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As much as many of us like to think that we’re highly organized and efficient when it comes to our use of Twitter, there is in fact a lot we can do to make our lives easier. In the last couple of weeks I’ve adopted some fairly radical measures to streamline and improve my use of Twitter, which I’ll share with you here. 1 – Cut the Number of People You Follow The temptation when you first start using Twitter is to embark on a ‘follow rampage’. You add the news sites you read, the bloggers you respect, friends, family, colleagues, business contacts and in turn many of the people that follow or are followed by these accounts. This seems like a great idea at first, but you find you soon reach a tipping point – in my own case, by following close to 2000 people, Twitter had become nothing more than a never-ending deluge of noise, with useful and informative Tweets getting lost amongst the junk. Even by setting up userlists in Seesmic Desktop (the desktop app I use), I was finding it ever harder to keep up. A couple of weeks back I made the decision to cut back on who I followed. It was time to ‘purge’. Before hitting the unfollow option in earnest, I realised it would be a wise idea to set myself some criteria for who I should keep: - Is the person i’m following bringing any real value to me? The million dollar question. It’s very easy to follow someone just because everyone else is, or because you they have a job that gives the assumption that their tweets will be useful. Often this couldn’t be further from the truth. - Is the person i’m following tweeting unique information and links or are they mainly retweeting stuff i’m already getting from other sources? - Does the person i’m following follow me and if they do, do they ever communicate with me or retweet what I put out there? I’m sure there’s plenty of further criteria of your own that you could add, but this is what suited me personally. Next, I realised that as I was currently following so many people, it would take me many hours to go through everyone using Twitter on its own. Thankfully there’s some great tools available to help you. I used Your Twitter Karma , so i’ll describe the process I went through in using this tool specifically. When you log in to Your Twitter Karma (be patient – it can take a few minutes to load your details) you’re presented with a huge list of Twitter users. Under each itemised Twitter account it tells you whether you follow that person, whether they follow you, or whether you both follow each other. Clicking on the avatar brings up that person’s Twitter profile, so you can refresh your memory as to who they are, what they do, and whether their tweets are of value to you. Next comes the evil part! The purge… Select the users that you wish to stop following, by clicking the checkbox next to their avatar. This can be quite a time-consuming process, but it’s well worth it in the long run. When you’ve selected everyone you want to unfollow, click the ‘bulk unfollow’ button at the bottom of the page. All done! Now check your Twitter profile to check that your follow count has dropped to what you expect. Be prepared that your follower count may also drop slightly, as some people use auto-follow / auto-unfollow tools that will drop you if you drop them. 2 – Effectively Manage the Remaining People You Follow In my case, once I’d purged my account I was left with around 200 people I was still following – a drop of over 2000! In return about 200 people stopped following me. Once I’d got over what I’d done, it was time to effectively manage who I was left with. This next step is very easy to undertake. Most desktop Twitter applications (such as Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck ) allow you to set up usergroups, whereby you can classify the people you follow into distinct groups, such as ‘friends’, ‘collegues’, ‘business’, ‘celebrities’ etc. In future when you get a new tweet for someone you have allocated to a group it will appear in the appropriate group column. This way you can find and read it with far less difficulty. Twitter now also allows you to set up lists as well, so you can group together people in a similar way. 3 – Be Prepared to Fall in Love With Twitter All Over Again I know that what I’ve described sound quite radical, but believe me, if Twitter has become an out of control stream of tweets that you can’t keep up with, it really is your only option. Now i’ve drastically cut the number of people I follow down to the bare bones, I’ve rediscovered my love for this great tool. Additionally, whereas before I wouldn’t have dreamed of using Twitter on my iPhone, now I can login to the likes of Tweetie and thumb my way through tweet after tweet of valuable information (and the odd piece of celebrity gossip!). The value is back! Please note: Undertake the steps I’ve outlined at your own risk. I can not be held responsible for anything that may happen to your Twitter account as a result of following what you read here. Also be warned that it is not advisable to bulk-unfollow Twitter accounts then bulk-follow new accounts, as Twitter may deem you to be mis-using their service and suspend your account without notice. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Why it Pays To Purge – Making Efficent Use of Twitter

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Why it Pays To Purge – Making Efficent Use of Twitter

It’s hard to believe that 2009 is finally coming to an end. As is always a very popular practice the media likes to take us on a stroll down Memory Lane but make sure we take a brief turn onto Morbid Court. Why? Because it is important to recap what celebrities either died or train-wrecked their lives in the past year. I admit that I read these lists more often than I should and often have the “I didn’t know they died!” moments which do literally nothing to make life better. They just happen. So why not look at how advertisers may have or could have benefited from celebrity news that range from death to sordid trysts to you name it? Search Engine Watch has spoken to Blogads CEO Henry Copeland and came away with this The sudden death of actress Brittany Murphy this week tied a morbid bow on a big 2009 trend — that of celebrities dying and falling from grace. According to Blogads CEO Henry Copeland, the unfortunate events provided advertisers on his network, at times, with a considerable amount of additional exposure at no cost. At this point there are a million places to go with this one and most are not complimentary. I am going to stay on the purely business side of this one though which is sordid enough. Basically, there appears to be a little disappointment from CEO Copeland in the structure of the advertising world as agencies and red tape don’t allow for advertisers to fully take advantage of traffic spikes due to these ‘events’. Though Copeland explained that his company could get campaigns “up and running in a matter of hours,” he said that Blogads didn’t receive any calls from marketers during the celebrity events. “Most major brand campaigns are planned weeks or months…ahead of time. So we haven’t had any ‘drive-by’ advertisers hop on a hot story.” He continued, “We don’t anticipate this kind of demand going forward because of the way the ad agencies and their clients are structured… There’s just [too many] decision-makers and [too much] budgeting, time-lag, and iterative looping built into the process. A really agile and smart advertiser should jump into these stories; but the structure of the ad industry makes it almost impossible.” Well, this just seems too good of an idea to pass up! I have the solution to this and I sure hope that no one takes this one and runs with it. I am going to hang out my shingle for my new ad agency called “Advertising Ambulance Chasers”. I think I will add the tag line: “We Get You There Even Before the Lawyers”. I understand traffic is critical for advertisers but are we going to be heading down this road to make sure that we advertise around tragedy because its good business? I hope not. We can leave that to the cable news networks who don’t realize just how pathetic they look when they make all of their pretty graphics and pithy sayings around the major headlines of the day which are always about some form of pain and suffering. Maybe I am just being naive and it doesn’t really matter how you get the exposure just as long as you do. Imagine though, that people get used to your brand showing up around tragic events? Just seems odd to me. As an advertiser or just an Internet marketer in general, what are your thoughts on trying to be ‘agile enough’ to advertise where the trouble is? Is this how you would like to have your brand known? Is there any potential harm in trying to be a morbidly opportunistic marketer? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Celebrity Death and Misfortune May Help Advertisers

As much as many of us like to think that we’re highly organized and efficient when it comes to our use of Twitter, there is in fact a lot we can do to make our lives easier. In the last couple of weeks I’ve adopted some fairly radical measures to streamline and improve my use of Twitter, which I’ll share with you here. 1 – Cut the Number of People You Follow The temptation when you first start using Twitter is to embark on a ‘follow rampage’. You add the news sites you read, the bloggers you respect, friends, family, colleagues, business contacts and in turn many of the people that follow or are followed by these accounts. This seems like a great idea at first, but you find you soon reach a tipping point – in my own case, by following close to 2000 people, Twitter had become nothing more than a never-ending deluge of noise, with useful and informative Tweets getting lost amongst the junk. Even by setting up user lists in Seesmic Desktop (the desktop app I use), I was finding it ever harder to keep up. A couple of weeks back I made the decision to cut back on who I followed. It was time to ‘purge’. Before hitting the unfollow option in earnest, I realised it would be a wise idea to set myself some criteria for who I should keep: - Is the person I’m following bringing any real value to me? The million dollar question. It’s very easy to follow someone just because everyone else is, or because you they have a job that gives the assumption that their tweets will be useful. Often this couldn’t be further from the truth. - Is the person I’m following tweeting unique information and links or are they mainly retweeting stuff I’m already getting from other sources? - Does the person I’m following follow me and if they do, do they ever communicate with me or retweet what I put out there? I’m sure there’s plenty of further criteria of your own that you could add, but this is what suited me personally. Next, I realised that as I was currently following so many people, it would take me many hours to go through everyone using Twitter on its own. Thankfully there’s some great tools available to help you. I used Your Twitter Karma , so I’ll describe the process I went through in using this tool specifically. When you log in to Your Twitter Karma (be patient – it can take a few minutes to load your details) you’re presented with a huge list of Twitter users. Under each itemised Twitter account it tells you whether you follow that person, whether they follow you, or whether you both follow each other. Clicking on the avatar brings up that person’s Twitter profile, so you can refresh your memory as to who they are, what they do, and whether their tweets are of value to you. Next comes the evil part! The purge . . . Select the users that you wish to stop following, by clicking the checkbox next to their avatar. This can be quite a time-consuming process, but it’s well worth it in the long run. When you’ve selected everyone you want to unfollow, click the ‘bulk unfollow’ button at the bottom of the page. All done! Now check your Twitter profile to check that your follow count has dropped to what you expect. Be prepared that your follower count may also drop slightly, as some people use auto-follow / auto-unfollow tools that will drop you if you drop them. 2 – Effectively Manage the Remaining People You Follow In my case, once I’d purged my account I was left with around 200 people I was still following – a drop of over 2000! In return about 200 people stopped following me. Once I’d got over what I’d done, it was time to effectively manage who I was left with. This next step is very easy to undertake. Most desktop Twitter applications (such as Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck) allow you to set up usergroups, whereby you can classify the people you follow into distinct groups, such as ‘friends’, ‘colleagues’, ‘business’, ‘celebrities’ etc. In future when you get a new tweet for someone you have allocated to a group it will appear in the appropriate group column. This way you can find and read it with far less difficulty. Twitter now also allows you to set up lists as well, so you can group together people in a similar way. 3 – Be Prepared to Fall in Love With Twitter All Over Again I know that what I’ve described sound quite radical, but believe me, if Twitter has become an out of control stream of tweets that you can’t keep up with, it really is your only option. Now i’ve drastically cut the number of people i follow down to the bare bones, I’ve rediscovered my love for this great tool. Additionally, whereas before I wouldn’t have dreamed of using Twitter on my iPhone, now I can login to the likes of Tweetie and thumb my way through tweet after tweet of valuable information (and the odd piece of celebrity gossip!). The value is back! Please note: Undertake the steps I’ve outlined at your own risk. I can not be held responsible for anything that may happen to your Twitter account as a result of following what you read here. Also be warned that it is not advisable to bulk-unfollow Twitter accounts then bulk-follow new accounts, as Twitter may deem you to be mis-using their service and suspend your account without notice. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Why It Pays To Purge – When and How to Unfollow

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Why It Pays To Purge – When and How to Unfollow

By Joi Murugavell – Follow her @joidesign A short definition of hashtags: On Twitter hashtags act as a means to create ‘groupings’ of tweets about a specific topic. Anyone can create a hashtag on twitter by simply appending # to a word (preferably a short word). Then other people who are interested in this topic look up the hashtag and ta-da all tweets about that particular topic are in one place. A recent event using hashtags brilliantly is #marketingnow. The diverse and often opposing opinions on hashtags is what makes it a powerful learning tool. Read more about hashtags and find out how to use them here . The good Hashtags are often used by companies to form a collective knowledge-base (and pats on the back) ‘in one place’. Adobe does this extremely well. Check out this example  of multiple hashtags being used to announce Adobe’s plans to open the iPhone to flash developers with its release of FlashCS5 (huge news for developers and iPhone users). In his tweet, @mszulc from Adobe skillfully uses 3 hashtags in one tweet (and even leaves character space for retweets, that’s pretty impressive!) By doing this, @mszulc adds to Adobe’s twitter knowledge base. He also added the ‘iPhone’ hashtag in, so folks who follow the iPhone tag can view the new announcement which is getting iPhone users excited it all sorts of excitable ways! The bad The bad side of hashtags is of course its best feature – ‘transparency’. A recent hashtag born out of extreme annoyance/hatred (quite funny) is #iSnack2.0 which was then nicknamed #vegefail Here, Kraft hating demons of fire exist, completely trashing Kraft’s new brand iSnack2.0. Kraft was no where to be seen putting out fires in their hashtag (they did listen and eventually pulled the name). The passion against the name was then of course transferred to their corporate hashtag #kraft, which used to have a mixture of news, comments, good stuff but is now dominated by iSnack2.0 laments. Monitoring unstable temperatures in your hashtag You can’t control what people say on a hashtag about your company. If you look at #Adobe you’ll see a mixture of comments from “yes! well done! Adobe releases flash for iphones” (which is the hot topic as I write this) to “my illustratorCS4 keeps crashing you suck Adobe!” etc. The negative and positive (temperature) in the Adobe hashtag is at a very healthy level, with more positives than negatives (at the moment). People are hashtag trigger happy, it only takes one unhappy customer to start a hashtag. For corporates, your hashtag is definitely not something you want to leave ‘on its own’ with a ‘what will, be will be’ attitude as it could quite quickly become a very large potty where you know … potty things happen. I recently bumped into a hastag about a CMS/hosting product we use to build websites. Its a fairly new, small hashtag with a current negative temperature. It was started by someone who was annoyed their email was down. Then someone else joined in and someone else etc. If you bumped into this particular hashtag now, it would seem like its your very own little corner to whinge about this particular product. At the moment it has the unfortunate building blocks of a potty (a shame, as its a brilliant product). A predominantly negative hashtag doesn’t exactly inspire you to say good things like “this is an amazing product”. A little peer pressure comes into play here too, if everyone is whinging you kinda feel a little bit out of place if you actually want to say something nice. Negativity loves company. Quick ways to plant some roses in a hashtag potty: 1) Start by telling a select group of people about your hashtag, encourage them to leave comments and get a conversation going with your hashtag, seed it with a topic. 2) Encourage your staff to use your hashtag, posting latest events, product enhancements, accolades etc 3) If you host an event, add your hashtag to your banners or simply let everyone know what it is (get lots of noise in there) 4) Ask your clients on twitter to post a short testimonial with your hashtag. Most people who are happy with you, will be more than happy to tweet about you. These are pretty simple things you can do right away, to throw a bunch of flowers in the potty mix. Hashtag potty mouths: Think before you poo At times its enjoyable to jump on the hashtag lament bandwagon. Who doesn’t like a big ol grumpy wumpy on twitter! Unfortunately, even though twitter encourages spontaneity, most of us who are not anonymous, still have to think a little before we tweet (sigh?). Probably the worst example I’ve come across was a bunch of people putting down a product they actually on-sell to their customers – not the best sales tactic is it? – #doh. Further reading How to get the most out of twitter hashtags Finding your community within a community Tools for monitoring conversations in Twitter Hashtags are dying – here’s how to save them What the hashtag – a user edited hashtag directory [image: Torley ] © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Quick Ways to Plant Some Roses in a Hashtag Potty Related posts: Six Quick Ways to Becoming a Twitter Pariah 7 ‘Secret’ Ways To Use Twitter Search 6 Ways Twitter Can Help A Bad Memory

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Quick Ways to Plant Some Roses in a Hashtag Potty