Twitter Tips

OK, let's admit it, Baby Boomersare not as computer savvy as youngsters but we try. I refuse to let Twtter intimidate me!! So here goes...

Some great tips & tricks for Twitter

Third-party tools

Take advantage of the hundreds of different third-party online  tools and services that enhance your Twitter experience. Below are a few of our  favorites.

• TwitPic - Take  advantage of TwitPic to post pictures on your tweets. If you want to post  pictures while away from the computer, use the Twitterific app.
• Qwitter - Great  service that sends an e-mail any time someone unsubscribes from your Twitter  profile and mentions a possible Twitter post you made that may have caused them to leave.
• Manageflitter  - Fantastic site for managing your followers and getting an easy to read  overview of people not following you back, quiet users, and inactive users.
• WeFollow  - Great website that allows you to add yourself to a listing of Twitter users by  tags you find interesting.
• SocialOomph - Another great  service with a collection of free Twitter tools including the ability  to schedule when a tweets gets posted.
• Tweetbeat - An  excellent site that takes the trending topics on Twitter and gives  you a clearer explanation of present and past trending topics.
• TwitterMeme -  Another great location to find the hottest links on Twitter.
• Twitter Grader - Great  service that grades any Twitter account and gives you additional details and  ranking information.
• Twitter Fan Wiki Apps - Finally, this wiki has a listing of several  hundred different Twitter applications and tools for users  wanting more.

Use Twitter Search in Inovative Ways:

Take full advantage of the Twitter search tool. Below are just a  few tips that can help improve your search capabilities on Twitter.

• Search for your website or blog URL and see if others are mentioning your  page.
• Search for anything near you by adding near:"city state". For example,  typing near:"Salt lake city Utah" club would return current tweets that  have happened in Salt Lake City, Utah with the keyword club in them.
• Find people who you may enjoy following by searching for keywords that interested  you.
• If you do not want tweets with links add ? -filter:links  at the end of your search query.
• Need more options, use the Advanced Twitter search.
• Any time you get excellent results click the "Save this search" button to  save that search. These searches can then be found under "Saved Searches" on the  right-hand part of your profile on the old Twitter interface or under the  "Searches" tab next to your timeline on the new Twitter interface.

Followers

• Engage followers.
• Do not follow too many people. No one is going to follow someone who is  following thousands of people but only has 10 followers.
• Retweet interesting posts.
• Retweet and participate in conversations with people with a lot of  followers.
• Realize it is impossible for anyone to read  every tweet.
• When first joining do not follow hundreds of people, doing this  may mark you as a bot.

Create useful and interesting tweets

• Try making all your tweets informative, useful, or funny.
• Do not post mundane posts, e.g. eating a bowl of cereal.
• Add hastags to your tweets. For  example, if your tweet is about computers, consider adding #computer in the tweet.