Some Cool Twitter Stuff

In my last post I showed you all a video by Perry Belcher. If that video made any sense to you at all, I bet you are chomping at the bit to figure out how to get this whole social media “party” started.

Today I thought I’d show you are few cool things I use for twitter, and some more resources you can use to get started.

Twhirl

First I found it very hard to remember to tweet when I was only doing it from the web. I downloaded twhirl which is a little desktop application. All that means is a little box in the bottom corner of your desktop lets you know when you have new tweets, and you can tweet back from there without having to go to the twitter website.

Twhirl is cool because it helps you stay in the stream of conversation, and reply to people quickly, which is always nice if people are looking for answers. It will ding to let you know you have new tweets, and it will show them on your screen. It also dings a different tone if you have replies and direct messages which is really nice.

It can be problematic for the same reason.  Seeing tweets come up all the time (especially when you are following a lot of people) can be distracting. I generally turn off the volume and just run through my tweets on twhirl regularly. It’s like a little coffee break through out the day.

If you can’t install twirhl for some reason (dial up) you might check out tweet deck. A similar application that allows you to track your tweets, replies and direct messages. It also allows you to follow specific keywords. I have not tried tweet deck, since I am really happy with Twhirl, but many people love it.

Twitterfeed

To streamline some of my tweeting (and so I don’t forget) I also use Twitterfeed.  Twitterfeed will take any RSS feed you have (think squidoo, your blog(s), your ezinearticles acct, bookmarking accounts) and will tweet to twitter each time something new is posted to any of those sites.

I currently have a couple of my blogs going through there, my squidoo lensmaster feed, my bookmarks, pictures and wishlist from tagfoot. So even when I forget to tweet, I am still tweeting as I do things I normally do every day.  Since I tag, and bookmark things I enjoy and things that are going on in my normal life people are being kept up to date on me.

I don’t add the bookmarking sites I use to build links as they would all be the same, and would be boring and repetitive tweets that will make people unfollow me. So I stick with tagfoot where I keep my personal bookmarks.

Mr. Tweet

Mr Tweet is a cool thing to try as well. You follow Mr Tweet and it will look through all your followers and who you are following and will figure out influential people you SHOULD be following. It will send you a direct message and then you click the link. Depending on the current size of your network will depend on how many people it will show you.

I didn’t necessarily go and follow all the “gurus” or influential people it sent me, but I did go through and check out people who were following them, figuring we had some things in common, and found quite a few very cool people to follow.

Twitter Karma

When you are following a lot of people, but it doesn’t seem like a lot of people are following you back you can go and see just who is and who isn’t. I use twitter karma for that. It shows me who is following me back. I can then look at their profile and see if I want to continue following them. It may end up they just aren’t active and haven’t posted in forever. Who wants to keep following those people?

TwitThat

Providing value is an important element in twitter. Here’s a cool tool that will help you do that. TwitThat is a little button that goes in your firefox browser. It let’s you click it and it will take you to your twitter account so you can tweet anything interesting you find as you are browsing online.

Dan Holling

Is the master of the twitterverse. I highly suggest you follow him if you want very cool information about using twitter. Follow Dan here.

He has created 100 “twittin secrets” that are quite amazing. I know I’ve mentioned them here before, but it’s worth repeating. It’s a great little treasure hunt around the internet for these tips. They are 100% free, and totally worth checking out.

Perry Belcher

This is the guy from the video in my last post. He has created a second video and will be offering a teleseries on how to make this whole twitter/social media thing work. If you are interested in learning from Perry you can check out the video here This course does cost money.

However, if you act fast, tonight Perry is also doing a free webinar on the same stuff. I’m sure it won’t be as in depth since he is charging for it later, but it will probably be worth going to, if only to get more followers on twitter. Here is where you can sign up for the Winning with Social Media webinar. It’s TONIGHT so don’t dilly dally if you want to come.

Twitter Moms

If you have watched Perry’s videos you know it’s all about finding people in you might like to interact with. Since I love to work with and interact with other moms I find twitter moms a great community. It is another Ning community, where moms who are on twitter hang out. It’s pretty active and I’m meeting a lot of really cool moms. On each homepage is the person’s twitter ID to it’s very easy  to follow people if you find them interesting.  IF it sounds like a good place to hang out, stop by and say hi to me when you get there.

Twitter Groups

Twitter Groups is a new application that allows people of common interest to gather. It is pretty new and plain right now, but it is growing and improving every day.  I think it will be quite similar to facebook and you can get in at the beginning, pretty cool huh?

Twitter Blogs

TwitTip.com is the only twitter tips blog I am following,  but I’m open to more, so if you have a great twitter blog you read let me know!!I know there are more out there I just haven’t searched them out.

Well this could go on all day long! There are so many applications being developed for twitter. In fact, I saw a tweet yetserday of someone wishing a list of all the twitter applications would be made so we could all keep track. Sounds like a great way to get people linking to your site. . . hint hint hint.

Remember to follow me on twitter.