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Ever wonder how those little tweet links produce a pre-written tweet with the perfect message all ready to go? I am going to tell you how it is done and you can use this in your newsletter and your blog posts for people to share your material even if you are not regularly using Twitter yourself.
The trick is to [Read more...]
One thing that helps get you going developing a community in Social Media is to reply in some way to everyone who engages you publicly. “Promote the people who reach out to you” — on an ongoing basis. However, some people might wonder how to get people to engage with them in the first place.
I suggest that you try engaging with others you find interesting and see who responds. You might also want to actually form a group of real life people who will commit to supporting each other online.
As you get more and more people people you are following, it is hard to track your special peeps. This is where a Twitter list can come in handy. Building a Twitter list of those people makes it easier to keep track of their tweets so you can focus more of your attention on them. Twitter lists are great, but are still time-consuming to create and manage. They tend to get out of date and I forget to add new people to my lists who should be on the list and then I don’t even realize that they aren’t on my list.
What’s a person to do?
I am going to share with you this new trick I learned [Read more...]
One of the reasons I think people don’t catch on to Twitter is that they are not following the “right” people. When they signed up they may have followed a few celebrities and, unless they are the type of person fascinated by the National Enquirer, they will look at their Twitter Stream once or twice and then never again.
The remedy to this problem is to find the “right” people to follow given your niche. You will find the Tweeps in your Twitter feed offer curated news in your field and other things of interest to you.
Whether you are just starting out with Twitter, or if you need to take [Read more...]
My new best secret weapon app that saves me steps make sharing articles on Tweeter easier is called Buffer App. It is a free app that lets me schedule my tweets so that they come out at predetermined times throughout the day.
Twitter is like fishing for salmon. You stand at the river and the fish are going downstream. You see one you like and you grab it. While you have that fish others are swimming on by.
To make sure your tweets are being seen by a variety of people, it is great to have [Read more...]
This week, Sarah Robinson of Escaping Mediocrity, interviewed me as a guest on a webinar for her course, Building Meaningful Online Relationships (that support your meaningful work). I talked about several key relationships that rocked my business that came about from my being active on Twitter. Actually, I find it amazing that Twitter and Facebook bring more visitors to my site than Google does, and I get a lot of Google traffic. This all happened in less than one full year of “really” being on Twitter.
One thing that stops people from staying on Twitter long enough to have the magic happen is they are not following the right people. I am going to tell you how to remedy this so you can get started with finding those people on-line that you may want to develop a relationship with in the first place.
Of course, you have to actually get on Twitter, complete your profile and [Read more...]
Susan of Asher PR sent us a link to this very timely Twitter Tips for WordPress post on Smashing Magazine’s website. Smashing Magazine is one of my favorite sites for design tips and inspiration. Another one of our clients, Global Girl has really taken off Twittering. Global Girl calls frequently for tips on becoming a Twitter power user and when she found Tweetdeck, she was totally hooked. After she gets a hold of these tips, we are going to have to do an intervention on her or else just start referring people to her for tips and tricks.|
This article will get anyone off to a great start using their blog with Twitter to its best advantage.The hacks to the code maybe a little risky for some beginners. So beginners, if you embark on hacks that involve changing code in your PHP files, just be sure to copy the content of the original file into a text editor first, in case something goes wrong. Then if you make a change and your site blows up you can simply add the original file back and try again. It is really pretty easy.
I am anxious to test out the Twit This and the Twit It Up WordPress plugins. I have been meaning to add a “Twitter This” link on our posts, so this will get one more item off of my to do list. Stay tuned for which one I think works better! And let us know if you try some of these tips which you found useful and why. Happy Twittering.
At New Tricks we believe that if something seems like a pain in the bum, chances are someone has a simple trick to alleviate your pain. When several of our clients mentioned that they have embraced Social Networking yet struggle to keep their different audiences updated, we knew exactly who to call for advice.
New Ticks is honored to have Andy ‘Gadget Geek’ Little as our inaugural guest blogger. Andy is a true renaissance dude when it comes to learning nifty New Tricks. His profile follows his kickin post.
So, you finally got on the bandwagon after succumbing to peer pressure. Your face is on Facebook. You’re now tweeting with a regularity that borders on obsession. You’re a Tumblr, are LinkedIn, have an Identi.ca, are on Plaxo, you publish one or more blogs… let’s just say you’re *connected*. Problem is, how do you even bother to keep all of these networking sites updated regularly? More over, you probably use the networks for different reasons. I tend to use LinkedIn and Plaxo strictly for business, while Facebook is for general “friend” interactions, and Twitter is my micro-blog of choice (although that is changing as more and more businesses are adopting a Tweet model for communication). Heck, even the www.georgiaaquarium.org was offering discounted tickets for their Twitter Followers.
My goal is, of course, to grow my network of cohorts, coworkers, colleagues, customers and clients, and to use social media applications where ever possible to stay connected to these groups. I quickly noticed that the demographic for social media services seems to follow the same segmentation as my groups on these various media services. Facebook is for friends, blogs are for business ventures (or family, or whomever depending on your blog), Twitter is more “techie”. So, I don’t necessarily want to use the same status update or micro-blog post to all my social media apps, because I’m targeting different audiences. Enter: ping.fm.
Here’s the gist in one sentence: Add a social network, create groups of networks, ping an update to your groups, and ping.fm updates your status (or posts to your blog, depending on the network). It’s really that easy. With a list of 30+ social networks that range from blogs (Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal) to photo sharing (Flickr) to the 800 lb gorillas of social networking (Facebook, MySpace) to instant messaging (Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo) to location-based social media (Brightkite, Jaiku, Twitter)… yeah, it’s a pretty deep list. Chances are you probably have an account on one or more of the social networks that ping.fm can update for you.
So how easy is it? Once you’ve authorized your ping.fm account to each of the network services and set up your ping groups, you’re ready to post and that’s even easier: you can post using the ping.fm dashboard, e-mail, sms, or instant message.
You can attach photos or location information for social media applications that support those types of media. You can use built-in short-cuts for posting to specific services, or create your own shortcut to one or more services. If you’re a www.jott.com subscriber, you can call Jott and speak your post. Jott can transcribe your voice message to text, and email it to ping.fm and it will be posted to your networks…but that’s another post. For now, it’s time to build your network and target your messages, and ping.fm just made that easier.
Andy Little, a graduate of UNC Charlotte, is a Consulting Technical Manager at Oracle. Andy is an experienced Enterprise Architect for a wide array of business applications in the insurance, financial and healthcare sectors. He’s the go to guy for just about everything but specializes in systems integration and conversion with an emphasis in content management, publishing, imaging and workflow software implementation and customization. Andy’s professional interests include client/server, web services, software-as-a-service and enterprise design/implementation.
His Tech Specs include: Java, .NET, ASP/JSP, C/C++, OOP, XML/XSL, HTML, JavaScript, UI Design, SQL, design patterns/models, usability, integration, DBMS (SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, DB2), Web/Application Servers (WebSphere, Tomcat, IIS).
In real life, Andy and his wife, Stephanie, are the parents of adorable 2 and ½ year old twins, Devin and Maya. You can follow the family, Andy’s recipes, his band “Hard Livin”, technology and daily life at his always lively blog, ‘A Little Slice of Life‘, on Twitter or Linked In
