Twitter is an exceptional tool to engage community. I provided a quick Twitter Overview and this process walks you through signing up, adjusting your settings, selecting user name(s), avatars, meta data and importing your current contacts.

Being active and engaging in your community is vitally important. The same time you invest in your personal face to face relationships, you will need to invest in growing and enhancing your online relationships to be successful and built trust.

Overview of Twitter Basics

Setting up a free Twitter account is simple.  Once set up you can move beyond the basics, and consider getting several accounts and avoid others from obtaining your brand, domain, product names, etc.

Check List:

Free Account
Select Name
Avatar/Photo
Global Location
Change Design Colors
Import Connections
Set Notices
Free Account.
Brief Biography

Free Account

Twitter names/ID’s are getting as popular as Domain names.  The best way to protect your brand is to reserve your name now.  Twitter allows you to register one user name per email. Have other email addresses available to this purpose.

Select Name

Keep User Names Consistent.  Use your real name, company name, blog title or a brand name.  Be consistent between networks. It is much easier to develop relationships, with your networks, when your community recognizes you across applications.  If you are your own brand, then using your real name “tawnypress”, or a hybrid “tawny_press”, plays a significant roll in your Google ranking.

Brief Biography

This is over looked many times.  Meta Data is important, very important on the web, but not usually people other than developers understand.  The explanation is simple, Meta data is a “tag” or keyword, which allows information to be found through a search on the web.

Write your biography, as you would a websites meta tags, in fewer than 160 characters. Choice words that best describe you, both professionally and personally.  People make observations based upon your bio and the look and feel, they express you and your company.

Avatar/Photo

Select a photo and use it consistently over all other social applications.  Be easily recognizable. In most cases an avatar in a 100 x 100 pixel size, in a JPG, GIF or PNG format, works across most applications, but there are exceptions.

Note: A 100 x 100 pixel size photo appears pixilated in TweetDeck’s larger profile window. Using a larger size of 1000 x 1000 file size, not exceeding 700 k, works best overall.

Global Location

Under “Profile” there is a LOCATION field.  Input your location in your profile; city, state or at minimum your country and state. This will help people locals people and business to locate you on Twitter when using search tools such as TwitterLocal or Twellow.

Change Design Colors

The color selector is greatly improved since I last covered this section.  Select colors that match or compliment your brands identity and image.

To activate the color wheel, click on one of the fields; background, text, links, sidebar or sidebar border. Click on the color wheel to select the desired color. The color wheel will put the appropriate web colors in for you, or you can directly input your web hex color information.

Important note: until you SAVE CHANGES, your preferences will not be changed. If you do not like your selections, CANCEL and begin again.

Import Your Connections

You can import your contacts from Yahoo, Gmail or AOL. On your home bar, click on “Find People”.

Note: if you use Outlook, you can export your CSV file and import into one of these free services.

Set Notices

These settings allow you to control notification emails.  You can set to have Twitter email you each time you have a new following or are send a Direct Message, by someone already in your network.

Mobile Settings

There are setting for having Twitter send to you though text messages.  Twitter does not charge for this service, but your phone provider, depending on your plan may.  There are many applications and services to view twitter on your phone, without using text messaging, depending on your phone and many are free.

There is even a mobile version of Twitter at http://mobile.twitter.com .

This was a brief overview of the Twitter Profile basics.  Take Twitter for a test run.  Take some time, follow a few people, listen to the real world in real time.  You can also see current trending topics at tweetmeme.com .

Spring is here and I felt like a clean, fresh start. We have spent the last 7 months on two large development projects, and we upgraded our website, so we decided the blog needed a new fresh beginning.

The old blog had a few of my favorite posts, so I decided I would to start by updating a few past articles and started with Social Media. As I read through them, it was like going through a time machine. It brought me back to a time, not so long ago, when people were laughing at Twitter, didn’t understand the usefulness of LinkedIn, and Facebook was for high school students. If you would mention Facebook or Twitter for business, most were met with resistance.

How perspectives have changed. Early adapters recognized the potential, but to be honest my own expectations have been exceed, especially with Facebook. Two years ago when our design team began developing Facebook Pages for clients, Facebook had less than 2.18% of online traffic. Today it has become a social phenomenon making up 7.07%, compared to Google at 7.03%, and 20 million people becoming fans of Pages each day, enabling business and brands to drive customer awareness.

Today, Facebook is one of the most powerful and useful social media services for brands, with over 3 million active Pages and growing. There are 1.5 million local businesses on Facebook today and 20 million people becoming fans of Pages each day. If you are in brand or business, you should take another look at Facebook. It might just surprise you.

LinkedIn is a company that was created on one simple mantra “Relationships Matter”. They have become one of the most widely used professional networking sites of today. The site has grown and has added more interactive functionality for sharing.

The LinkedIn Answers, similar to Google Answers or Yahoo! Answers, has grown considerably and is a fast and effective method to get answers to business related questions, from your network and from industry experts. It even has features for jobs seekers or professionals wanting to expand in their careers with new opportunities.

And if you haven’t heard of Twitter yet, you are missing the largest surprise to come from social media in my opinion. I remember myself asking what Twitter was two years ago and was lucky to have people on LinkedIn help me learn and experiment. It is instant information whether you have a question, need information or want to see what the world topic is currently trending. Many applications, but Tweetmeme is one of my favorite sites to catchup quickly, but there are hundreds of others available.

All of these services have upgraded iPhone, Blackberry applications, helping you stay on top of your networks and easily communicate or reach out in a moment.

Take a quick and free peek at what people are saying about your brand or business with one of these free services, such as Addictomatic, it is quick and easy. Or, Setup a simple Google Alert that sends you an email each time your name, your brand, product or services are mentioned on the internet.

If you want to see more including simple monitoring charts visit Sensidea’s website and download Social Seek’s for your desktop and has a free iPhone application.

I am most surprised by how quickly Facebook and Twitters popularity has grown in the past few years.  I look forward to seeing the future.

I was reading TwiTip and realized there was a comment field, to link your twitter address, linking to your Twitter home page.  That is a great idea. I searched for a Wordpress Plugin, none was found on Wordpress.org. This worked great until I upgraded to 2.7 and am hoping this plugin will soon be upgraded as well.

To my delight, a few days later ProBlogger, wrote a post on his process.  He provided a link to Ideashower, a plugin developer with a method of adding fields into the comment section. Between ProBlogger ’s post and the overview of the developers site I was able to code my comments, fairly simple. If you use Thesis template, ProBloggers post would benefit you.

Here is the process I used.  Let me remind you, each Theme is different, so your code may look slightly different. It is also a great idea to make a backup before changing any code, here is a plugin referred by @panah, WP-DB-Backup. I used Dreamweaver to modify my php files and used my “undo” a few times testing this method.

Download Plugin Files

Download the plugin files from the developers site.

• • Download – Version 0.2 (For Wordpress 2.0 – 2.3)
    • • Variable Setup – Access Settings > Extra Comment Fields.
        • • Wordpress Plugin: Extra Comment Fields

          How I added the Twitter ID field to comments on Twitip.com

      Activate – Log into Admin Panel. Access the Plugins, locate “Extra Comment Fields” and click Activate.

      

      Comment.php Modification

      In this section, you will be modifying your html code. I am using Dreamweaver as my editor. Open your Comments.php file, usually located in wp-content/themes/yourthemename/comments.php

      Part 1

      Look for a piece of code similar to the image below. This code may be grouped together with several similar lines, grouped together, with “text” name(s) like comment_author, comment_author_email or comment_author_url or something similar.

      When you locate the correct code, copy one entire section, and paste it at the bottom.

      

      Part 2

      

      a.Name =”twitter” (your reference name)
      b.Id=”twitter” (Set in Activation & Variable setup A)
      c.Value = $comment_extra_twitter; ?>” (refers to plugin & variable set)
      d.Twitter ID’,'arthemia’) (“Twitter ID: is the label that will show on your comment form)
      e.optional)’,'arthemia’) (“optional” is the label that will show on your comment form)

      Once your code is modified, upload your new comment.php page. Go to your blog, view your comment section, it should now have a Twitter ID line for commenter’s to add their Twitter Id.

      

      Part 3

      This next step is a method of allowing people to enter their user names with and without the “@” symbol, and continue to link correctly. This piece of code, courtesy of ProBlogger referenced above.

      Look for code that looks similar to this:

      div class=”commentlist”

      Under this section of code, courtesy of ProBloggers post, paste the below code as is:

      extra_twitter) {
      // Strip out the @ if they put it there because we’re going to need to get rid of it for the url anyway
      $extra_twitter = preg_replace(”/^@/”, “”, $comment->extra_twitter);
      $extra_twitter = htmlentities($extra_twitter); ?>
      ”>@

      Twitter Added to your Comments:

      This is such a quick and easy way to locate the commenters blog as well as their Twitter Id, which is as important to me.

      

      Let me just say, I HOPE someone creates a great plugin to add your Twitter ID in the future. Every Theme is different, so please, if you follow this process and find any differences with your theme, please post the work around. I hope this was helpful and simple to understand. Please post a comment if you add it to your blog, so we can see your creativity.

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  Download – Version 0.4 (Requires Wordpress 2.5+)

  Install the Plugin

  Unzip the “Extra-comment-fields” zip file.  Upload the file PHP file “extra-comment-fields“ to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory, under your themes directory. This file does not have a folder as do many Plugins available.

  Activation & Setup

This post has taken an interesting turn. My original thought was to feature individuals, as well as big brands in this set of examples.  That turns out to be an entirely different post, as few big brands have actually “branded” their Twitter backgrounds.  Valuable no cost space to show their unique brand, being wasted. Why? Maybe it was over looked as they hashed out their ROI justifications.

What the big brands have missed, the savvy business professionals have not. What do I mean? Take a look at these creative backgrounds, not only shows their brand, but also contains useful information in addition to the mini bio of 160 characters and your single URL link.

Sonny Gill

In this background Sonny Gill has managed to show his brand logo, email, AOL IM, Google Talk and shows the symbols of six of his other networks; Linkedin, Plurk, Facebook, Digg and StumbleUpon.

It is simple, clean and sleek, yet packed with valuable information.

Armano

I am constantly inspired by David Armano’s graphic illustrations, so it was no surprise his Twitter background would be as inspiring. He has his brand logo, expanded bio and information of address for five other networks. As a personal touch, a photograph of his motorcycle, showing more of his personality and interests.

Mayhem Studios

Calvin Lee updated his background just yesterday. Thank you Calvin! He gave me one more great example for my this post. He has managed to show his brand logo, website, blog and email addresses. In addition, four alternative network addresses, he is available to engage; on Linkedin, Bizmik, Facebook and Skype.

Michael Bertoldi

In this simple, clean and sleek. Michael Bertoldi has his brand logo, email address and five symbols of other networks he engages his community; Linkedin, Deli.cio.us, Facebook, Digg and StumbleUpon.

Amber Naslund (aka AmberCadabra)

Amber Naslund’s Twitter background is simple, clean and has focus on her branding. She has matched the images, log and colors between her Twitter background and her blog. Nice transition and no doubt it is the same brand.

Cheryl Smith

Cheryl Smith’s Twitter background is a great example of  branding. Her Twitter background is clean, simple and has focus on her branding. What is most nice is when you go from Twitter page to blog. The transition is smooth and almost transparent.

Need help creating a custom or semi custom background?

Not everyone wants to spend precious time on branding, yet wants to set their Twitter page apart, so I have listed a few sources to help those who want to create something, quick and easy. Here are a few websites to help, some services are free, others have are fee based.

Twitbacks -This application allows you to be creative, without any design or illustration skills.  You can add your name, company, website, blog, bio, photo, logo, phone, email, twitter name and add social network icons. As of this post, the service is free.

Twitterbacks – They make it simple for those with Photoshop or any software capable of editing a PSD file. Go ahead and download a file and construct your own Twitter background.

There are many other great backgrounds out there and over time I will locate and enjoy more. If you have a good background, please drop a comment and give us your Twitter page link.  I also made a Flickr album with more backgrounds I have admired.

Conclusion

Have you looked at your Twitter background? Do any of these samples inspire you? Will you create your own creative background? If you create or always have a creative Twitter background, please post a comment with a link.  All creativity welcome.

I admire these professionals for thinking outside the box and taking advantage of what has been missed by many big brands. To learn more about them, click their Twitter Background. Enjoy.

Related articles:

• • Using Twitter to Enhance Your Social Network

  37 More Information Packed Twitter Backgrounds

I follow a variety of wonderful professionals on Twitter. Through their daily links I learn a great deal, on a variety of levels, without the time investment of surfing the internet for information. I use links as part of my daily education process, quick, easy, sent by respected members of my network community.

In return, I send out information that I found interesting or helpful. That information was valuable to me, but how to analysis the value to my network community? Sure, many times I get tweets of appreciation or DM’s, but that is not a analysis by any means.

In compiling a database of social media applications, I came upon Tweetburner. It provides information on your most popular URL’s shared on Twitter, historical statistics, and more.

The first rule in using this application is the requirement of sending links in the shortened URL format “Twurl”. Twurl? Yes, you guessed it, not the format I had been using for the past eight months. A little frustrating to start a test with no history to view, however once I sent out five new links, I had plenty to help me evaluate Tweetburner.

Tweetburners Home Page

Let visit the Tweetburner home page.  On the home page of Tweetburner, you can view the generated Twurl’s to date, Twurl ‘s recently shared, most popular and top 10 URLs in the past hour.
Here is what you can view :

•    Current number of Twurls
•    Number of times Twurls have been clicked
•    Most popular Twirls in the last hour
•    Top 10 URLs with most clicks in the last hour
•    Recently shared Twurls

Now that we have teased you with Tweetburner ‘s main page, let us set up your free account and view your own Twitter and Friendfeed statistics.

Create Your Free Account

Let us start by creating your FREE account. This is a two step process:

Step 1 - Go to the Tweetburner website and click on “Create An Account”. Keep it simply and use your Twitter login and password.

Step 2 - Customize your Tweetburner account to include Twitter and Friendfeed. Here is the information you will need on hand:

•    Twitter Name & Password
•    Friendfeed User Name
•    Friendfeed remote key.

What’s a remote key? A remote key is a password to share with third-party applications and other websites, which allows them to interact with your account with limits.  This is much safer than supplying your password.

Your Stats

Your account is now set up.  Let us look around at YOUR user statistics. Start by clicking on the “Your stats” tab.

•    Clicks on user’s Twurls last week
•    Number of Twurls shared in the past Two weeks
•    YOUR top 5 Twurls
•    Latest Twurls

Please Note:  As previously stated, if your historical links were shortened using any format, other than “Twurl”, you will not see a history.  To begin tracking your history, set your application to send links in a “Twurl” format.

Archive

The archive page show past results, message, Twurl ID, number of Clicks to date and the date and time posted. This page is provides overall statistics on how many people clicked on your link.

How does this help you? This provides insight to the value of your links.

Account Sign Out

To sign out of your account, simply click on the button “Signout”. Obviously self explanatory, but I wanted to complete ALL the tabs.

One wonderful thing about Twitter is the ability to interact and learn from your community. I find Tweetburner to be useful in evaluating the usefulness of my URL links.  How do you evaluate the usefulness of the URL’s you send in your Tweets to share? What other tools have your discovered and why do you find them beneficial? Do see Tweetburner as a value to helping you engage more effectively? Would appreciate your feedback. If you found this post helpful, please consider subscribing to our feed.

Related articles:

• Using Twitter to Enhance your Social Network
• Links – How to Find Them and Share Them on Twitter

You have selected a Social Networking service, created your profile, selected a photo of yourself and invited your contacts to join your network. Now you have built a network! Congratulations!

The network you have created is an important one. You have invited people to become part of your network community, so what is your plan? How are you going engage with your community?

Being active and engaging in your community is vitally important. The same time you invest in your personal face to face relationships, you will need to invest in growing and enhancing your online relationship.

Twitter is an exceptional tool to engage community. Why Twitter? It allows you to communicate in real-time, share information, get help to questions and build relationships. People share many aspects of themselves on Twitter, much more than the carefully planned bio on their profiles. Twitter allows you to gain unique insight and open the doors to many new relationships quickly.

Overview of Twitter Basics

1. Account – Setup a free Twitter account.
2. Name – Pick a meaningful user name that you can use in all of your networks. Be consistent.
3. Avatar/Photo – Be easily recognizable. Select a photo and use it consistently over all other social applications.
4. Bio – Complete your one line bio, telling visitors a little about yourself.
5. Location – Put your location in your profile. This will help local Twitter users locate you.
6. About You Page/URL – Add a URL to allow people to learn more about YOU.
7. Customize Twitter – Create a custom background and promote your brand.
8. Invite Your Connections – Locate your connections on Twitter and invite non Twitter users to join in the conversation.
9. Set Notices – Set your notice preferences for followers.
10. Promote Your Twitter Account – Promote the fact you are on Twitter on your networks, in groups and in the Twitter Yellow Pages.
11. Managing Tweets – Simple tools to help you engage with the community.

Let’s Get Started

1. Account

Set up a free Twitter account or consider getting several accounts and avoid others from obtaining your brand, domain, product names, etc.
Twitter names/ID’s are getting as popular as Domain names. The best way to protect your brand is to reserve your name now. Twitter allows you to register one user name per email. Have other email addresses available to this purpose.

2. Name

Keep User Names Consistent. Use your real name, company name, blog title or a brand name. Be consistent between networks. It is much easier to develop relationships with your network, when they immediately recognize you across applications.
Seriously, using your real name on Linkedin, nickname on Flickr, and yet another on Twitter gets confusing for the best of us. Same goes true to avatar photos, be consistent.

3. Avatar/Photo

Select a photo and use it consistently over all other social applications. Be easily recognizable. In most cases an avatar in a 100 x 100 pixel size, in a JPG, GIF or PNG format, works across most applications, but there are exceptions.

Example: A 100 x 100 pixel size photo appears pixilated in TweetDeck’s larger profile window. Using a larger size of 1000 x 1000 file size, not exceeding 700 k, works best overall.

Special thanks to my friend Simon Salt, for allowing me to feature him as my example.

4. Bio

Complete your one line bio in fewer than 160 characters. People will look at your bio and by this brief description decide whether or not to follow you or engage in conversation. Make your bio interesting, by being “REAL”. Not everyone works 24 x 7, so put a mix of interests in your bio. Even business people have interests in sports, arts, family fun, pets, video games, gardening, etc.

5. Location

Put your location in your profile. Include the name of your city and state, or at minimum the county and state. This will help Twitter users locate you and your business on TwitterLocal.

6. About You Page/URL

Create URL to allow people to learn more about you. In Twitter you can add one link. Which link to choose? What is best, website, blog or one of the many other profiles you have created? Which one is best?

Connect to all of them. How? Create a custom landing page, just about you, and provide links to all of your social profiles. A little thought goes a long way. Make it easy for people to find, learn, engage and connect with you.

Please, avoid creating a link that appears like spam, which will turn people off immediately.

7. Customize Twitter

Let us not forget the “Visual” aspect of you or and your brand. Continue with the consistency with a custom background to match your website brand. It can be enhanced to be a , company logo or personality. Caution: Avoid creating a background that looks like a “sales” piece. The appearance of spam is a turn off to many.

• Creating your background

In this example, we used Adobe Illustrator, but any graphic software will work if you can export into GIF, JPG or PNG format.

Format: GIF, JPG, PNG.” Images must be smaller than 800k.
Canvas Dimension: 795 px by 400 px (this was viewed on 15, 21 & 23” monitors)
Top Branding Dimensions: 39.428 px by 795-821 px

• Change Design Colors

Select colors that enhance custom background graphic. You can change the RGB colors for the background behind your graphic, text, link colors, sidebar background fill and sidebar border.

To activate the color wheel, click on one of the fields; background, text, links, sidebar or sidebar border. Click on the color wheel to select the desired color. The color wheel will put the appropriate web or RGB colors in the appropriate field. You can also directly input your web hex color information if you have it available.

Important note: until you SAVE CHANGES, your preferences will not be changed. If you do not like your selections, CANCEL and begin again.

8. Invite Your Connections

Locate your connections on Twitter and invite non Twitter users to join in the conversation.
You can import your contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and MSN. Note: if you use Outlook, you can export your CSV file and import into one of these free services.

9. Notices of Tweets in your timeline

These settings allow you to control the replies that appear in your timeline.

In the notices section of your settings page, you can choose how you will see the @replies of others. You have three options:

• all @replies: see all of the @replies made by people you follow, whether or not you follow the person to whom the reply is directed.
• @replies to the people I’m following: see @replies from people you follow directed toward other people that you also follow. This is the default setting.
• no @replies: never see any @replies in your timeline, ever

10. Promote Your Twitter Account

• Twellow

Twellow is like the Twitter Yellow Pages. You can search by name, Twitter user or by category. Members can set up a brief bio or an extended profile with links to a variety of their social networks. , as well as your web or blog URL’s.

• Communication Materials

Email Signature – Include your twitter name in your email signature. A simple and professional signature can be created with WiseStamp a Firefox extension enables you to easily customize & add personalized email signatures on any webmail service (Gmail ,Yahoo ,Aol mail, Hotmail).

Business Cards – Include your twitter address near your blog and/or website information.  One Twitter user @adellecharles, suggested if your card has too much information and it begins to look busy, you could consider adding a Twit Bird as a symbol.  I love this idea!

As @Twalk said, “Many of us operate in multiple niches, so why not have mult. biz cards”. This is a great idea. Going to an event or conference, want more than your normal biz card has on it? Try Moo cards.

• Join a Twitter User Group

Facebook has a group named “Twitter”, with over 8745 members.
LinkedIn has several pages of groups, one prominent group Tweeple, has over 1700 members.

11. Managing Tweets

There are a variety of desktop and mobile applications that will help you organize and manage your Twitter communications are available.

• TweetDeck – My favorite and most valuable tool is TweekDeck. Why? I can create different columns and categorize my followers, topics of discussion, clients, etc. Plus the added benefit of having Twitscoop built directly in the application and the expanded profile viewing in the side panel.
• Twirl – This application also runs on Adobe Air, but is a compact version, taking up much less room on your monitor.
• Twitter RSS feed – Keep up with Twitter updates by subscribing to Twitter via RSS Feed. You can subscribe to any Twitter user or even track your own feed.

Just go to the users page and click on the RSS feed at the bottom left hand side of their page. Note: You do not have to follow them, to get their feed.

Closing

Now that you are easily recognizable, linked to your network connections, promoted your account so others can locate you easily, you are ready to begin engaging with your community.

You can communicate in real-time, share information, get help to questions and build stronger relationships.

Writing this post was a great re-check of myself, soon realizing I had been a bit lax in following my own advice. I found a few of my avatar photos were not consistent, my landing page needs work and I will consider a new style of business cards with room for my Twitter address, or at minimum a Twitter Symbol.

People are creative, with creative ideas, what are yours? How do you promote yourself on Twitter? How do you manage your Twitter steam? What tools and tricks work best for you?

Does anyone have the perfect background size for all monitors? I tested 15” to 23”, but there must be an overall method that fits all? No?

Look forward to hearing your tips and tricks!

Related articles:

• Twitter – How Do You Manage the Noise?
• Brands Using Twitter

What is noise? The “noise” they refer to is you, their network of followers. Examples include tweets about pets, children, going to the gym, what someone ate for lunch, etc.

Over the years I have learned, great ideas, long lasting friendships and partnerships, often come from amazing places.  Looking at the surface is not a good judge of a person or situation.  Everyone has something to offer, everyone is necessary, everyone is of value.

This video remains one of my favorite Social Networking tips, one I thought I would share with you today.  The video is by Gary Vaynerchuk, a man with over 16,000 twitter followers, who discusses “How to cut through the noise”.

He presents his view on managing the “noise”, whether on Facebook, Pownce, Twitter, Email or whatever other platform you use on to connect to your network of people.

Small things, connect people, people represent your networks.  When my dog had cancer, there were many supportive dog lovers on Twitter, which quickly turned into friends.  Not surprising, several have become great business resources, exchanging help, tips and even leads to prospective business.  Twitter people who bonded over the love for our pets.  What is noise to some are common bonds to others.

First, how do you like the video? So what do you view as noise? Do you find it difficult to manage all the Twitter traffic? Have your found a way to manage your Twitter messages?

Anyone who knows me or engages with me on Twitter, soon realizes I believe in the power of Twitter.  It has become one of my favorite daily social networking tools.  A surprise considering I started with the question “what is a twitter”.

No morning paper for me anymore, just coffee, blogs and my Twitter peeps, for the first hours each day.  Topics change by the minute as information is spread through Twitterville.  Over the past few weeks, I have noticed an increase in brand discussion, the leading question, what brands are on Twitter?

The blog Fluent Simplicity dedicates an entire page titled “Twitter Brand Index”, listing the brands by category. It is the most detailed list I have seen thus far and the author includes details on how to add your brand to their index.

New brands seem to be popping up very quickly, everyone wanting to test out this new form of marketing.  Are companies just jumping in or do they have a well thought-out plan? Do they have policies and guidelines? Do they have a plan of things they want to achieve?

Yesterday, I came across a post by David Armano, titled “Guidelines for Brands Using Twitter”.  He is providing a few suggestions for brand managers, agencies and brand employees wanting to engage in the Twitter community.

Some simple and sound advice:

• Be Generous
• Be Transparent
• Provide Value
• Listen, Before Talking
• Context, Context, Context

David Armano goes into depth in each category and provides some examples of companies using Twitter to brand and engage with the Twitter community.

Please read his full article “Guidelines for Brands Using Twitter”, as well as the Twitter Brand Index by Fluent Simplicity.

If you are not already, follow one of your favorite brands; share your thoughts, suggestions and other tips you would like to see a brand use to engage with you on Twitter.  Do you have a good example of Brand interaction on Twitter, we would like to hear about that too? Let us know which brands you now follow and why? Is there any brand that should not be on Twitter, why?

We encourage you to share, any of our posts that you find interesting and useful. Please feel free to repost portions or the entire post, but please link back to blog.einnoventions.com‘s article, and give our team credit. Thank you! This notice excludes use for profit.

Common Craft has created a reputation, for taking complex ideas, and turning them into short, unique and understandable videos.

I thought this would be a nice compliment to the posting “Twitter, What is a Twitter” and “Twitter Two Months & Counting”.

Common Craft has many more enjoyable videos, on their website as well as on YouTube, teaching Social Media services and applications in a easy to understand format.

I hope you enjoy and if you know of any other useful videos of Twitter, please let me know.

Related articles:

• Using Twitter to Enhance your Social Network
• Twitter – How Do You Manage the Noise?

In the two months I have been testing this tool, I have discovered far more benefits to Twitter than ever imagined. It strikes me as funny, that I have only been using Twitter for a few months, because I already have created some wonderful relationships. This alone has made my Twittering experience worthwhile.

In addition to making new contacts and friends, I have been lead to valuable resources, helpful links, new social networking services, evaluations of new communication tools, alternative phone services, advice, support, and education and been witness to new ideas and the use of future technology.

It makes me smile, when I think back to a time when I thought Twitter was basically a chat room of sorts.

Establishing my presence on Twitter was basically the same as building any other social network. It took a little time, thought, theme and people to network with having similar or like interests. Twitter allows me to learn more about my connections, far beyond the basic bio we have all written.

Users sometimes just observe, other times join in on the conversation or post a questions. Then there is the posting of any random thought, which helps you understand their thoughts at that moment. I have discovered a lot of dog lovers in my network. People will talk about their pets on Twitter, but of course don’t post that type of information on a service like LinkedIn.

Another great benefit of Twitter, it brings people together from a wide variety of other social network services, e.g. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Association of Virtual Worlds and Plaxo.  People I may not have met, unless I was active on their specific social networking service.

At the start of each day, I grab my coffee and log into Twitter. Many already up for hours and tweeting about the latest news, interesting blog posts, links to great video, sports, local happenings and offering up though provoking questions. Then there are those, in other parts of the world, who have completed their day and are heading off to sleep, while leaving their posts behind for us to catch up on.

Twitter reminds me the universe is much larger than my tiny piece of the world. Every day I find new and exciting information and contacts globally.

If you would like to try out Twitter, go to their website and set up yoru free account.  If you want someone to start following, you can follow me, I use my own name @tawnypress .

Please share with us any enhancements you have made, to get the most out of Twitter. Any helpful widgets you can suggest?  Have you tried landing pages?  Have you integrated Twitter into your blog?

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