I  have a few Twitter Tips up my sleeve and I’d like to share these with you.

Use a colorful background or wear a bright color in your profile photo.

This tip I picked up from Erin Blaskie. She explains that by having a bright profile image your Tweets will ‘pop’ out more within someone’s Tweet Stream, makes sense to me.  Check out her Twitter profile image when you follow her you will see how much her Tweets actually seem to jump out at you.

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It is important to add your Twitter URL (or ID) to your Facebook, your Website and your Blog.  This will help your current connections to find your Twitter URL (or ID) and start to follow you on Twitter.

By adding your Twitter URL to your Facebook, Website or Blog page people will then be able to quickly follow you on Twitter by clicking  the link and going to your Twitter profile.   Your Twitter URL is http://www.twitter.com/username or ID  for instance mine is http://www.twitter.com/dawncullo

To Add The URL To Your Facebook

The link can be added to your Contact information under the Info Tab in the Websites section.

1. Click on the INFO tab in your Facebook Profile.

2. Scroll down to the Contact Information section

3. Hover your mouse over the Edit button / pencil area until it appears and then click EDIT.

4. Scroll down to the WEBSITE section

5. Type in your Twitter URL (remember it is http://www.twitter.com/username)

6. Click the blue SAVE CHANGES button.

7. View the link on your profile Home Page under the INFORMATION section.

8. If the new link does not appear, click on the pencil icon to bring up the EDIT menu.  Click the box next to WEBSITE to make that section of your profile visible in the Information section.

To Add The URL To Your Website and Blog

Do a quick Google search for “Twitter Buttons” and you will come up with a laundry list of  designs. My favorite site is Twitter Buttons but there are a lot of new sites popping up all the time so check those out too for a design that fits into your Website or Blog theme.

1. Once you have found the design you like input your Twitter ID in the box at the top of the page and click “GO”

2. The site will automatically generate an HTML code below the design.

3. Select copy code and then paste to it your Website or Blog.

4. You can also past the code in a notepad document and save it for use later.

I found this one on Twit Buttons

If you are unsure how to do then add this to your Website or Blog page this could be a great task to delegate to a Virtual Assistant or a Web Site Editor.

If you have a WordPress Blog site I can help you with this task.  I offer this as part of my Blog Update service.  Send me an email if you are interested in adding your Twitter ID to your blog.  My email is dawn@sunrisevirtualservices or you can Tweet me.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Dawn Cullo, Sunrise Virutal Services

Congratulations, you made it on Twitter but now what?  The first thing to do is to find people to follow because if you are Tweeting and no one is listening to you then what is the point, right?

• Click on the FIND PEOPLE link and type in a person’s name, a company name or Twitter ID.

You can also find people by using a keyword search.

• Utilize the search box on your profile and enter keywords such as your target market or keywords associated with your business.
• The search will reveal other people who have used that word in their Tweet or Bio.
• Click on their profile to view their page
• You can elect to follow them by clicking the FOLLOW button.

Here is a good plan of action for finding people to follow, this should keep you busy for a little while.

1. Locate your friends and family
2. Search for business associates
3. Search for your “competition”
   Remember that following your competition is a good thing becuase you can keep an eye on what new products or servcies they may be featuring.
4. Seek out companies
   Following local and national companies can be fun and beneficial to you because you can hear about company news instantly and even take advantage of coupons and discounts only offered to Twitter followers.  You can also send Direct Messages to these companies and get answers quickly from real people without waiting on hold!  Some of my favorite companies to follow are:
   @JetBlue
   @HomeDepot
   @WholeFoods
   @nordstrom
   @hotwire_deals
   @Overstock
   @OReturns (Overstock Returns)
   @rubbermaid
   @Sharpie
   @BestBuy
   There are a zillion more companies to follow just search for your favorite ones in the search box under the Find People link.
5. Follow News Tweets
   No need to wait for the 5 o’clock news or look it up on the web.  Get news updates instantly by following local and national news stations as well as newspapers.  Also, try digging a little deeper to find your local news anchor’s Twitter Page
   @cnnbrk
   @andersoncooper
   @ricksanchezcnn
   @foxnews
   @LaTimes
   @NYTimes

What are some of your favorite people or companies to follow?

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Dawn Cullo, Sunrise Virtual Services, JetBlue, HomeDepot, WholeFoods, Nordstroms, Hotwire, Overstock, Rubbermaid, Sharpie, BestBuy, Cnn, Fox News, Anderson Cooper, Rick Sanchez, La Times, NY Times

I just started to use this Twitter Tool called TweetStats.

TweetStats will Graph your Twitter Stats including

• Tweets per hour
• Tweets per month
• Tweet timeline
• Reply statistics

Here is a view of my Tweet Cloud, the bigger the word the more I have Tweeted about it.

This is one of the many graphs that are available.  This one illustrates who I have sent an @reply to and how often.

There are a ton of Twitter Tools out there these days, what are the ones you find most useful?

Technorati Tags: Twitter, TweetStats, Sunrise Virtual Services, Dawn Cullo

I’ve always been the type of gal who likes to take a peek ‘behind the curtain’ so I guess that is why I have always been interesting in the famous folks in our world.  Now that I am using Twitter I am so happy to see that famous folks are on there as well.

It is also great to see companies embracing what Twitter can do for their customer service department and their company image. I am thinking of taking a flight on JetBlue with my daughter and so I sent Jetblue a question and received an answer within minutes, no joke.

I asked the question at 4:57 and received my answer at 5:06 !  I don’t think that I could have gone to their website and got the answer myself that quickly.  They even sent me the link to what programming will be available during my flight.

Another cool reason to be following companies is that they sometimes offer deals to their followers.  For example Jet Blue recently hit the 100,000 mark for Twitter followers and is offering a special to celebrate their new found Twitter fame.

Here is this weeks list of some of the new people / companies that I am following.

Companies

SouthwestAir / Southwest Airlines
hotwire_deals / Hotwire Travel Deals
DunkinDonuts / Dunkin’ Donuts
WholeFoods / Whole Foods Market
JetBlue / JetBlue Airways
traderjoes / Trader Joes
LushLtd / Lush Cosmetics Ltd
ENews / E! News
zappos / Zappos.com CEO -Tony

People

tonyrobbins / Tony Robbins
moonfrye / Soleil Moon Frye
aplusk / Ashton Kutcher
mrskutcher / Demi Moore – more from Demi on qik.com/mrskutcher
mariashriver / Maria Shriver
WilliamShatner / William Shatner
TheEllenShow / The Ellen Show
RyanSeacrest / Ryan Seacrest
Mark_Wahlberg / Mark Wahlberg
MariahHBF / Mariah Carey
THE_REAL_SHAQ / Shaq
MCHammer / Hammer
brodyjenner / Brody Jenner

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Jet Blue, Zappos, Southwest Air, Hotwire, Dunkin Donuts, Trader Joes, Lush Cosmetics, E! News, Tony Robbins, Soleil Moon Frye,   Ahston Kutcher, Demi Moore, William Shatner, The Ellen Show, Ryan Seacrest, Mark Wahlberg, Mariah Carey, Shaq, MC Hammer, Brody Jenner, Sunrise Virtual Services, Dawn Cullo

I am loving what happened on The Ellen Show the other day.   Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was a guest on the Ellen Degeneres show, he talked to her about Twitter. 


Hours after the show, she started her Twitter account and she even posted some TwitPics too!  Check out her Tweets and TwitPics on www.TweetTree.com

Do you want to Follow Diddy and Ellen? They are @TheEllenShow and @IamDiddy

Ellen is going to appear on the Jay Leno show on Wednesday, March 11th and will be talking to Jay about Twitter too.

Do you want to find even more famous people on Twitter? Check out FamousTweet and you can follow people like William Shatner and MC Hammer, yes these are the real people.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Diddy, Sean Diddy Combs, The Ellen Show, Ellen Degeneres, Sunrise Virtual Services, Dawn Cullo

Yes, you should use Twitter for your business and for fun.

I think that Twitter is the coolest customer service tool since the phone! Where else can a company get instant, and I mean INSTANT feedback about their product? You don’t have to find the company’s phone number or wait on hold until you can talk to a customer service person. I personally have communicated with DirecTV about how happy I am with the free Nascar HotPass this season, and yes he responded right away! I also have been known to communicate with the local news guy about a few things too. It is like direct access to these companies and we should all be taking advantage of this great technology.
Here is how to get started:

Sign Up. Go to http://www.twitter.com/ and sign up for a free account under you name or your company name.

Create a short but sweet bio and upload a pretty picture of YOU, not your dog or your pet parrakeet, just you or your company logo.
You can create a custom background and upload it or choose one of the nifty ones provided by Twitter. I created one in photoshop and saved it as .jpg. Just remember to keep it simple.

Get a Twitter Desktop Management tool. Go to http://www.tweetdeck.com/ and download an awesome desktop management tool to manage all the awesome Tweeting you will be doing and receiving because Twitter is like a dorito chip, once you start with one, you can’t stop. There are some other great tools to use as well such as http://www.tweetlater.com/ where you can schedule automatic Tweets to go out on specific days at specific times and it helps manage other Twitter goodies such as keyword searches and sending out automatic direct messages.

Start Tweeting! You have 140 characters to work with , so keep it short. OK, so now what do you Tweet about? You can Tweet about anything you want, what you are doing, what you are going to do, comment about a show you are watching, something or someone you want to promote. During Nascar races I follow a handful of people and we all comment about the race, it is great fun. We also use hash-tag the # sign after each Tweet so we can keep track of the conversation. Not sure what a hash-tag is? Check out this YouTube video by @MariSmith – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAHitI26MmE

Start following people. Here are some people that I recommend following right away you will get some great content from them @MariSmith @JoeComm and me too @DawnCullo.The easy way to add people to your Tweet Stream is to follow a few people and then look at who they are following. You can also do a search for people or companies on Twitter. Some companies to follow are @DirecTV, @CNN , @Zappos to name a few. You search here http://twitter.com/invitations for people or companies. I even follow my local news stations and local traffic alerts on Twitter. I actually found out the my husbands company was going to lay off workers before he called to tell me, I heard it on Twitter!

Interact with people and learn the lingo.

RT = ReTweet
If you see something cool go by in the the Tweet Stream you can Re-Tweet it. Just use the letters RT before the Tweet
@ = Responses
If you want to respond to someone use the symbol @TheirName such as @DawnCullo before your comment. The replies will be placed in the Tweet Stream for everyone to see.

DM = Direct Message
You can send a private message by using letters DM before your content and it will be sent to the person in private.

To make it easier on your self down load TweetDeck and it will automatically put all the corect letters before your special Tweets based upon the action you select when you hover your mouse over their tweet.

This is a screen shot of TweetDeck. I have it set up in 5 columns. All Friends Tweets, Replies, Direct Message, Favorites (people’s tweets you don’t want miss) and TwitScoop, which shows the trending topics based upon the popularity of words in various Tweets.

There is so much more I could say about Twitter, I could go on for days. So check out my main resource on all things Twitter http://www.marismith.com/blog/ for some great info.
See you in the Tweet Stream.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Mari Smith, Joel Comm, DirecTV, CNN, Sunrise Virtual Services, Dawn Cullo