HOW TO: 7 Ways to Get More From Twitter

Wish you could get more from your time on social media? Is that especially true on Twitter? Well, have I got a post for you.

7 Ways to Get More from Twitter

Lists as a way to get a lot more from Twitter: Lists are probably the most under-appreciated, most-useful feature of Twitter. They are a way to manage the "firehose" of tweets come from large numbers of people you follow. Lists are best organized around your interests (this could mean the industry you work in, family and friends or even competitors). When you open a list you only see tweets from those people. It is important to remember that Twitter lists can be public (visible to anyone and searchable on Google) or private (visible only to you). 

Some resources for more information on lists:

• Twitter’s own Create and use Twitter lists covers the basics.
• Take it to a new level with Dave Delaney’s How to Use Twitter Lists Like a Pro 
• Another good post that includes "10 Brilliant Ways to Use Twitter Lists" is Aaron Lee’s How to Use Twitter Lists to Follow Thousands (and Appear Superhuman) 

Use Advanced Search: Use the Twitter Search window at the top right of the page and once you have results look to the left for the “Advanced Search” tab. In Advanced Search Twitter allows users to search by different arrangements of words, excluded words, hashtags, type of language, from certain accounts, mentioning certain accounts, near a certain place and/or within a date range. There is also some modest sentiment analysis that allows searching by positive or negative mentions. 

The best aspect of search in Twitter is that you can save your searches and re-run them when you want. Twitter also allows embedding searches (which Twitter calls Timelines) so they can be displayed on a website or at a conference, for example. How to embed a timeline 

Join a Twitter chat: These are an under-utilized aspect of Twitter. They are a discussion held via Twitter where everyone follows the same hashtag at an agreed-upon time. They are great way to learn in any field you’re interested in and to connect with new, relevant followers. The company Gnosis has compiled a very useful resource: Twitter Chat List By Day of Week 

Follow a relevant hashtag: One of the best ways to network (whether it’s at a conference or some other event or even in your day-to-day life) is to follow a hashtag and to engage in conversation using that hashtag. For more see Twitter’s own Using hashtags on Twitter. 

Pinning a tweet: If you have a tweet you’d like more people to see or to be associated with you for a longer period of time you can pin it to the top of your Twitter profile (meaning it stays there until you unpin it). For example if you have a tweet about a new blog post or a tweet about how your business is offering a special deal then it can stay at the top of your profile where it is more likely to be seen. For more, see: How to Pin Tweets to Twitter Profile Page.

Use tweet sorting: Visitors to any profile can choose which timeline to view: a basic Twitter stream (the default), tweets and replies or a stream of only photos and videos. This is useful to see how engaged a Twittter user may be.

Optimize your Twitter profile: Do such basic things as ensure your bio has all of the critical information and keywords you would want related to you in the 160-character space. Use the same avatar (preferably showing your face) as you use on other social profiles. Choose a large background image that says something about you. For more, see Kevan Lee’s 5 Tips to Optimize Your Twitter Profile. 

This is not a complete list, but I hope it's a good start. What other things would you like to know about Twitter? 

Related posts:
13 Very Useful Twitter Infographics
9 Surprising Things You Can Do With Twitter
Twetiquette: 10 basics for Twitter politeness

10 Social Media Resources for Small Businesses

Any small business owner knows that it’s always about being short on money and short on time … which is why social media can be such a good investment. 

By carefully choosing a few social media platforms and allocating a little time each day small businesses can reap rewards including new customers/increased sales, competitive intelligence, better customer relations and greater word-of-mouth marketing. 

The question is where and how to begin. To help here are 10 resources for small business owners. 

10 Resources for Small Businesses on Social Media

1. Your Guide to Benefitting From Social Media by Bar Charts Inc is a good intro to social media for business purposes, has some helpful "Getting Started" tips and also answers the question for small business: “Why be on social media?”

2. Top 5 Social Media Platforms for Your Business by Gold Coast Design Studio covers Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest and offers reasons you should use them and a few best practices for each.

3. Small Business & Social Media by Purolator is a basic explanation of five key platforms and includes need-to-know terminology and "7 Tips for Getting Started in Social Media" for small businesses. Its Canadian focus on social media usage numbers is hardly surprising given that Purolator is a Canadian shipping and logistics company.

4. The Small Business Guide to Social Media Mastery produced by MarketMeSuite and Placester shares some powerful stats about why small business needs to be on social media and then offers useful tips, recommends some social media leaders to follow and warns against "spreading yourself too thin."

5. Unlock the Secrets of Facebook (For Small Business) by Intuit – offers solid beginner tips on the set up and operation of a small business Facebook page. It also offers a couple of friendly reminders about maintaining a tone of voice and scheduling posts on social media.

6. All About Twitter for Small Business by Search Engine People offers plenty of reasons to be on social media, insights into why customers might connect there and tips for optimizing a small business Twitter account.

7. Small Business Guide to Twitter by Simply Business is a great flow chart approach to answering questions a business owner might have about social media. Each of the 21 boxes in the flow chart then has a clickable link to a useful resource.

8. 5 Go-To Tips to Master Pinterest For Your Business by Infinista Concepts is a useful step-by-step graphic to get better engagement through Pinterest.

9. The Small Business Guide to Google+ by Simply Business consists of a nice interactive flowchart that answers questions and directs readers to more resources based on their knowledge and/or interest level in Google+.

10. The Power of the Hashtag for Small Business by The Huffington Post is a brief history and overview of hashtags and how they can be used by small business to get new customers and learn from other businesses.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of other resources for small businesses on social media available on the web, this is just a starter list. I hope it is helpful.

Class: This list has been put together ahead of a new class I’ll be offering at the Rochester Brainery. For more see Social Media for Small Businesses.

Social Media 2013: Looking Back and Looking Forward

The year 2013 on social media will be remembered for being the year visuals dominated social media … and as the year the major social networks began to mimic each other.

From left: Vine, Snapchat and hashtags were big in 2013

From the scorching growth of Instagram and Pinterest for still images to the growing popularity of Vine and Instagram for video 2013 was all about images. Let’s look back on the past year and then predict what 2014 might have in store.

2013 – a look back at three key trends

Photo-sharing: Snapchat, the micro service that allows users to share an image for a few seconds and has become a darling of teens, created lots of buzz when it first turned down a $3 billion buyout offer from Facebook and then reportedly a $4 billion offer from Google. But it could also be said that the service prompted changes on other social networks.

Instagram (a Facebook property that introduced video in June and web embeds of video in July) seemed to be trying to compete with Snapchat by launching Instagram Direct, a way for users to send photos and videos privately to up to 15 contacts.

Twitter upped its game by allowing photos to appear in a user’s feed (an idea that mimics Facebook’s news feed). The late October change applied to Vine (owned by Twitter) videos and pictures uploaded to Twitter, not to Facebook-owned competitor Instagram’s links. And, in what is likely a nod to Snapchat’s popularity, it added the ability to send photos via Direct Message, Twitter’s private message service between followers.

All of which reinforced the idea that the biggest social networks are scrambling to be the "one app that does it all."

Hashtags: Facebook launched clickable hashtags this year. Like on Twitter, hashtags help group content on similar topics. Users can click on a hashtag on Facebook and see all the content that's available on the social network for that hashtag. As part of the updates to Google+ in the past year was the addition of the "related hashtags" feature, which automatically adds hashtags related to a post. This means users can find related content via hashtags on Google+.

Other platforms that are now hashtag-friendly: Instagram, Vine, Flickr, Tumblr and Pinterest. And, again, the number of platforms using hashtags is a clear signal that the biggest social networks want more of your time.

For more on hashtags see Mashable’s The Beginner's Guide to the Hashtag or click on the graphic below to see the full infographic.

Brevity Between Vine and its 6-second looping videos and Snapchat and its shared photos that disappear in under 10 seconds, 2013 was about the briefest of social interactions.

Snapchat was likely the new app of the year and the king (or queen) of ephemeral social sharing with users now sending and receiving 400 million photo messages per day. In late December it was updated to add several improvements like "smart" filters and the ability to replay photos and videos. FYI: The update is hidden within Settings - Additional Services - Manage.

Vine, as mentioned earlier, was highly influential and grew rapidly in 2013. Users quickly rose to the challenge of creating fun, interesting and sometimes poignant 6-second videos. Late in the year Vine introduced vanity URLs for users – a first step toward being a mature social platform. For more on Vine see Mashable’s The Beginner's Guide to Vine.

2014 – predictions of what’s to come

Facebook’s decline will become obvious: The service is now too big and too crowded for many users, according to Jay Yarrow in his Entrepreneur magazine article Facebook Is a Fundamentally Broken Product That Is Collapsing Under Its Own Weight. Teens are deserting in droves and moving to other platforms such as Snapchat, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, Twitter and Instagram (which Facebook owns). All of which are proving popular with said teens seemingly because they don’t "do everything."

"Second screen" battles: The second screen phenomenon has been developing for several years – it’s where people watching a TV show, such as The Voice or the Super Bowl, use a social network to talk about it with other fans. Twitter, the current leader in the battle, and Facebook have been looking to sign deals with TV networks and advertisers. Expect this competition to heat up.

Twitter finally goes mainstream: It’s likely Twitter will become the next billion-user platform, the questions is whether that happens in 2014 or 2015. With more than 700 million users currently and its growth increasing month over month it’s probably a matter of time before Twitter reaches the 1 billion mark. The biggest challenge: Getting more of the those 700+ million users to be on the platform more regularly. Current estimates have as few as 250 million users being active on the platform regularly. The No. 1 reason people are slow to engage? Twitter operates differently from most other social networks.

More pay-to-play for advertisers: It’s getting harder and harder for marketers and others to stand out on the biggest networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin. This means these networks will increase the ways they can help a marketer for a price. For users this will mean a steady increase in promoted posts.

So what do you think? What will be the big changes in social media in 2014?

6 Reasons to Finally Join Twitter

Twitter has exploded as a social media platform in the past two years. It is a key part of many organization’s social media strategy. And yet there are still many who are unsure if Twitter is for them.

If you are on the fence or haven’t given the platform serious thought why not consider?

Twitter:

1. Is the best news feed: If you’re following a few reputable sources of news you’ll quickly learn that more often than not you’ll hear about the news first on Twitter. Over time you’ll also pick up other good sources of news and before you know it you’ll be as dependent on Twitter for news as any of your more traditional sources.

You do need to be smart and remain skeptical of unlikely sounding news until it is confirmed by multiple sources, but nevertheless for timely news Twitter is hard to beat. You can find some of the most popular news sources on Twitter here: The top 25 most viral news sources.

2. Is a great learning tool: The University of Twitter, if you like. By following people who share good content that is relevant to you, your career and/or your stage of life you get a constant stream of useful information. And, best of all, it comes to you in manageable 140-character bursts – if you want more, you click the link. This article might help: Choosing Who To Follow On Twitter.

3. Allows complete control of what you see: You only see content from people you choose to follow. You can block any people who follow you and you don’t want to be associated with. And best of all it is completely transparent therefore although there are spammers they are few and far between (and often shut down in minutes if not hours).

If someone does send you an "@" message (public message directed at you and you don’t like what they are saying and/or didn’t ask for it) you can tag them as a spammer and block them.

There are also numerous ways to organize your Twitter stream from tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite – see 10 Twitter Tools Used by Social Media Experts – to simpler approaches such as Twitter lists. 

4. Makes better connections than other social media: You follow people who share interesting content and that is often material retweeted (RT) from someone they follow. This way you can check out new Twitter profiles and find interesting people to connect with on Twitter. One of the biggest differences between Facebook and Twitter is that the former is closed (you have to be friends with others to chat) and on the latter you don’t.

I’m connected to people around the world – many of whom I feel I know quite well although our only interactions for several years now have been via Twitter. When traveling I try to meet these people in real life and it is always a rewarding experience. Here are some tips on how to grow your Twitter presence.

5. Makes you a better writer: Before you dismiss this too quickly, think about this: In Twitter you need to say something of value in 140 characters or less – a lot less if you’re going to include a URL and leave room for others to retweet your message. This forces you to think about word choices (as well as teaching you a lexicon of creative abbreviations). This might be helpful: The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines.

6. Builds communities of interest: Joining a regular tweetchat on a topic you care about will get you in front of others and a chance to find more interesting people to follow. A tweetchat is when people follow a given hashtag (#smgrchat, a social media community manager chat, for example) at a given time each week or month. Someone moderates by posing questions and anyone can jump in with their answers or their own questions. This is a great professional development opportunity. To find a chat on a topic you care about: List of Tweetchats By Day of Week.

One big reason NOT to join Twitter

If you’re only interested in connecting with family and friends you should stick to Facebook. Everything on Twitter is public unless you protect your tweets. If you protect your tweets you won’t get many followers (Who wants to follow a hidden account?), so really, what’s the point?

So, are you convinced? Will you join Twitter now?

Related posts:
Twetiquette: 10 basics for Twitter politeness
Twitter "Expert" or Twitter "Twit"?
10 Tips for Better Business Tweeting

9 Ways to Learn at Twitter University

A recent post by Jeff Bullas called Twitter Reveals 11 New Facts on its Traffic and Usage reminded me what it is that I love about Twitter: It’s one heck of a place to learn.

There are some great stats there. I think they reinforce what I believe is the greatest value of Twitter – it's just hands down the best ready source of information you didn't know you needed to know.

I call it the University of Twitter and my only regret is that I don' have three or four hours a day to devote to learning from it!

And I’m often surprised that more people don’t take advantage of this great resource for learning and sharing.

So how can you learn from this free “university”? Let me count the ways:

1. Follow people like you: Easy right? Not so fast Slick! You’re have more than a one dimension so be sure to follow people who tweet about ALL the things that interest you. You never know when the person you follow because they also like Siamese cats will tweet out a link to an interesting site on football great “Mean Joe” Greene.

2. Follow people who are nothing like you: Likewise find a few followers of people you follow who seem to be 180 degrees from anything you know or care about. Follow them for a while and you may be surprised what you learn. And remember, it’s Twitter, so if you change your mind you can always unfollow them.

3. Follow smart people: Some tweets just make you see things differently … they make you think. This is reason enough for me to check out the sender’s Tweetstream and if I like what I see I follow them.

4. Follow funny people: And for Pete’s sake have some fun. It’s as true on Twitter as it is anywhere: All work and no play can make you pretty dull. For example: You’ve likely heard of @shitmydadsays and @badbanana , but do you know @funnyoneliners and @CinderellaJoey?

5. Organize the people you track/follow: Use the Lists feature to keep track of a few different types of Twitterers without committing to following them. If you like what you learn then you can follow them.

6. Use search: Go to search.twitter.com and type in any word related to something you want to know about and voila you get tweets galore (many with useful links). This kind of search always yields material you likely would not have found any other way.

7. Track trends: The scrolling trending topics bar on the Twitter home page can sometimes also lead to interesting tweets. Although the continuing fascination with Justin Bieber escapes me.

8. Follow hashtags: Keep an eye out for interesting hashtags (the “#” before a word, for the uninitiated). Click on one and see what a bunch of folks are tweeting about. You may be surprised where following hashtags can take you but you’ll often find interesting tweets.

9. Try randomness: Sometimes you should follow links “just because.” The caution here: Beware of spammers and those who might be trying to spread computer viruses via tweets or Direct Messages. How can you be safe? Never click on DM links and before following a link in a regular tweet check out the sender’s tweetstream. A lot of duplicate or similar tweets indicates a spammer (at best) and a virus spreader (at worst).

Did I forget anything? Are there other ways to learn at the University of Twitter?

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