Posted by Gabe on November 21, 2009 under Ask Gabe, Twitter, Twitter for Beginners | 
I was just asked a question by @RightonMom that, although I have talked about similar situations in the past, I don’t believe I have dealt specifically with this question. So here goes:
“Do you unfollow those who unfollow you?”
The answer to that at least for me is yes and no. No because I do not monitor who “unfollows” me. There are tools out there that supposedly email you when you are unfollowed but quite frankly I found them to be unreliable. I also discovered that I have so much I have to keep track of on a daily basis that the last thing I need is to add something else to that list.
But where the answer becomes “yes” is when I am “massaging” my follower ratio. Two things I have been consistent with in my Twitter journey are 1) Making no bones about the fact that I do seek out followers, or more specifically connections — the more people who know about Kids Are Heroes the better for us. (Having said that I will not and have never purchased followers nor have opted in to sites that claim to get you more.) 2) I manage my follower ratio by unfollowing those who do not follow me back or end up unfollowing me. This practice increases the chances of getting more connections, which is my ultimate goal. Think about it. If someone unfollows me they have made a statement that they are not interested in my subject matter. So how can I connect with that person? Now does that bother me? Absolutely not. There are plenty of subjects that I am not interested in so that may be the reason I do not follow a particular person. But that is no reflection on the originator of the tweet.
Twitter is such a wonderful tool — through its use I have garnered so many connections that have helped us along the way. I am always very active on Twitter in the pursuit of new connections. Mind you this is not intended to be one-sided. I try also to help as many people as I can. That’s why I write about Twitter – I have been told that these posts are helpful to some and I am glad to do it.
So how do I actually do this? When you follow as many people as I do it becomes more and more difficult to keep track. Luckily there are tools out there to help. My tool of choice has been Huitter (Mutuality). That tool is great as it will automatically unfollow all who are not following you. That’s when I discovered it costs money to use it after a while. Well I am cheap so I sought out another alternative. The best one I found was TwitIn by InRev (using their “Flush” utility). It requires much more work on your part as it is much more interactive, but it’s still free and you are not really bulk unfollowing which can get you in a spot of trouble with the Twitter police.
So that is what I do anyway. Not saying it’s the only way, just my way. I know there are a lot of conflicting opinions on this subject out there, so let’s hear ‘em. :)
Posted by Gabe on November 19, 2009 under Ask Gabe, Twitter, Twitter for Beginners |
I just received a very interesting question from @HomeSchoolMD:
@KidsAreHeroes What’s the difference between using Tweetdeck vs. Twitter lists?
Let me continue by saying that I don’t pretend to be a “guru” on either subject, especially when it comes to Twitter lists. I have created one and I honestly don’t use them that much. (I explain why in the addendum to my #followfriday post.) But I do pretty much exclusively use Tweetdeck so I feel I can at least answer the question. (I also welcome comments in case I miss any good points here.) The main difference in my mind is that Tweetdeck “groups” which compare to Twitter lists cannot be made public for anyone else to follow. They are simply for your own benefit. Where Tweetdeck excels is in the ability to have multiple columns visible simultaneously. So I can view several groups at once along with my mentions, direct messages and general tweets. It appears to be a bit easier to put people in Tweetdeck groups, as with Twitter you have to be in the user’s profile to add him or her to your list. So with Tweetdeck it’s strictly for personal benefit, but with Twitter getting people to follow the lists you have created can also be considered some sort of personal accomplishment.
I cannot help but get into a wider comparison to the overall interface of Twitter and Tweetdeck. One major advantage of Tweetdeck is that it automatically refreshes any and all columns after a time that you specify in the preferences section. It also allows you to customize notifications, both visually and auditorially. You can specify general tweets, mentions, groups and or direct messages in the notifications. Since I work in an environment where I have several computers, I prefer to leave it on at all times and have it beep only when I get mentions (I know not very “green” is it?). Tweetdeck is designed to be able to do just that, but a bug in the software is preventing this at this time — I expect them to fix it in the next release.
The multiple columns, once I experienced it, made it impossible for me to go back to the old way of doing things. This is true expecially if you follow LOTS of people like I do. Tweetdeck also gives you the ability to filter tweets in your columns (i.e. if you filter by “http” you will get only tweets with links inside them.)
Tweetdeck has a “Translate” feature which is pretty cool and I have used it from time to time. It will translate the tweet from whatever language it is written to your own native language. It also interfaces with MySpace and Facebook — these are features I personally do not use.
The one difference that is being talked about A LOT recently is that they both have retweet buttons that will retweet a post you might like. The difference is that in Twitter’s brand new implementation you cannot edit the retweet. Period. It simply retweets the exact tweet to your followers giving only the originator of the tweet the credit. The advantage here is you never have to worry about going over the 140 character limit, since the original tweet cannot be added to. So for example, here is a tweet I retweeted with both Twitter and Tweetdeck.
Original Tweet:
GabeONeill: Am testing to see what happens when you use Twitter to retweet a very long message that approaches one hundred and forty characters. Just tw
(the “tw” is at the end of the 140 characters)
Twitter retweet from @KidsAreHeroes:
GabeONeill: Am testing to see what happens when you use Twitter to retweet a very long message that approaches one hundred and forty characters. Just tw
As you can see the tweet is identical. When viewed in Twitter it has their retweet icon in front and says “Retweeted by KidsAreHeroes” at the bottom. Now the real interesting thing here is that it does not seem that the Twitter retweets show in the Tweetdeck stream at all. I was trying to see how these would appear but in several cases I could not find them. Would love to hear the scoop on that if anyone knows it.
Tweetdeck retweet from @KidsAreHeroes:
KidsAreHeroes: RT @GabeONeill: Am testing 2 c what happens when you use Twitter to RT a long msg that approaches one hundred and forty characters. Just tw
Now as you can see I had to edit it so that there was enough space to include the RT in front, and the GabeONeill also takes up part of the 140 characters in this case. This can be a pain if someone writes a cool but very long tweet. But this method allows us to give credit to multiple retweeters (which I like) and can be used to add commentary on the end. Here’s an example:
RT @Milogirly RT @CarynTamber: @KidsAreHeroes My favorite kind of dog! Bernese Mountain dogs are beautiful! (Agreed! :)
Another rather large difference is that you have to go to a separate list to see who has retweeted you. This is very cumbersome to me. Using the old-fashioned method, if someone retweets you that retweet ends up in your mentions folder. That way you know which of your tweets are more popular than others and you have the opportunity of giving thanks, even connecting with the retweeter.
From what I have seen and heard being able to edit is still the preferred method of retweeting. We are even conditioned to the point that if we want retweets we keep our tweets short enough to allow for them.
So what do you all think??
Posted by Gabe on August 6, 2009 under Ask Gabe, Twitter, Twitter for Beginners |
I really enjoy helping people get acclimated to Twitter. I think it is because I want to help them unlock the powers of social media for themselves. So what I have done is create a new “Ask Gabe” series of posts for newbies, where I answer selected questions directed at me about Twitter on this blog. I used to do this in tweet form, but some questions cannot be answered in 140 characters, and if I write the answers here other newbies can also benefit. Just click on the “Ask Gabe” category on the sidebar to see all the questions and answers.
To ask me a question, simply pose it to me by replying to me (@KidsAreHeroes) on Twitter.
Also don’t forget that many of your questions may already be answered in the “Twitter for Beginners” section of this blog. Happy tweeting!
Posted by Gabe on August 5, 2009 under Ask Gabe, Twitter, Twitter for Beginners |
This is the second in the Ask Gabe series. A very good question came back to me posed by @DaveWebbBC:
@KidsAreHeroes Hi Im new to twitter, how do you manage conversations in the midst of 100s of tweets from random people?
Ok Dave, there are two parts to this. By your tweet I see you have learned to preface your tweet with the @ sign followed by the intended Twitter ID. This is the proper way to do this. I received this in my Replies/Mentions folder (as do you when you get tweets directed at you). Many newbies don’t see this folder. When you open Twitter from your browser, on the right sidebar you see “Home”. Underneath that you see your Twitter ID and under that is the Direct Messages folder. Click on your Twitter ID and you will see only tweets that are either directed at you or mention you in the tweet. What may be confusing is that you also see them in your main Twitter stream. So the basic answer is to check your Replies/Mentions folder – this will be separate from your main stream that has all those other random tweets.
Now once you get a little more comfortable and daring, you can install a product such as Tweetdeck that provides columns for different folders. Your Replies/Mentions folder is viewable at the same time as your main Twitter stream. You can even see your direct messages concurrently as well. And the nice thing about Tweetdeck is that it automatically refreshes itself, wheras you keep having to manually refresh your browser to see new tweets.
Now, one problem occurs when you get a response from someone who you directed a question quite some time ago and you can’t remember what you asked. Or maybe you just commented on something they said. They come back to you days later assuming you had just asked the question. That happened to me yesterday. There are a number of ways to do this, but the only tool I could find that worked properly was TweeTree. This tool shows the threads in conversations. Go to Tweetree.com and log in to Twitter. Look at your Mentions folder. You should see the conversations that you have been having.
Now there should be two other resources that can help. Specifically Advanced Twitter Search and TweetGrid.com. You can add boolean operators to Tweetgrid – for example to see conversations between you and me enter: DaveWebbBC AND KidsAreHeroes – note the capitalized AND. Unfortunately this isn’t working now in either case. I think that both use the Twitter Search API and my guess is that something is wrong with it at the time of this writing. I was unable to find the tweets from @DaveWebbBC to @KidsAreHeroes. If this works for someone else or if someone knows something I don’t please enlighten. UPDATE: As I suspected, at least according to this post, the Twitter search engine is indeed broken. That’s probably why it is no longer available directly from their home page. What you were trying to do will be much simpler once it is fixed.
UPDATE 8/25/09: I was working with the aforementioned tool Tweetdeck just now and I tripped over something that is definitely related to this. Tweetdeck has different columns that you can set up. One is the Mentions/Replies column. As I stated it will automatically update according to how often you have it set and you can see other tweets as well. If you get a reply (as opposed to just a mention), there will be text at the bottom of the tweet that will say “..in reply to..”. If you click on that it will show you the conversation you had with that person. I just discovered it so I have yet to determine its real value, but it seems like it might be very helpful.
UPDATE 8/6/09: I saw this link today for Twitter Conversation and Communication Tools. Looks like there are several more tools to help. Haven’t tried them all, so when I do I will come back and update again. Here is the link.
Hope all this helps… :)
Posted by Gabe on August 2, 2009 under Ask Gabe, Social Media, Twitter, Twitter for Beginners |
This is the first post from the Ask Gabe series:
I recently received an interesting question when I asked my Twitter “newbie” colleagues if they had any questions about Twitter.
“@KidsAreHeroes: I sent out a general tweet asking for a response and got nothing. Is there a trick to getting answers?”
That to me is a loaded question with the following correct answers: “Yes.” “No.” and “It depends.”
I examined this person’s profile and saw that she had 109 followers. The question she asked was definitely of a “nichey” nature. My response to her was that what she needed was more targeted followers to raise her chances of getting worthy answers to a question such as this. There are many factors involved when you send out a question.
1) How many of your followers are actually online at the time you asked it? There are many opinions as to what is the best time to tweet, but you can try it yourself by asking the question a few times at different times of the day to see which produces the best results. You must be careful not to be too repetetive or people may unfollow you. You must also consider your target audience. If it is global then you might also try a service like Future Tweets that will schedule the question in the middle of your night which is the day for many others.
2) How many people are following you? I think many new people still don’t realize that your followers and your followers only are likely to read your tweets. So if you have 100 followers, it’s the middle of the night for 50, 25 are awake but off line right now…you get the idea.
3) How many people are your followers following? If a person follows more than a few hundred people chances are that many tweets will be not be noticed at any one time. This is just simply the nature of the beast. To combat this you can retweet your own questions, but just be aware that overdoing it will be annoying to many.
4) Does your question appear to have a self-serving nature? If you have hidden agendas behind your tweets you are likely to turn people off. Here’s an example: “So-and-so said my web site was awesome! What do you think? http://spammylink.com” The number one thing you should remember about being involved with social media is the word “social”. If you connect with people they will pay more attention to you – plain and simple. I was perusing new followers’ profiles this morning and came across a particular person who had a few tweets that read something like, “New to this, bear with me.” Then he asked how to shorten a URL. So far so good. But then I saw some self-serving tweets that pointed to his web site. The sad thing is here that I don’t believe this person is a spammer per se, but he simply doesn’t know any better. Hopefully he will learn in time.
5) Who are you? That’s right, I said, “who are you?” To me you are just one of the eleventy-million people on Twitter until: a) I learn more about you in your profile, b) I read one of your tweets that interests me, c) You have engaged me in some way that wasn’t spammy. This is crucial to your success with Twitter. You must make your connections one at a time. And guess what? That takes work and it also takes time. But the time is incredibly well spent. There are no shortcuts to doing this properly. Oh sure, you can get sucked into the “16,000 followers in 90 days” scams but what do you have then? You still haven’t connected with anyone and the ones that you would like to connect with can tell that you used a program to gain followers so they won’t follow you. On top of that many people (includng me) unfollow when they see a tweet that advertises these follower schemes. Just for your knowledge here are a few relevant tweets from @spam which is the account to report spammy Twitterers to:
“If you give out your username and pw to a site claiming to get you more followers, updates often get sent out on your account.”
“Giving out your username and password to a 3rd party site promising you more followers: not a good idea! Please be safe!”
“Don’t believe the hype & sign up for ‘get followers fast!’ programs. They can be scams that steal your username and password!”
So, is there a trick to using Twitter? I wouldn’t call it a trick, just be genuine and connect with people – everything else will fall into place after that.
