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I’ve posted before about how certain features can improve your twitter experience. These required a lot of research. After reading hundreds of blog posts, I’ve gained a new appreciation of twitter applications.  One of them is The T wit Cleaner. I primarily use the web interface. I leave tweetdeck on when I’m busy but I’ll use the web to really dive into conversations. I follow over 1000 and,  despite being really picky with my return follows, started to find my friends where getting drowned out. I needed help but didn’t want to spend hours manually going through my list. This is where The Twit Cleaner literally saved my twitter stream. What is the twit cleaner? The Twit Cleaner i s an app by @sidawson that is designed to help clean out your twitter account. According to the FAQ , “it gets your following list, then analyses the profiles & tweets of every single one of those people, looking for certain patterns of behaviour (people not talking, being over repetitive, posting the same links repeatedly, etc).” I’ve run this a couple of times and, frankly, its awesome. Note: The account @twitcleaner isn’t associated with this – you have to make sure to @reply thetwitcleaner . How does it work? The whole process is really simple. First, you have to click the button to request your report. Note that there is a box which, if left checked, will send out a tweet telling your friends about The Twit Cleaner . You are under no obligation to tweet anything. You will then get shown a pop up asking if the application has your permission to access your account. This is safe. I have many friends that develop apps and they only need the information to give you the information you need. You will shortly get sent a DM linking to your report. There is an example report on the about page . Yours will look different and some of the names have changed. Thats cool. That picture was designed to help you understand it better. The report will contain a list of potentially dodgy accounts. Now – just because someone is on a list, doesn’t mean that they are dodgy. I will explain this further, but it just means that they fall into a certain category of behaviors. The main categories are: Dodgy – spam phrases, @ spamming, duplicate links etc Absent – No updates in a month, or fewer than 10 tweets. Repetitive – High numbers of duplicate tweets or links Flooding – So high volume you can’t see anyone else Non-Responsive – No interaction & those that follow back < 10% Everyone is free to use twitter in their own way. Not all of these behaviors are bad. Some people are travelling and thus aren’t on twitter for an extended period of time. Some people use the platform primarily to broadcast. The Twit Cleaner organizes people into subcategories so you can easily choose who you want to unfollow. In my summary, I have a section saything ‘These accounts ignore you.’ Within that, users fall into 3 subcategories. Hardly follow anyone Don’t interact with anyone Have fewer than 10 tweets. Each section is broken up like this. Based on the report, it is really easy to make a decision about who you want to unfollow. This process is really easy. There are two options. You can use the data to manually unfollow people or you can let The Twit Cleaner do it for you. You are given four options: Only unfollow those I don’t select Unfollow the spammy and absent, keep the rest Unfollow the spammy, keep the rest Unfollow the absent, keep the rest. I suggest you use whatever option feels right for you. I always choose to unfollow the users I don’t select. This is time consuming but ensures you don’t accidentally unfollow people. Selecting someone is easy. You just have to click their avatar. Their icon will show up as shaded and that person wont be unfollowed. How much does it cost? Surprisingly, the report itself is free. There is a small charge if your total follow count is over 2000. The prices are: Up to 25,000 – $5 USD Up to 50,000 – $10 USD Otherwise – $20 USD These are very reasonable prices considering what you get. Mini Interview with Si Dawson I was fascinated by this application and so, took the opportunity to ask Si a few questions about The Twit Cleaner . I hope this gives you an insight to what goes on behind the scenes of 1. This was super easy and really thorough. Why did you choose to offer it for free instead of charging? The report is always free. I do charge a small sum if you follow more than 2000 people & want to get us to auto-unfollow for you. 90% of twitter users follow fewer than 2000 people, so for the vast majority of people, the entire process is free. For larger lists, I figured once people saw how useful the report was & how much time it would save them, they’d be happy to pay. The charge is primarily to cover costs on larger reports. For people with massive lists (20k+) it can take literally hours on a quad processor box to do all that analysis. I did have one report that ran for three days. It’s a LOT of work. 2. How much work went into creating and maintaining the twit cleaner? I’d say I’ve spent somewhere in the order of 1500 hours to date. Eg, last night I worked until 5am, & was up again at 9 to deal with tech support issues, minor hiccups etc. That goes on seven days a week. It’s pretty full on. 3. How does using this application improve your twitter experience? I designed it because I tried some auto-follow tools (keyword following, that sort of thing) & quickly start to dread looking at Twitter. There was so much noise, so much junk. The Twit Cleaner categorises everyone you’re following into common groupings – people that just post links, people that never talk to anyone. Those that are just blasting noise out, & not authentically engaging with anyone, oh, & the pure out spammers, & so on. So, by seeing these groupings, it then becomes very easy to go “You know what? I’m actually not interested in following that kind of person.” In my case, I got rid of all the spammers, the link feeds & so on. When I got up the next morning I looked at Twitter, & suddenly it was -interesting- again. It went from 90% noise to 90% interesting stuff. Stuff I liked, information that was interesting to me. It was always there, but I just couldn’t see it because of all the crap. My follow list dropped by about 30% but my enjoyment went up 500%! 4. Do you plan to create more apps that will help the twitter community? I have a couple more apps in the imediate pipeline, yes. Obviously there are some bits of the site that are still a bit average. The functionality is good on the report, for example, but the UI needs to be slicked up quite a lot. So, there’s that. The other things is this – calling in The Twit Cleaner is kind of an emergency situation. Things have gone mad, & you need to get them back under control again. Wouldn’t it be better to not need it in the first place? So, one app (which I already have early beta versions of, but isn’t quite ready for public rollout), is a clean followback – which follows anyone that follows you, but filters them according to the algorithms (so you’ll never follow any spammers). Another is clean keyword searching. So, following people that use certain keywords – all very common already – but again, filtered by the algorithms. You’ll be able to choose which categories you’re interested in following or not. Using these two give you all the power to grow your list & respond to the community, but keep it clean & high value at the same time. I have some even more exciting stuff I’ve been testing out, but it’s too early to talk about that just yet. Suffice to say, it’ll completely revolutionise finding quality people on Twitter. I’m very excited about it. Over to you: Have you used any applications to clean up your twitter account? What was your experience like? Also, if you have any questions about The Twit Cleaner just leave them in the comments. Disclosure: The developer, Si Dawson , is a friend of mine. However I didn’t know that he created this, or that he was a coder, until after using the service. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Review of The Twit Cleaner

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Review of The Twit Cleaner

If you’ve always dreamed of being published, but just didn’t have the time to finish a novel/novella/short story, Twitter may be your big chance at fame, fortune, and a spot on Oprah. Okay, okay, only fame. And only a little. For writers who like a challenge, there are a number of Twitter-based ezines that publish short (and I do mean short) stories. Some call them “Twisters,” others micro- or nano-fiction, and others simply “one heck of a challenge.” You’ve only got 140 characters to tell a complete story that leaves your readers nodding their heads with a sense of fulfillment. If this sounds like your cup of java, there are several venues where you can submit your tales for consideration. Some even pay big bucks (up to $1.50), so what are you waiting for? Twitter-fiction markets: Thaumatrope – @Thaumatrope If you can write a science fiction, fantasy, or horror story that fits in a Twitter box, send your submissions to these folks. Pays $1.20. Tweet the Meat – @TweetTheMeat This publisher of horror/weird/speculative fiction wants “fear in 140 characters or less.” Thanks to their weekly themes, there’s plenty to inspire you. Pays $1. Nanoism – @Nanoism Submit your thoughtful, literary nano-fiction to these folks. They’ll accept all genres but particularly want “stories that move us with their writing, stories that stay with us longer than the few seconds it takes to read them.” Pays $1 for one-tweet stories and up to $5 for serials. @Microcosms This publisher’s first “issue” isn’t scheduled to appear until April, but you can send in your submissions of science fiction, fantasy, and horror now. Pays $1. Know of other markets for Twitter stories? Share them in the comments! © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Flex Your Literary Fast-Twitch Muscles Writing Twitter-Sized Stories

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Flex Your Literary Fast-Twitch Muscles Writing Twitter-Sized Stories

As marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and Mark,” or, more specifically, “Are we all just toiling mightily to make a bunch of rich nerds (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his employees and investors, Twitter’s Biz Stone and Evan Williams and their employees and investors) richer, while we impoverish ourselves?” That’s both a literal and a figurative question, since using those social networks is exactly what makes their founders and investors money (well, sort of), and, as the argument goes, we’re essentially a volunteer labor force creating content for these sites—an interesting point. Meanwhile, using social networks (at all, as the argument here seems to go) means sacrificing time (true), actual interactions (possibly true but not always)—and our very souls and identities. They mean this to be a discussion on a personal level, since a central thrust of the argument is that these social networks have sacrificed so much of our privacy that we’re allowing them to steal (don’t we call that “giving” in English?) “the sole ownership of our own thoughts, emotions, personal expressions, etc.” from us (yes, if I post “I’m sad” on a social network, that means that they also own my emotion…. right….). Of course, if you’re using Twitter and Facebook as a marketer, you’re there looking for business ROI from publicity—being public. Ad Age (you know, “Advertising” Age? About . . . could it be . . . advertising ?) does acknowledge that social networks might work for these purposes, if they’re worth the sacrifice: If you’re a brand marketer, chances are good that you’re extracting real value from investing time and energy in social media (and you’re happy to have consumers volunteering their time to be your “brand ambassadors” or whatever you want to call them); good for you. (And if you’re a consumer who gets off on connecting with big brands — or just wants to interface with customer service in a forum, like Twitter, where certain marketers seem to be hyper-responsive — well, good for you too.) In general, if you’re soft-selling something — like content or an idea — that can benefit from free publicity, Facebook and Twitter are your friends. Even if, well, they’re the two-faced sort who think nothing of riffling through your handbag or backpack when you get up to go the bathroom — you know, glad-handing “friends” (those are air quotes) who are obviously using you for something, only it’s not always entirely clear what. Um . . . I hate to bring this up, but aren’t we as marketers just using our social networks as those same kind of “friends” (and possibly even the friends and fans we acquire on those social networks)—we’re just using them as the means to an end? I do agree, of course, that on a personal level, excessive use of social media can rob us of time and valuable interaction with the people we care about most. It’s good to examine our relationship with the Internet and social media on a personal level and decide whether it’s really worth the time and effort we put into it, or if we might put that time to better use. While that’s the brief summary of the argument at the conclusion of the article, the main thrust is that using social networks is such a great sacrifice of ourselves (even without a time investment) that it’s not worth it. What do you think? Do you demand ROI from personal social network use? Or are you glad that most people don’t ?

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Are You Getting Enough out of Twitter & Facebook?

It’s true to state that different businesses take different approaches to using social media, whether that is blogging, tweeting, creating facebook groups and fan pages or utilising LinkedIn . Small businesses have gained online advantage with their small size flexibility giving them the confidence to stand out for their brand and engage with their audience. It’s key to online success for all business sizes that the “social” element of social media and twitter is really appreciated. Both the smaller, and large businesses which do well in social media are those who embrace with open arms the opportunities it gives. Small businesses are doing well because: – They are taking advantage of their size and “knowing their customer” – They often have just one person tweeting for the firm and no chain of command to define the social media approach. – They socialise and build real business relationships on Twitter and other social media platforms, in the way that traditionally they would offline at places like the Chamber of Commerce. And – it is much cheaper to do so! Larger businesses shouldn’t be afraid to get involved on Twitter and other social platforms. As an organisation you can learn from listening to what is already happening in your area of expertise by using Twitter Search to check out content, tone and discussions, as well as googling to find out if competitors are using social media, and how. Twitter and other socialmedia platforms can work well because business does work on trusted connections, and the online medium of Twitter is just the new extension of that. Businesses will do best when they work within the context of their own environments and answer the unspoken questions (Is it safe for my business, won’t it take too much time, what if it goes wrong, what if an employee talks about us or our work…) honestly and up front before taking action online. At the same time, if you’re not involved you’re missing a great opportunity, and if you don’t test the waters, you’ll never know if it works for your business. When you do dip a toe in the water, you’ve got all those experiences built from networking offline in the “real world” in the corporate environment. Use the right people, who are interested in social media and your subject, and you’re off and running and born to tweet! © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Big Business: Don’t lose out to small businesses on Twitter

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Big Business: Don’t lose out to small businesses on Twitter

Image via Wikipedia Okay so last year I ran a few posts featuring reader questions I’d received through the contact form. It was great because I’d post the question and then the readers would comment to help answer them. Here are a few I think worked out well last year: Answer A Reader Question: Promoting Local Events on Twitter Answer A Reader Question: Multiple Twitter Users In Business Answer A Reader Question: My Twitter Account Was Phished! Answer A Reader Question: Top Tips Answer A Reader Question: Twitter Bullies Answer A Reader Question: Twitter Etiquette? Since it seemed to be a pretty popular type of post (from both sides), AND because Twitter and social media relies heavily on helping people, I’d like to bring that back as a regular feature, so send in your questions ! © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Bringing Reader Questions Back To TwiTip

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Bringing Reader Questions Back To TwiTip

Most people on twitter want to increase the number of people that follow them. I currently only have about 170 followers and so gaining 1,000 new followers may seem a little ambitious. But I am up to the challenge! Here’s my 10 point plan to get 1,000 new followers this year. (This works out to about 85 new followers per month.) 1. Tweet about new blog posts Whenever I post something new on my blog I will also tweet about it. This may sound obvious but it’s worth mentioning. If you have great content you need to make sure that it gets tweeted. 2. Tweet More Often In 2009 I didn’t tweet every day. There were some weeks where I didn’t tweet at all. I need to change this and make 3 tweets every day. If every tweet garners me 1 new follower then tweeting 3 times a day should give me 3 new followers each day or over 1,000 followers by the end of the year. I could tweet more often than 3 times a day but I fear that it will irritate some of my followers. Since I seldom add new stuff to my blog more than once a day I have made a list of old but valuable blog posts. It is from this list I will pull from to tweet about. 3. Develop a schedule and Tweet at the best times I have found that some times of the day are far better for tweeting than others. It seems that 9 AM to 5 PM Pacific Time are the best times to tweet. I don’t really have any strong empirical evidence and I haven’t run numerous controlled experiments. It’s just what I have observed with my own tweets. So I have developed a schedule to ensure that I tweet about a couple things around 9 AM and again at noon. Hopefully tweeting at the right times will result in more retweets and more followers for me. 4. Make it easy for visitors to tweet about my site If you use WordPress there is a simple plug-in that puts a “ReTweet This” button on every blog post. It allows visitors to retweet your post with a click of button. It also displays how many people have tweeted about it. It’s called Tweetcount and is a free download. 5. Invite people to follow me at the end of each post When people finish reading a post on my blog they ask themselves, “What should I do now?” It’s at this point that you should have a link inviting them to follow you on twitter and get more fabulous updates about the topic at hand. 6. Put a link to my twitter account in my e-mail signature I receive e-mails every day from different people asking me how to get traffic to their website. And I respond to everyone of them By putting a link to my twitter profile at the bottom of these e-mail responses I can get more followers. I have no idea why I didn’t do this before. 7. Have a contest with the winners being picked for my twitter followers I’m not sure exactly how I plan to do this but I hope to have it figured out in a few weeks. The first thing is to find a prize that people actually care about. It has to be something that they would be willing to follow me for the chance to win. I run a blog about how to get traffic to your website (My blog is called Nick’s Traffic Tricks) and I tweet about things related to traffic generation. So I want to gain followers that are interested in this topic. As a result I want to select a prize that will attract these kind of people. If I simply give away an iPod I will probably get lots of followers and most will not be interested in what I tweet about. The results will be that I will gain lots of followers in the short run but most of them will eventually drop off. So the prize I select has to be something that entices the type of followers that I want. (If you have any suggestions on how to successfully run a contest on twitter please leave a comment below!) 8. Write for TwiTip I wrote a guest post for TwiTip a month or so ago. That was probably the single best thing I ever did to get more followers on twitter. Within a few days I had 40 new followers. I’m going to try to write for TwiTip twice a month. This should result in 80 new followers each month. 9. Leverage my email list I have an e-mail list of over 1,000 people that receive my traffic tips on regular basis. And I plan to leverage this list to get more followers on twitter. I will add link to my twitter account at the bottom of each e-mail that I send to my list. I just need to think of a way to really entice them to click the link and follow me. I will also e-mail my list every time I post something new on my blog. At the bottom of each blog post is an invitation to follow me on twitter and that will result in a few more followers. 10. Submit each new blog post to StumbleUpon and OnlyWire Submitting your website to StumbleUpon and OnlyWire will result in more traffic to your website. And more traffic means more people are reading your blog posts and seeing your invitation to follow you on twitter. I’ve personally seen a viral effect with StumbleUpon that increased my twitter following. A couple months ago I posted a fantastic way to get backlinks to your website quickly with little effort. (This was something that my readers loved!) Without my knowing, many of my readers stumbled the post sending a ton of traffic to my blog. A side effect of this was that there was a jump in the number of people following me on twitter. If you do nothing else make sure you stumble your content. I believe this is so important that I will actually stumble your content as well. Just go to: http://nickstraffictricks.com/can-i-stumble-your-site/ © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . How I Will Add 1,000 Twitter Followers This Year

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How I Will Add 1,000 Twitter Followers This Year

So I probably should’ve posted this yesterday, but here’s a recap of some of our most popular posts from 2009. Happy New Year, everyone! 7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence 8 Characters to Make Your Tweets Sparkle Who to Follow, and Not to Follow, on Twitter – That is the Question #followfriday Revolution What Did You Do The Day Twitter Almost Died? The Proper Way to Pitch on Twitter Why You Should Start Over On Twitter With A BRAND NEW Account What’s Your Biggest Twitter User Peeve? How to Grow an Interested Following on Twitter using RSS Should You Send an Autoresponse Direct Message to New Followers? 3 Ways to Recognize Bots and Spammers on Twitter How To Unfollow On Twitter With Class 10 Ways To Be Useful on Twitter 10 Reasons To Use Your Real Name As Your Twitter @Name Get More Followers by Spending Less Time on Twitter There’s a Better Way to ReTweet! The 90-10 Rule for Successful Twitter Networking To Follow or Not to Follow; that is the Question A Full-Time Job, a Wife, a Kid and Dial-up Internet: How to Keep up with the ‘Big Boys and Girls’ on Twitter Follow Me and Win a Prize – The Merit of Twitter Competitions 7 Ways to Be Worth Following on Twitter 8 Sure-Fire Ways To Tick Off the Twitterverse © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Happy 2010! Here’s Your 2009 TwiTip Recap

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Happy 2010! Here’s Your 2009 TwiTip Recap