9 Advanced Twitter Tips and Tricks

In his book Tweet Naked, online marketing expert and Social Media Firm CEO Scott Levy provides the critical information entrepreneurs need to craft a social media strategy that will boost their brand and their business. In this edited excerpt, the author takes your Twitter skills to the next level by describing nine things you should be doing to up your Twitter game.

Do you want to be a rookie or a pro bowl veteran? The way you go about “tackling” your career is similar to being a rookie or a veteran. You can go through the day-to-day and remain average, or you can study, practice, train and try to find every possible advantage you can over your opponents.

For me, the following are simply things you must do to take part in everyday social media. To others, these might feel like advanced techniques and tactics that are at a higher knowledge level and maybe even desire level when it comes to doing social media. But if you want to elevate your game and get the most out of your investment (time and money) in social media, then take it to the next level with these nine tips and tricks.

1. Follow the leads. Twitter isn’t just about your tweets; it’s also a fantastic source for information on your competition. But don’t just follow your rivals–follow your rival’s followers. This will give you fresh insight on how to broaden your own following and what those people are looking for. It may even show you what your competition is doing better than you. With a small tweet tweaking, you may be able to get those followers to convert to your own company.

2. Save the sales pitch. Don’t get caught up in using Twitter as a selling tool. Instead, use it to increase customer loyalty and offer valuable information to your followers. Overmarketing will merely leave a sour taste in followers’ mouths, and you may even end up losing them if their feed gets too clogged with too many promotions.

3. Keep it small. Posting links and content is a fantastic thing, but Twitter users are all about brevity, so be sure to shorten your links by using a redirect service. bit.ly and is.gd are excellent ones to use, but there are other companies that offer additional services. Take a few minutes to do some research and find the best fit for your brand.

4. Answer with a period. Twitter filters allow users to only view answers if they are following each side of the conversation. But by starting off your answer with a period, the post won’t start with @–it will instead be viewed as a separate tweet and will be seen by all of your followers. Breaking grammar rules never felt so excellent.

5. Lose a few characters. Yes, 140 characters is the technical limit on Twitter, but all the cool kids are now only tweeting with 125 or less. Small, punchy tweets will grab your followers’ attention rather than getting lost in their feeds.

6. Twitter + & = ???. Lose the ampersand in both your profile and your tweets. Whatever the reason, Twitter doesn’t show the “&” sign correctly, so save your followers the distress of trying to figure out what it says and just spell out the word; it’s worth the extra two characters.

7. Cross-post to Facebook. Kill two birds with one stone by connecting your Twitter feed to your Facebook account. Head to your Twitter profile settings, then go to the bottom of the page underneath your bio. It’s an simple way to have your tweets post automatically to your Facebook feed.

8. A picture’s worth a thousand tweets. I can’t stress enough how vital pictures are in any social media platform, and Twitter is no exception. Use Twitpic to share photos as part of your tweets. Snapping photos on the go? Download the Twitterrific app to your smartphone to post pictures when you’re away from the computer.

9. Nobody likes a qwitter. Qwitter is a fantastic tool that notifies you when someone unfollows you on Twitter and even goes so far as to suggest potential tweets that caused them to leave. There are both free and “pro” memberships available, depending on how often you want information and how detailed you’d like it.

Twitter Updates #Music With New Ways to Discovery Artists, Scan Music Library Feature, and ……

Twitter has updated its #Music app today to bring new ways to discovery music by focusing on artists that you follow on twitter or other artists on the top tracks. The app also scans your music library now to suggest more relevant artists to you. Finally the app has been localized in more languages now.

A fresh approach to finding new music by using Tweets and follows to power discovery. The most well loved new music and emerging talent on Twitter right now. Follow your favorite artists and see which artists they follow.Listen Now via iTunes, Rdio, or Spotify.

What’s New In This Version:

We’ve added a bunch of new ways of learning music. Listen to artist’s top tracks, similar artists, and the artists that your favorite artist follows on Twitter.

We also scan your iPhone’s music library now to suggest more relevant artists to you. And we show you the artists that you’ve Tweeted about so you can always get back to them.

Finally, we’ve localized #music into all of your favorite languages. If you’re one of those excellent looking people living in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, or Switzerland then we’ve got you covered!

You can download Twitter #music from the App Store for free.

               

Hulk Hogan (Fake) tells his story on Twitter

To place a bow on today’s fake Hulk Hogan Twitter tale, the person originally claiming to be Hogan is now claiming to be a disgruntled TNA wrestler.

TNA president Dixie Carter acknowledged the tale this afternoon after Eric Bischoff shot down the claims that Hogan and Bischoff are leaving TNA. “Recent Twitter of Hulk Hogan
leaving TNA is bogus. To what extreme people will go,” Carter said on Twitter.

The person who impersonated Hogan on Twitter will have people believing he could be a TNA wrestler, as the person has made several points critical of TNA management that reflects the mood in some circles of the TNA locker room.

We reported over the weekend that 10-15 wrestlers were considering their options of staying with TNA, feeling out the rumored Wilpon Family promotion, or pursuing WWE options. The person claiming to be a TNA wrestler acknowledged the rumored promotion and claimed some wrestlers are considering leaving TNA if management doesn’t “admit to mistakes.”

Even if the person turns out to be just a fan impersonating a TNA wrestler after impersonating Hogan, the person will have people in TNA trying to track down where the Tweets are coming from based on the comments being made today.

Caldwell’s Analysis: Quite the bizarre tale today. I’m leaning toward doubting that a TNA wrestler would go to these lengths to get a so-called message out, but it remains to be seen. The whole tale was made even more bizarre by Bubba the Like Sponge and Eric Bischoff linking to the fake Hogan account before this went down.

Log on to Twitter to Catch Fraudsters

Car insurance companies are targeting social networking sites, particularly Twitter, in order to catch out fraudsters who are causing the cost of insurance premiums to rise at their fastest rate ever, according to the AA British Insurance Premium Index.

Apparently, insurers have been taking advantage of the rise of ‘tweeting’, using Twitter, but also Facebook and MySpace to investigate certain claims and find evidence. The news comes just as it has been announced that car insurance quotes : are showing the highest increase in years, since the Motoring Organisation started tracking trends of quarterly insurance premiums 16 years ago.

Over the last few months, the average cost of a comprehensive car insurance policy has increased to just over GBP 700, which is a rise of 11.5%. This is the average of the cheapest 3 policies for each customer, a measure which the AA refer to as the ‘Shoparound’ index. The fact that this is largely due to fraudulent claims is frustrating for the majority of drivers who treat the claim process properly and responsibly.

Andrew Goulborn, Commercial Director for motor insurance comparison site, Tiger.co.uk commented: ‘It is estimated that fraudulent claims like these are costing policyholders throughout the country an average of just over GBP 40 a year on their car insurance quotes : . Another reason why it is really vital for people to shop around for the best deal on their car insurance’.

The recent recession is thought to be a huge factor in the steep increase in insurance costs, as many unscrupulous individuals have contributed to the amount of fraudulent claims placed.

Twitter, but, is helping to expose the cheats who are abusing the system, as there is more constant streaming of shared information with people posting multiple messages all day long sometimes.

Richard Davies, a board member of the Insurance Fraud Bureau has claimed that the information on sites such as Twitter was very useful to insurance companies, as it could be used as evidence because it was publicly available on the internet. Many industry insiders who agree with him also add that the responsibility of the content falls to the social networking sites, as they are the ones in control of the privacy settings.

There are a couple of different types of fraudulent claims, which fall into categories of people who embellish the details of real claims for a larger payout and organised who make crashes, causing innocent people to be involved in accidents so that they can claim from them.

There are a number of law firms who have already reported successful investigative work using Twitter to ‘out’ fake claimants and are hopeful that it will continue to be a excellent way of ensuring claims are legitimate. Using ‘tweets’ as evidence in revealing fraudulent claims has already saved some firms thousands of pounds.

In Lady Gaga’s Concert, Britney Spears Tweets To Let Her Fans Know

Last night was the first highly anticipated Lady GaGa Monster Ball concert held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The stars came out to see the performer, including Britney Spears who took to Twitter to let her fans know that she was going to the concert. Lady GaGa has taken the world by storm. With each and every new hit song, she gains more fans who can’t wait to see what next part of the singer’s artistic vision will be expressed in future projects. She is a global superstar who writes her own music, and yes, certainly has the voice of a superstar.

Spears wrote via Twitter:

“On my way to go see @LadyGaga – Brit”

Even Perez Hilton joined in on the tweeting, and said to his followers:

“@ladygaga Britney is in the building! #PayingRespect”

Britney Spears is reportedly getting ready for her return to the world of music as she is working on her next album.

5 Commonly Misunderstood Things on Twitter

As Twitter evolves, many things become either forgotten or ignored. There are mistakes that people make because they’re new or unaware, but sometimes people just don’t do certain things because they’re not reminded of their functions. Here are 5 common things people tend to lose track of.

1. Starting a Tweet with an @
This is certainly the top mistake I see being made on Twitter. They want to mention somebody by their Twitter name but they don’t realize that when you start a Tweet with an @, the only people who see it are the people who follow you and that person. This wasn’t the case before May 2009 or so when Twitter changed it.

To get around it, many people will start a Tweet with a period but I prefer when people rework their sentence so it doesn’t seem so obvious. Something like “So @somebody and I were at dinner….”

2. Putting your Twitter profile address in the URL field
All Twitter users have a few profile fields they can use for information like name, location, a small bio and website. Many people place their Twitter profile in the web address which serves no purpose. We already know that address because we are on it. Leave it blank or link out to somewhere else online – your blog, your Facebook profile, whatever.

3. Thinking the new RT feature is untrackable
The new RT feature has caused a bit of confusion but one of the things I see the most is when users say they don’t know who has RTed them using this new RT feature. A business once even held a contest recently and said “please RT us but don’t use the new RT feature…we can’t track it!” This isn’t right though. If you’re on Twitter.com, go to the “Retweets” link on the right side and click on the tab “Your Tweets, Retweeted.” Voila! You can see who has RTed you with the new RT functionality.

4. Asking all of Twitter to “DM for more info”
Businesses in particular seem to do this a lot. They have a job opening, for instance, and they say “we’re now hiring, DM for more info. Please RT” but here’s the problem: the people who read the message want to contact you probably won’t be able to DM you because you probably aren’t following them which leads to the awkward “hey, I’d like to DM you but you aren’t following me.” Just don’t say “DM for more info.” Use answers or something that all people on Twitter can do.

5. Not knowing how to favorite or “star” a Tweet
One of the handiest Twitter features is the ability to “favorite” a Tweet. You do this by clicking on the small star next to a Tweet. People use this for two main reasons: to bookmark links or to mark something they like.

When you bookmark a link, you can find them by going to the “Favorites” link on the right. Everything that you have favorited will appear there. I often favorite links when I’m using Twitter from my phone so I can go back and visit the sites later on my computer.

The other reason that people favorite Tweets is to “vote” for them. Twitter users who mostly use Twitter to entertain like to get stars (another term for favoriting a Tweet) as a means of approval. These users likely track their stars on a site like favstar.fm which displays your Tweets and the number of stars they’ve received.

Any other common mistakes you would add to this list?

Preserving The Titanic With Twitter

Social media like Twitter will soon venture where no tweet has gone before: underwater. On August 22, Expedition Titanic will dive to depths up to two and a half miles to revisit the wreck of the Titanic. Accompanying the archaeologists, scientists, and oceanographers, social media tools will enable the public to join in as well.

RMS Titanic, Inc., the company behind this mission, resulted from collaboration between Premier Exhibitions, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Waitt Institute.

Christopher J. Davino, President of RMS Titanic, Inc., clarifies that the Expedition:

“will be using some of the most advanced technology available to make a portrait of the Ship unlike any that has been made before – virtually raising Titanic and sealing her current state forever in the minds and hears of humanity.”

More than just supporting further scientific exploration, Expedition Titanic aims to use modern technology to commemorate the legacy of the ship. Throughout the mission, the team will record the entire wreck site through a complete photomosaic and 2D and 3D video. The project aims to compile this expedition with information from past visits to the Titanic in order to develop an extensive record of the ship today.

From home, viewers will be able to experience the site as well. After traveling to the sea depths through a 3D-animated film, visitors will be able to explore the wreck site through near real time images and video, an interactive archeological map, as well as read updated messages from the divers themselves.

Once the mission sets out on its quest, updates will be recorded through a variety of social media tools. Flickr and YouTube will also allow the explorers to share photos and videos online.

With all the social media and digital technology components, Expedition Titanic represents a truly monumental approach to preserving archeological wonders of the world. The expanse of the project only proves the incredible capability of technology to record, remember, and immortalize monuments of today.