Wegatta Know! / Twitter

Like caramel and chocolate, some things just go well together and nothing epitomizes this sentiment more than integrating the social network juggernaut Twitter with the blogging software giant WordPress. There are a number of Twitter tools on the market that, when combined with WordPress, will turn your blog into a marketing magnet that attracts readers and followers.

Here are a few free Twitter tools you can integrate easily on your WordPress blog to optimize your social networking activities.

1. Twitter Tools – This WordPress Twitter plugin provides a couple of cool and useful functions. The main one is the ability to automatically tweet your blog posts to your Twitter account. Other options include using Bit.ly to shorten URLs, add hashtags to the tweets and to post a daily or weekly digest of your Twitter tweets on your blog.

2. Tweet This Plugin – This WordPress Twitter plugin adds a Retweet button to each blog post so visitors can easily tweet your posts through their Twitter accounts. You can also set the plugin to automatically shorten URLs and to send new and upcoming blog posts to your Twitter account. The nice thing about this plugin is it keeps track of how many people retweeted your post using the button so you can see at a glance how popular the article is.

3. TwitterLink Comments – The producers of CommentLuv also created a WordPress Twitter plugin that allows a commenter to add a link to their Twitter profile each time they leave a comment. Let’s face, if people see they can get an extra link that will promote their projects, they will usually leave a comment.

4. Twitter Widget – Twitter Widget by TwitterCounter is not a specific WordPress plugin but it might be nice to have on a blog. This widget tracks Twitter users who most frequently visit your blog. This is nice for creating a sense of community and for rewarding active users with a little publicity.

5. WordPress Greetbox – This isn’t a Twitter tool per se but it still is a great plugin. This tool detects where your visitor came from and greets them with a personal message that you define in the admin panel. So for example, if your visitor came to your blog by clicking a link on Twitter, they will be greeted with a custom message that says something like, “Hi Twitter user, thanks for stopping by my blog”. This is great for personally welcoming people to your home on the net.

There are many more Twitter tools for WordPress that you can use to create community and to help you manage your social networking. You are only limited by your creativity and imagination.

Stacy Kinney is an Internet Network Marketing and Social Media coach. She teaches the most effective methods for lead generation on the internet today. For more tips and tools that will give your business the boost it needs to compete effectively in the marketplace visit http://RockYourBusinessOnline.com | Follow Stacy on Twitter

Author: Stacy Kinney
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: PCB Prototype & Manufacturing

o Do you know that only 17% of all Twitter accounts tweeted in December 2009?
o Find out how many Twitter accounts do not have any followers, or even send out a single tweet!
o Learn who the core Twitter users are

Figures based on a recent report from RJMetrics, a company which develops online metric analysis software, have shown that Twitter may not be as popular as we are led to believe. There are actually less than 15 million active Twitter users worldwide out of 75 million registered Twitters accounts. In fact, research has shown that approximately only 17% of all Twitter accounts tweeted in December 2009.

But we have to also take into consideration the number of spam and machine bots that tweet up to 150 times per day to increase search engine optimisation. A quick search shows that more than 32% of all active Twitter accounts are made up of these machine bots. These bots mainly tweet about hotels offering good deals, news services, weather services, top news within Digg, games and many more.

If we choose to only concentrate on the percentage of total active accounts of real humans, the percentage of Twitter accounts that tweeted in December will be much lower.

Other data also shows that Twitter may not be as popular as we are led to believe. After all, up to 25% of all Twitter accounts do not have followers, and as much as 40% of Twitter accounts have not even sent a single tweet. In other words, 30 million Twitter accounts have never been updated. Further analysis also shows 80% of all users have sent out less than ten tweets. Not only that, the percentage of accounts sending out tweets has been on a steady decline over the past few months. These worrying figures show that many new users simply do not do anything with their Twitter accounts after signing up. These figures will surely deter any internet marketing firms from investing on Twitter as part of its social media campaign.

Despite these unexpected figures however, online marketing firms must know that Twitter is still growing at an unprecedented rate. In fact, if it maintains its steady pace of creating 6 million new accounts every month, the company should reach one hundred million accounts by early May. Twitter has already made headlines with its current worth of one billion USD based on Twitter’s current private market valuation. This means each active account is worth at least $67. Not bad for a company that was once unflatteringly compared to Second Life, a virtual world that quickly faded into obscurity several years ago.

Not only that, those who have turned into core Twitter users have became increasingly engaged with the social media platform. A report from Sysomos last year has shown that the top 5% of the most committed Twitter users account for as much as 75% of all tweets. Statistics show that these core users are mostly employed in the area of technology and the media. They thus have the ability to instantly spread red hot news worldwide for as much as four hours before it hit the mainstream media.

Although Twitter may not be as popular as generally assumed, it is still widely regarded as an effective news feed platform that appeal to those who are generally more tech and information savvy. Anyone considering huge internet marketing campaigns should still consider Twitter as part of its social media engagement plans.

Christina has 8 years experience working with companies such as HSBC, Bayer Healthcare and Packard Bell at Online Marketing Company – Conversion Hub. She is also a SEO consultant for a search engine optimization company and an expert in social media and marketing.

Author: Christina Tan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Smart cooker

I was reminded this week when asked by a friend about how to get over the twitter 2k limit. My friend was new to twitter and had been trying to build a following as quickly as he could for his business. He started adding friends and when he got around the 2000 number he was no longer able to follow anyone. Being new he thought he did something wrong so he created another account and did it again. So he starts following people and when he gets around the 2000 number of people he is following he again can not follow anyone. The number it stops him at is not the same but near the 2K point. Since the two numbers are not exactly the same it is less apparent what is going on. At this point he is getting frustrated. What the heck is going on. What am I doing wrong. I don’t get it.

It was at this time that he saw an ad I had written that was titled “I have over 80K followers on Twitter” He saw this ad on Facebook and since we are Facebook friends he reached out to me and asked. “What is the secret to the 2K limit with Twitter” You see he had added 20 accounts on twitter and had reached the limit all 20 times. He saw the pattern that it stopped around 2000 but did not know what to do.

Twitter has put limits in place that keep people from doing exactly what my fiend was doing and that is following as many people as he could in hopes that they would follow him back. You see on Twitter the only people that see your tweets are those that are following you. So the key is to get as many people as you can to follow you so when you tweet they see your tweets. So to keep people from following thousands and thousands of people in hopes that some follow them back and then give that person an opportunity to spam their follows with sales pages, twitter has put limits in place. The limit is 10%. You can not follow more than 10% more people than are following you. Twitter does not enforce the 10% limit until you get to 2000 people you are following.

So what this means is that you need to have 1901 people following you before you can follow 2001. Now these numbers are not exact which is why it is not so easily detected by the newbie to twitter. Twitter checks for limits on a timed schedule and depending on when they last check and how many followers you have and setting the locks and unlocks the actual numbers are around these limits but rarely exact. So what I advise people is to get their followers up to 1950 and they will see that the limit is lifted and they can add more followers.

Bob has over 100K followers on twitter. As you know there is more to it than just followers. Bob also knows how to monetize the followers using his special techniques and marketing system. Learn Twitter from one of the best in the MLM industry on this subject.

Bob Howard is member of the elite master mind team for the best online marketing system on the planet. To work with Bob Howard and learn more about the marketing system that has allowed him to achieve his success, you will need to register on his blog.

Author: Bob B Howard
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Pressure cooker

Twitter is among the hottest properties on the internet today. But, there are many business owners that are mystified by this popularity & how to make good use of it. There are quite a few people that feel they should use twitter but don’t know how to make full use of it as a platform for building your exposure, online. This article aims at simplifying twitter so that you can learn to use it to help promote your business.

Firstly, until I myself downloaded this gadget called TweetDeck I was as confused as any other person on how Twitter can benefit my business. This gadget lets you update Facebook and twitter at the same time. It is one of those applications that you absolutely must have if you want to be able to understand twitter. This desktop application lets you sort people that you want to follow on twitter into separate groups, lets you limit the amount of tweets that you can see at 1 time & also lets you get rid of all the tweets that you have already seen with just a simple click. Also, with this application, finally a search on Twitter starts to make a little sense.

After TweetDeck, my Twitter experience has significantly improved. As a new user of Twitter, you might feel a little intimidated when you visit your own home page. You will find a large number of posts from people that you are following whom you may or may not know about and you might be overwhelmed by the amount on content that you see on your page. If you want to effectively use the application then just group the people that you wish to follow together and you get a powerful tool where you are at the forefront with regard to anything that is happening on the internet or in your industry.

How do you start on Twitter? The first thing that you will need to do is understand the things that you want to read and the people you would like to follow and to identify clearly the things about Twitter that you like. In my case, I wish to follow people in my industry who have some meaningful things to say or point towards interesting applications, articles, videos or blogs that I would like to review but would never have been able to find on my own. Then, depending on what I like and the people whom I find interesting I have started writing my own posts so as to grow my own audience on Twitter.

How do you use this for business? It is a very good tool when it comes to linking and this is great for businesses. You can use Twitter to direct people to your website or to articles that you have written and you can even direct them towards services which you would like to highlight. You direct the traffic. Also, google indexes twitter and thus, in many cases, your Twitter home page may show up in organic search results. You can use TwitterFeed to directly post blog posts onto Twitter. If you have a website or a blog of your own, then you can get more people following you by putting TwitterFeed onto your web page. People that do not have your information can simply choose to follow you on Twitter.

The most important thing about Twitter is that you should identify the things that you like the most and then frame your ideas similarly. You have to learn to use Twitter properly before you actually make a successful business tool.

Learn More For Free At http://www.twitter-pitstop.com

Author: Barry Dixon
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Make PCB Assembly

Getting a Twitter education is much simpler than you may think. If you’re prepared to play full out and learn the basics of Twitter, then you will naturally go and look for those resources that allow you to do just that. Yet the problem that remains is that people do not know where to start and this is due to the huge amounts of information already out there. It’s easy to get lost in such a maze of information. This article hopes to guide people to some good resources to get started today.

Articles

Article directories such as EzineArticles and Articles Base contain thousands of articles which serve to teach the basics of Twitter and social media in general. If you like reading and want an abundant source of information, then visiting one of these article directories is something you should start doing.

Blogs

In addition to article directories, there are many people out there who blog about their experiences on social media sites such as Twitter as well as offering to teach newbies different things. The best social media site out there by far is Mashable which not only provides you with a Twitter education but also lets you know of any cool Twitter applications or functions that get released. If anything new happens in social media, you can be sure that Mashable will be the first to cover it.

Video Tutorials

If you are not a big fan of reading, then articles and blogs would not have appealed to you one bit. On the other hand, video tutorials will be appealing. The beauty of video tutorials is that chunks of information which may take hours to consume can be consumed in a matter of minutes with video. As a result, you can learn much more quickly and be on your way to becoming a Twitter expert.

At the end of the day, the way you get a Twitter education is up to you. Just work out whether you prefer reading or watching and how much time you have on your hands to make a wise choice.

Martin Sejas is the owner and creator of Twitversity, an online education course teaching newbies how to use Twitter. The course is comprised of 12 Twitter tutorials covering the most important concepts to kick start and accelerate your Twitter knowledge.

Author: Martin Sejas
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Wordpress plugin Guest Blogger

When you start talking about Twitter in the community, it’s common to see a controversy start. There are some people who think it’s useless and others who claim to be Twitter-addicted. As with all things, there are good and bad signs but I’ve felt compelled to write about why I Twitter.

I’ll admit that I was one who first signed up for Twitter and then left for many months without sending a single Tweet. I’d read about it online and wasn’t thrilled to hear of another social networking site making its way up the net-popularity ladder.

When I first tried it, I wasn’t really sure what the point was. But then I did come back later and give it a second try and I realized that the key to success with Twitter lies in finding the best way to make it work for you.

For me, Twitter is a way to build a brand name, advertise new books, promote my articles, meet other writers, find article ideas and even book ideas, contact people regarding interviews, be contacted regarding interviews, watch job boards in one single stream, advertise my services, help establish myself as a niche expert and much more.

I have met some friends along the way and the socialization can be fun and interesting but the bottom line is that if Twitter wasn’t making me money, I probably wouldn’t be using it. The spammers are annoying, I dislike the social networking groups and games (i.e. Join my Mobster family; I’m sending you a gift) but the benefits I get outweigh the downside and it’s well worth the time I put into it.

Each person has to make their own decisions about whether or not Twitter is right for them. If you’re not getting anything out of it, then obviously you shouldn’t waste your time. However, I advise you not to judge until you’ve at least given it a full-fledged effort to see what it can do for you.

Lisa Mason is a freelance writer with a specialty in Internet content and SEO articles and the author of How to Earn a Living Writing for the Internet as well as two poetry anthologies and a how-to poetry book. She has written thousands of articles, hundreds of ebooks and thousands of website pages and related content.

Professional wordsmith for hire: gamer, wife, mother, entrepreneur, published poet, co-owner of game guides company, public speaker and Internet business consultant. You can learn more or follow Lisa’s blog from her website

Author: Lisa A Mason
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger

Twitter has become so successful, so quickly because users run and manage most of the communication. The world has been amazed at the speed of delivery and of dissemination of news stories around that break.

For example when the plane landed in the Hudson river, Twitter broke the story before all the main news channels. The Iran election was one of the main forms of news from the country when outside news channels were banned. And sports starts and celebrities often broadcast their latest news and gossip on Twitter before their PR agent has time to cobble together some good spin.

But what is the future for Twitter?

At some point it needs to generate some income. In recent weeks there have been rumours of the high probability of Twitter cutting a deal with Google. Twitter has had one of the biggest impacts on the internet world in recent history.

Can Twitter continue to innovate and create a sustainable business?

If Twitter sells out to Google, it is likely to perish as quickly as it came. Twitter dominates the real time communication category but they are facing stiff competition from the likes of Facebook who are striving to grab a piece of the pie. If twitter fails to innovate, it will confine itself to being a communications medium, or even worse, a news distribution engine and will surely perish. In the same way, Google as a business is not a search engine but an advertising business that is printing money at unprecedented rates. Google does this by owning the equivalent of distribution in the digital age. The ability to automate the placement of advertising next to relevant content and map consumer queries to useful advertising stands at the heart of Google’s success. Others have tried and failed to generate the revenues seen at Google: hotmail, digg, New York Times Online etc

Twitter has the potential to become a dominant, sustainable business but it has a narrow window of opportunity.

Twitter needs to move quickly or else its value will start to be eroded by its hungry competitors. If it does a deal with Google, all is lost for Twitter. If it gets creative, it will continue to revolutionize the internet and our way of searching for solutions.Users could engage with Twitter for discovery. For example using geo tagging :if you are walking through New York City and fancy seeing a film, simply type in “film” into Twitter and receive a stream of the closest cinemas, with start times and what’s on.

Watch Twitter closely over the next few months- change is in the air….

Sam Goldsmith is a successful internet entrepreneur, marketer and all round sportsman!

Get FREE tips here on how to use Twitter to drive thousands of followers to your website and blogs. Monetize Twitter fast. Find out how…

http://www.mytwittersuccess.net

Author: Sam Goldsmith
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Bumper guardian

So, you’re after more Twitter followers, right?

Well I’ll tell you right now that having 10′000 followers or more does not mean much on its own.

If you want to build your followers and have some sort of influence within Twitter, you need to build your followers up in certain ways, otherwise you’ll end up being followed by nothing but thousands of bots, spammers, scammers, and people that are simply trying to sell you their trash.

Here are 5 things to focus on when it comes to building up your followers.

Offer value
Trust me, most people don’t really want to know what you just had for dinner. If you ask interesting questions and answer other peoples questions, then you’re a valuable tweeter. Focus on offering helpful and interesting information. Tweet what blogs you’re reading and what you’re currently finding interesting, and give your opinions in the process. And like I said, ask questions. People will get involved, people will retweet you, and you will be seen by other peoples’ followers in the region of thousands. I can assure you, you’re going to get more followers this way. Valuable followers, not bots and spammers.

Tweet regularly, but not too regularly
You really do need to be fairly active on your Twitter account in order to keep people interested. Going for a few days with little to no tweeting could result in some people unfollowing you. Stay active every day, but don’t tweet random stuff for the sake of being active. Like I said, people don’t want to know what you just had for dinner, and they don’t want to know what you had to drink 9 minutes later. That’s the kind of tweeting that will lead to people unfollowing you. You can automatically tweet a handful of interesting articles per day in your niche using Google Alerts and Twitter Feed (Google them).

Leverage your network
You probably already have social networking profiles, maybe even a blog, right? Well I advise you to drive traffic from those sources to your Twitter account. Whether it be Facebook, or dare I say MySpace.. just take advantage of any friend lists you have anywhere else on the web. When posting blog posts, be sure to leave a link to your Twitter profile. If people like your writing, you’re going to more followers out of that. You can do the same sort of thing by submitting useful articles to article directories, which is really a way of marketing yourself and getting traffic to your Twitter profile.

Connect with others
Your followers should be a lot more than just statistics. Attempting to connect with like-minded people by answering their questions is a great way to get networked. But also, take a good look at the people following you. Check out their blogs, their work, and opinionate on their stuff. If you find someone you could help, help them. If you find someone who can help you, ask them for that help. If you get into the habit of doing this, you’re going to drastically increase the value that your Twitter profile following really has. And you’ll certainly stand out from a lot of the more isolated tweeters out there.

Build a brand
Whether you’re on Twitter for building a business or not, having a brand is a great way for building your follower list. If you have a great personality then let it shine through in your tweets. But don’t forget the technical things; fill out your bio and sum yourself up in a nutshell. Your Twitter background should have a logo/name and a photo of yourself. Use that same logo and photo of yourself everywhere, especially on your own network. When someone sees the same logo and photo more than once, they tend to remember. You want to be remembered, right? Rather than just becoming long forgotten among the masses. You’ll become known for your interest. Your niche(s).

Well, those are some useful tips for building up a steady flow of valuable followers in the way it should be done. But Twitter is so saturated now, so how do you get in the region of thousands of people following you in short time, rather than just hundreds?

Taking it further
If you’re interested in getting at least 1000 targeted followers per week, you may want to use the 1000 Weekly Follows guide.

1000 Weekly Follows is a 5-day guide with some simple but useful steps to building a successful Twitter account of 1000+ followers per week, taking less than half an hour to apply per day. 1000 Weekly Follows highly encourages relationship-building in the process of gaining you 1000+ followers per week so that you end up with thousands of VALUABLE followers.

You should grab a copy of the guide today from http://www.1000weeklyfollows.com.

Thanks for reading, and have fun tweeting!

– Ashley Cooper

http://www.mynamesash.com

Author: Ashley C Cooper
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Gadget reviews

For a start, when choosing your username it is recommended to use your name to enable people to find you on Twitter. If you decide not to use your name try to be original and savvy, and the username you choose should match your username on other sites used by you for your business. This way people will recognise you and your business by this name and will easily find you on all your sites and when Googled, all your information will be found with one search.

You can get Twitter backgrounds at little or no cost to you which look neat and professional, this can make a big difference to your Twitter account and the respect you receive from followers. Try these Twitter background sites twitterimage.com (free) twitart.com and twitterbackgrounds.com (customised).

You are limited to a small amount of words so make the most of what you have when writing your profile. Your Twitter profile is to tell people who you are, what you do, what you are about and what your hobbies are. Let your personality and character shine through.

Use a nice, smiley picture with a happy, positive face to represent yourself. Try not to use a picture of something else as your profile pic, most users like to see the person behind the account where possible.

Regular tweets (about 10-15 per day) will keep your followers interested and checking back for more. Use the 3 to 1 rule, 3 quality content tweets to 1 ad. Post links to articles you may have written or to your updated blog. If you don’t write articles, post links to other articles which you think may help your followers. Try socialoomph.com for scheduled tweets. I normally spend 10 minutes in the morning managing my tweets for the whole day using this feature.

Twitter is not a great asset to you unless you build up your followers and here’s a great way to build up over 1000 quality followers every week! Look for people who are well known in business and MLM and try to follow their followers, add around 200 per day at the most as Twitter can suspend your account if you follow too many at once. Now, most people have auto follow set up so when somebody follows them they automatically follow back. Those who don’t are the ones you want to unfollow. Friendorfollow.com will give you a list of people who aren’t following you back, Huitter.com unfollows Twitter followers who are not following you in return and it does this in a matter of minutes. Oh, and if you want to auto follow your followers as well, socialoomph.com has this option when you are setting up your account.

It is a good idea to add quality followers and also unfollow people who don’t follow you back every day this takes about 15 minutes to do every morning.

I hope these tips help save you time and make good usage of Twitter. When you are in the routine of this articles advice you need only spend half an hour each morning on Twitter which is pretty good for a free marketing strategy which has the potential to bring you lots of new customers.

Wishing you Success

Kelly and Andrew
http://meetkellyandandrew.blogspot.com
http://wealthinbusinesssolutions.com

Author: Andrew D Fennessy
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Duty on LCD/Plasma TV

I think we can all say that Social media is growing more and more each and every day. If your business isn’t on the top Social Media sites, you are missing the boat.

Is Social Media the end all of marketing? Of course not, but it is a huge powerhouse that if done right, businesses can get a ton of exposure for without spending a fortune on marketing.

Let’s look at Twitter. It’s the most basic of the top sites out there, yet is very powerful if used right to market our business.

Communicate With Customers

Twitter offers a fast and easy way to communicate with customers and prospects. 140 Characters at a time, you can keep in touch with your customers about new things going on with the company. Are you opening a new location? Tweet it. Offering a new product? Tweet that too. What about when you are going to be at a trade show? That too is a great Tweet for your business. Get them involved and let them know what’s up with you and your business.

Fast Specials And Offers

In the past, if you wanted to send a special to your customers you had to mail them a postcard of brochure. Then came the ability to email them, but for marketing a small business, Twitter for business marketing is great. It’s cheap (free), easy and immediate.

Many Twitter users have their Twitter feeds go right to their phones. No need to wait for Johnny to get home and check his email. No chance that your message will get lost in the junk folder.

You can send out multiple messages each and every day without spending a dime or having to wait for the mail to get there.

Customer Service

As more and more people are using Twitter in their everyday lives, Twitter has become a great way to offer customer service for customers and prospects asking questions. It’s easy to do. Someone asks a question and you just reply with a link to a support article, or link to where they can find the answer.

One of the major Credit card gateways had an outage and instead of spending hundreds of man hours replying to single emails and phone calls, they dedicated one person just to post to their Twitter account updates on the issue and how it was being resolved. They then just directed all other forms of contact to that one place.

That gave the customers a one stop location to let people know what was going on and what the situation was.

Things like this are just the tip of the iceberg on how you can use Twitter for business. I know at first glance, most people don’t get the idea of hot to use Twitter for business but it really is a simple and easy to use tool that can be very effect in communicating with your customers and prospects about everything you have to offer. It’s not complicated, just 140 characters at a time.

So, if you want to really take using Twitter for Business to the next level, find a ton of followers and use Twitter as an effective business marketing tool, download my free Twitter For Business Step By Step Guide where I’ll walk you through some great resources on where to find followers, build your list and make Twitter a great marketing tool without spending a dime!

Author: Ely Delaney
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Pressure Cooker