Top 10 things New People to Twitter Should Know

1) Twitter is a place to socialize both professionally and personally. Do both. Tell your followers about the funny or interesting events that go on through your day. I recently received 37 replies within one minute to this tweet—”My son just told me it looked like I had a beard in my arm pit.” I agree, kind of gross, but they all thought it was funny and they were my kind of folks and conversation was started. On top of that, my name showed up on the list of 37 other people, causing my list to grow. @MariSmith does this very well.

2) When you like something you read enough to send a reply and say “that was great”—Retweet it. (Signified with a RT) When you RT someone, especially someone with a large following, it gets you noticed. It’s also a more profound way to thank them or tell them you liked it. You also become a hub of good info to your followers. Then when you are talking about something you produced they will be more likely to look at it. @PeterSantilli taught me this one with a quiet slap on the wrist. I stood corrected because he was right.

3) Grow your list of followers. Go into people’s list of followers that follow you and follow their interesting people (wow, that was a lot of “follow” in one sentence, where’s a thesaurus when you need one?). Many will follow back. The rules—Under 2,000 followers you can follow as many as you want (up to 2,000). Over 2,000 you can only follow 10% more than follow you. You need to decide how big you want to be. A large list can be very time consuming done correctly. @AlohaArleen has a giant following and she is very responisive to her peeps. That takes lots of time because she is doing it right.

4) Follow people back when they follow you. My rule of following back is I don’t follow anyone back who is amoral, or is just a business. Anyone else, they are in. I am using Twitter as a tool to promote barcagii.com and my blog and most people on twitter are likely customers, why wouldn’t I follow them? I want to know the person behind it. Also make sure to follow people back or often they will drop you.

5) Post a good twitter picture and Background. Make it intriguing or interesting. @barefoot_exec and @matalarry are some examples. Notice they are not goofy--just friendly and inviting. Don’t do logos. This is a mistake I have made from the beginning. People don’t follow logos as often. Also don’t change your twitter picture often. Many keep an eye on their favorites with a glance, keep them used to the same one.

6) Use DM for idle chit-chat. Many “Big Listers” will disagree here but use the DM (direct message) for idle chit-chat. If you @ things like “thanks a lot” or “you’re the man” then as you grow you will over tweet your followers with smaller lists and become white noise. Make sure if you are broadcasting something that it is something your followers want to hear. I see @juliebonnheath use this well in conversations. While you are on it, don’t over tweet in general. You become annoying and get read less. Pick your tweets wisely.

7) Use hootsuite.com or TweetDeck. I advise that small list folks use hootsuite.com . Once you grow over about 1,000 followers TweetDeck is the best, but can be clunky sometime.

8) Bring your expertise to the table as free info. You won’t give away all that you have to offer in 140 characters. Give it away, and they will come. @chrispirillo is a good example of this.

9) Get noticed by big list people. RT them. Post links to their blogs in an @ to them. Be genuine. There are plenty of big list folks you will like. The folks I motioned here would be a good place to start. A bigger following gets noticed by these folks. I call it Social Equity. Build yours, while you build these important relationships.

10) Be yourself, pick a side. If you like Obama--say it. If you don’t--say it. People want to know who you are. Don’t sit on the fence. (I don’t like Obama—he’s just another politician—guilty by association.) @Scobleizer pulls no punches.

Enjoy twitter, keep it fun and informational. Follow people you know in the beginning and they will help you find the way. If not, just ask. That’s the great thing about twitter, people are helpful. Good Luck.

By the way, you can follow me @matalarry

15 Highly Recommended Twitter Apps for Web Professionals

Tweet Management is probably the most important aspect of using twitter. We all know that once you begin to follow a lot of people things can get hay-wire. These applications help you manage your tweets and keep up with your followers efficiently.

• Tweet Deck is an essential application used for keeping updated and keeping active on Twitter. Download it and start creating “Groups.” as soon as you can. These groups can be defined for anything such as “Domainers” or “Designers” and will display updates from only a select few of your followers. This is just the tip of the iceberg for TweetDeck features.


• Split Tweet features the ability to manage your multiple Twitter accounts and monitor your company brand. An excellent web interface allows you to view and send tweets from all of your twitter accounts. I use it to manage @DotSauce @AQDN @DNMarket @TweetSocial all at the same time with no hassles.


• Group Tweet is not for everyone, but can be used for allowing multiple people to post updates to a common group Twitter account. Simply create a new account for whatever group you might have and connect it with Group Tweet. Example: @DNMarket


• Future Tweets as you can probably guess, allows you to store tweets to be posted automatically at a later date. Great when you can’t manage to Tweet a certain day, you can have some stored. Also good for repeating important tweets on a schedule.


• Twitter Search is the entire twitterverse at your fingertips. Especially important to use if you’re not using TweetDeck. Use advanced searches to find the latest news and updates as they happen, find people with similar interests, follow hash tags and most importantly keep track of people who mention your name.

Friends and Followers can be tough to manage and sometimes overwhelming. These great apps will help you manage new and old followers and keep your audience growing.

• Twitoria helps you find people you are following that have not updated in a long time. Sometimes its beneficial to clean your following list of people who are inactive.


• Friend Or Follow is an excellent tool that quickly shows you who you are following but is not following back and vice versa people following you that you are not following. This can be an alternative to getting massive amounts of email alerts for new followers.


• Twimailer is a new service that replaces the generic”New Follower” email Twitter automatically sends you with an enhanced email message featuring the new followers description, URL and their latest tweets. Saves time and sanity.


• Nearby Tweets enhances Twitter with a local people search! Simply type in your city and a keyword if you like to find people in your area.

Twitter Directories can be an excellent way to find new followers and in turn get followed by lots of people with the same interests as you. These are the best of the best twitter directories:

• We Follow (Example: WeFollow.com/tag/domains) is a new but popular directory. Simply send a tweet to @WeFollow with up to three hash tags like #seo #blogger #domains etc.


• Twellow is the self proclaimed Twitter Yellow Pages, featuring an index of over 2 million Twitter profiles. Sign up to be able to edit your Twellow profile, connect it with other social networks and choose what categories your profile is featured in.

Blog or Website Enhancements let you connect your website with Twitter which encourage your website visitors and blog readers to connect and engage with you on Twitter.

• Twitter Tools is the most widely used WordPress plugin for including your Twitter stream into your WordPress powered website and more importantly this plugin sends a Twitter update anytime you write a new post.


• WP Greet Box is another essential plugin which can display a customized message to a visitor based on what website they came from. So, if a person finds your website from Twitter you can display a short message thanking them and encouraging a ReTweet or a follow.


• TweetBacks, by WordPress guru Joost de Valk, brings more interactivity to your articles by feeding Twitter responses right to the comments area of each of your posts.

Twitter Forum Community would be good for discussing the latest news about our favorite service, Twitter.

• The Twitter Forum at TweetSocial is a new Twitter community project of mine. Go beyond 140 character discussions with open topics about Twitter apps, Twitter tips, news, marketing, resources and more.

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Got something to add? We’d love to hear what great Twitter Apps you are using. Please leave a comment below.

Twitter 101

Computer expert Ken Colburn looks at what you need to know about Twitter, and has some tips on how to use it.

Why I love Twitter!

Because there you can interact with legends....like Shaquille O'Neal for instance