag. Hashtags are also accessible via various Twitter APIs — there are a plethora of web apps that utilize the Twitter API like foller.me and the Twitter data visualization tool Mentionmap . Hashtags Will Improve Your Twitter Experience Utilizing hashtags not only allows other people to find you on Twitter, but also allows you to find other Twitter users who you many benefit from following. Given that many developers love playing around with the Twitter API, by using hashtags you’re also providing them with raw material to help build the next super-cool Twitter API-based app. These apps also provide yet another avenue for people to find you on Twitter. Twitip has many other neat articles on hashtags that are worth reading. For new Twitter users who may still be a little puzzled by hashtags, my hope is that re-conceptualizing them as keyword tags will help you benefit more from the one of the most interesting and useful social media tools available on the Web today. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Why You Should Consider Using Hashtags

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Why You Should Consider Using Hashtags

Guy Kawasaki is a social marketing talent, he tweets every post of his blog three times a day, eight hours apart. Every time he gets hundreds of clicks. The tool Guy Kawasaki uses is Otweet , which is a paid web app that lets you schedule your tweets. Since Otweet is not free, you may be not interested, but luckily, there are some other similar and FREE web apps that let you schedule your tweets, among which, below 11 websites are the best for your reference: 1. CoTweet You need to register before you can use CoTweet, which lets you schedule the tweets and send them right now or in any specific time to one or multiple Twitter accounts. You can read, reply or retweet the tweets of the mention/direct messages, your friends’ updates and your twitter lists. If the URL is shortened by bit.ly, you can see how many times it has been clicked. 2. Dynamic Tweets You need to create a new account in Dynamic Tweets, then you can schedule the tweets and send them immediately, how many minutes/hours/days/weeks later, or in a specific time. You can add tracking code and spinnable text to every tweet. You can also send the tweet to multiple Twitter accounts at a time. 3. FutureTweets You can register a new account, or log in with your OpenID. Once your Twitter account is verified, select your timezone, input the tweets, and then schedule the publishing time. There are 3 funny things you can do with FutureTweets: add some funny images to the tweets, flip the tweets, and set the time by moving the clock needles. 4. HootSuite HootSuite lets you manage multiple Twitter accounts as well as your Facebook, your LinkedIn and your Ping.fm. You are able to attach pictures, videos and document to the tweets, to schedule and post the tweets to all the accounts at a time, to read, reply or retweet the tweets of twitter lists, and so on. 5. SocialOomph SocialOomph was called TweetLater before. You can register a free account or a paid account. For free account, you can schedule how many minutes, hours, days, or weeks from now on the tweet will be posted to one or multiple Twitter accounts, but you can only schedule 12 tweets per hour. 6. Taweet You need to sign in with Twitter OAuth and verify your email account, then you can schedule your tweets, post the tweet to multiple Twitter accounts one by one, read the tweets of your stream, replies, and direct messages, and so on. There will be a link added to every tweet you send from Taweet. 7. Twaitter You can sign in with Twitter OAuth or your username and password. Twaitter lets you schedule public tweets and publish them in any time. And you can reply, retweet, or favorite the tweets, see if the tweeple follow you, manage your multiple Twitter accounts, and so on. 8. Tweet-U-Later When you sign up, you will get an email address, to which you can schedule your tweets with Tweet-U-Later by sending emails. You are able to schedule public tweets as well as private massages, you are also able to schedule recurring tweets, but just don’t violate the Twitter rules. 9. TweetFunnel You need to create a new account in TweetFunnel before you can schedule your tweets, which also can be published right now or held in the draft. You can see the tweets of home stream, mentions, direct messages and reply, retweet, or favorite them. 10. Twittontime Sign in with Twitter OAuth, select your time zone, and then you can schedule your tweets. The Twittontime dashboard just looks like a calendar, you select a date, write down your tweets, and schedule the publishing time. 11. Twuffer Sign in Twuffer with your Twitter username and password, select your timezone, and then you can schedule the tweets by hours, which means you are not able to set a specific time like 8:30 am, but only 8:00 am or 9:00 am. Among the above 10 websites, HootSuite is my favourite, which one is yours? Or do you have any other nice similar web applications to schedule your tweets? © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . 11 Websites to Schedule Your Tweets Online for Free

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11 Websites to Schedule Your Tweets Online for Free

On Twitter, you have 140 characters to play with. Most people stick to the 26 letters, 10 numbers, half a dozen punctuation marks and currency signs. Fact is, underneath your fingers there are a treasure trove of characters to make your tweets more interesting, shorter & more colourful. By making your tweets stand out, you will get more people actively reading them because subconsciously your eyes are drawn to them. If your tweets are useful (and I’ve no reason to doubt why they should be), you should end up with more clicks on links, more retweets and generally more twitter love. Here’s a few of my favourite special characters that I like to put in Tweets. I explain how to get them on the most common form of keyboards – the US Keyboard Layout (which is used by the most of the western world). If different, I will also include the UK keycode, between them that should cover most of the keyboards in English speaking countries, but if English isn’t your native language, these may be different . The characters are there, but you’ll have to dig to find them. 1. The Ampersand How To Get It: Press Shift + 7 When Should You Use It? This character is very simple, as it shortens the word “and” to 1 character, saving yourself two characters in the process. 2. The “At” Sign How To Get It: UK Keyboards – Shift+’ US Keyboards – Shift+2 When You Should Use It? Used all the time in emails, the @ sign can also be used for events (for example, the show begins @ 7pm). Saving yourself one character in the process. 3. The Asterix How to Get It: Press Shift + 8 When You Should Use It? This is one I use all the time for emotions, verbs, basically what I am doing. If I’m writing **smiles and nods**, I’m smiling and nodding. This is great in conveying how I feel about things, as well as emotions that are difficult to convey such as sarcasm. 4. The Music Symbol (Joined Quavers) How to Get It: Hold Alt & Type 14 When You Should Use It? I’ve begun seeing this more and more when people are talking about music & songs they are listening to, particularly when using services such as Last.fm & Spotify . Often people will post music recommendations, followed with joined quavers, to show that it’s a musical link. It’s a great idea to do this, as it can be a text based warning to users, by saying “this link is a Spotify link, so a song will automatically play when opened”. This’ll stop users opening music links when they really shouldn’t be. 5. Hearts How to get it: Hold Alt & Type 3 When You Should Use It? The obvious place is by sharing a link that you love, or a twitterer you love, or anything you “More than like”. This negates the old

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8 Characters to Make Your Tweets Sparkle

The ability to retweet on Twitter was already available and has been mostly of use to those in business situations who could take advantage of their followers retweeting their promotions. This has been drastically changed with the retweet feature now being in a simple to use button under any of your feeds tweets. You may ask yourself why you would bother retweeting more often just because of a button, and you are right to do so. After all you are just making the ones you follow more exposed to the tweeters who follow you. However this works both ways. Your tweets can also be retweeted by your followers. The new feature doesn’t just place a simple RT in front of the retweeted tweet on your profile. By being retweeted your profile picture and username appears next to your own tweet, on someone else’s page! For example today I retweeted @johncmayer and his photo and link appeared on my profile. For him this means that now all of my followers (who otherwise may not have seen his tweet) have been exposed to his content and may choose to follow him and/or retweet it again creating a ripple effect and sending his message to an entirely new audience. By being promoted by other twitter users one could potentially gain thousands of new followers. Which we all know translates to twinfluence. For social users who hover around 100-200 followers this provides an avenue for increased twitter success. It should be noted however that without interesting tweets you are unlikely to be retweeted in this new fashion so although the features are useful, tweet-quality is still king in what determines your networking success. The new feature also gives even more power to those with staggering amounts of followers already. For example @aplusk who is almost at 4 million followers could choose to retweet a message and give that person’s content access to the gargantuan amount of followers he has. For tweeters who promote their own blog or product this could be the best free advertising campaign that they ever get. Even television commercials won’t receive upwards of 3.5 million views in a matter of seconds. The sidebar on twitter now includes a section appropriately titled ‘retweets’. Within this selection there are 3 mini-sections. The 1st of which is ‘Retweets by others’ which shows what the people you follow have been retweeting. This again will give added exposure to those lucky enough to be retweeted by someone like @biz. The 2nd section is ‘Retweets by you’ which is as simple as it sounds; it lists all the tweets that you have retweeted and gives you the option to untweet those messages. The 3rd and most important section for you is the ‘Your tweets retweeted’ section. This section allows you to follow which of your tweets have been retweeted and by whom. This allows you to track your tweets and observe the spread of your content and username which is ultimately the thing that will make this feature useful to you. All of these sections also show who else has retweeted what you have. For them it means they are being exposed to others who have similar interests and for you it means that you are also being exposed to others with similar interests, others who could potentially become your newest followers. As you can see the retweet feature will change how we network and how we make connections with others on twitter. The button doesn’t guarantee twitter success but it does make it easier for those with interesting things to say. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . How The New Retweet Feature Changes Marketing On Twitter

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How The New Retweet Feature Changes Marketing On Twitter