Day 5 What happened?

[PillowThrowDecor]

Retweeting in Twitter is a pain in the BUTT!

Retweeting in Tweetdeck is piece of cake.

Find a message you want to retweet....
Put your mouse over the person's avatar...
Four little boxes/options appear...
Reply, Retweet, Direct Message or Other options appear

In the bottom left corner or these 4 boxes is the Retweet button. Click it
Voila... message is copied and addressed in the message bar at the bottom.  Sometimes it is in RED whioch means that the message is too long.  Highlight the red message with your mouse and pick out a spot that can be edited.  If you look closely in the bottom right part of the red message you can sometimes see through the opacity how many letters you are over ...

say...  -8 .... means that you have MINUS 8 characters left... or 8 letters too many. Start abreaviating where U can 2 get more LUV in the line  

Twitter speak... is like talking " pig latin" when we were 8 years old

Christine

[Callidora]

How do I stop automatically following people?  I set this up a long time (since I didn't understand Twitter) and now I don't know how to undo it.  I have a lot of crappy, spammy people I'm following!

[PillowThrowDecor]

U need to find the program that you set it up in.  Tweetlater? or Tweetspinner?

Cheers
Christine

[Sirocco]

Hey, I just retweeted something from Tweetdeck. This could turn out to be something after  all. I did notice that sometimes I got an error message when trying to retweet. I assume that is traffic overload or something. The message was not too long.
Paul C
http://siroccostradingpost.blogspot.com/

[storybeader]

<Go read my bio at http://www.twitter.com/pillowthrowdeco. jealously count each space in ur bio!!! >

At last I found you!     I took off the period at the end the sentence... it's always the obvious things!  Now I can look at your profile... :roll:

All the writing shortcuts are fun  :lol:   Still learning how to read them.  Need to go and check who I'm following... a discerning tweeter...  bbl

Wow - TweetDeck is spaceage looking     Do you recommend any of the columns over another   :?:   Love the "Mentions"  Nifty-keen  :lol:

[Thyme2dream]

I absolutely cannot say enough good things about twitter- its AMAZING for free advertising and getting the word out!! I have lost count of the number of people who tell me they have found me through Twitter and but I know my business volume has more than doubled since I began using it!

It is a bit overwhelming at first, but Christine is giving everyone great tips and believe me its worth it :-)

A couple of things I emphasize:

Think Keywords when you are posting.  Not in a spammy way or keyword overload like you see in an Ebay listing title (shudder, Im so glad I dont ebay anymore!!), but think about how you word things.  The thing is, a LOT of people use twitter search to find people they are interested in and your tweets are more likely to get picked up by totally random strangers if you make sure to include relevent words in your tweet. For instance, instead of a tweet that just says "sale in my iCraft shop"  include a keyword about your product  "Jewelry sale in my iCraft shop" or in my case Fairy Elven Jewelry  sale in my iCraft shop" :-)  Because my jewelry appeals to a very specific demographic, its important for me to include words that will help attract them- let them know its not your run of the mill jewelry- its MAGICK jewelry, lol

I have over 2000 followers, and the majority of them I did NOT follow first..they found me because I was tweeting things in their interest area

 a couple other random rules of thumb:

Don't ever just post a link- always try to give a pithy attention getting bitit of a description(like Christine with her subject titles).  

On the other hand, dont go the other way and just sound like an advert all the time- be yourself, be personable and let your personality shine through in your tweets :-)

Dont tweet a million times per minute (I used to be guilty of this sometimes and my beloved children were the ones who pointed out it was obnoxious when it filled up their whole update page, lol)

My personal opinion- if you are tweeting your business its best to leave religion and politics out of it for the most part.  I have VERY strong views on these things and it was hard for me to do that, but I think its probably safer in the long run (Especially since I have really weird views for a fairytale loving hippy chick, lol).  

My favorite tool on twitter:

TWITTERFEED!!!

Here is a basic article on how to set it up:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4836251_twitterfeed-maximize-use-of-twitterfeed.html

I use twitterfeed to keep things going when I dont have time to twitter..it sets up to take RSS feeds and post them to twitter occasionally. I have my blog and some of my shops set up through twitterfeed

A couple things I recommend:  
Dont over do it- it will take up to the 5 most recent posts, but I found if I am relisting or listing a lot at once that gets annoying and seems more like spam!  I have it set to ony the 2 most recent, that seems to be plenty.

If you plan to have lots of feeds going in to it, stagger them by selecting different time intervals when you get to that option (IE one at 30 minutes, one at 2 hours, etc).  That isnt usually a problem for my personal account, but I run one for one of my etsy teams and have every member's blog going in, so I needed to do that with those.

Lastly, here is a blog with a series of twitter strategy posts...the author is a photographer so comes at it with an artist's perspective.  The only caveat I would add with him is that he doesnt leave his politics out of his business twitter page (see my opinion about that above:), and I dont agree with all of his strategies, but over all a good reference blog for marketing artwork in general:

http://www.theartistscenter.com/2009/02/real-time-twitter-strategy/


AND> can we have a list somewhere of everyone's twitter accounts so I can follow them??

Im www.twitter.com/thyme2dream  

Cheers,
Karla

[storybeader]

how did he get my email?   :lol:

Thanks for all the advice and links, Karla  
I'll have to go surfing  

I'm worn out!  I did get on and tweet some, and deleted some people who I mistakenly added.  I got my TweetDeck established.  

What the lists all about   :?:   I wouldn't mind making a few lists...  

[Sirocco]

This was a fun and productive day learning about Twitter even though I was not able to be on line much today. I got my bio and icraft store in my Twitter profile, I have learned about Tweetdeck, and retweeted a couple of times. I am happy. Thank you Christine and Karla for the explanations.

Callidora sent me a direct message suggesting I use TrueTwit. What does that do?

I will be out of town for the next few days and without an Internet connection. So this will be my last post until Monday.

Paul C
http://siroccostradingpost.blogspot.com/

[Zs Knees]

I know this subject has come up in the past and I don't want to belabor it, but part of the reason I have trouble with Twitter is because I feel like I'm spamming.

I struggle with this especially because when I'm not in bootcamp I pretty much only tweet about social justice issues, charities, interesting news, etc. So to then start spraying my little following with 10-20 advertisements a day...

So, maybe the problem is mixing the two worlds in one Twitter account??? Or maybe it's that in my mind, there is a place for sales and advertising, and it should be where people have put themselves in the path of it.

I don't know, is there something I'm missing here? Does anyone have similar issues that they've reconciled somehow?

[PillowThrowDecor]

So sorry about the period thing. :oops:

Glad you are getting the hang of it.  It get very easy very quickly.

I usually have just 3 columns and keep the "spare" space if I am doing a special search.

I order them with General tweets, Direct messages and Mentions and no 4th column so I can double click on an avatar and read up about someone in that 4th column.

Good for you!

Cheers

Christine

<Go read my bio at http://www.twitter.com/pillowthrowdeco. jealously count each space in ur bio!!! >

At last I found you!     I took off the period at the end the sentence... it's always the obvious things!  Now I can look at your profile... :roll:

All the writing shortcuts are fun  :lol:   Still learning how to read them.  Need to go and check who I'm following... a discerning tweeter...  bbl

Wow - TweetDeck is spaceage looking     Do you recommend any of the columns over another   :?:   Love the "Mentions"  Nifty-keen  :lol:

[PillowThrowDecor]

Thanks ever so much for all of those great suggestions Karla and all!!

Reasonable concerns Z's!

Remember that most of the people that we are following are fellow artisans and people interested in handcrafted items. I find it helps to have a broad interest of things to tweet too.  I love the techie stuff.

What is really important for the first while is to spend a lot of time listening / reading to other people on twitter. Engage with them... chit chat (not about what and where you have lunch).

You have to do things in balance. If say, half of your followers are non artisans then make sure that only half of your tweets have to do with handmade and the other half things relevant to your followers. Do what you feel comfortable but you are right, don't load them up with 20 or 30 selling messages in a day. Retweet other peoples messages... they'll love you. When someone follows you check them out and their site or store and engage them in conversation about what they do.  People are generally very friendly on Twitter. If someone doesn't like what you are saying they will unfollow you or block you.  Don't take it personally... they just aren't interested in your information and want to spend their time elsewhere.  that's ok.

Maybe for the first while do more reading than tweeting, start with retweeting and then jump in evenuatlly with a stronger voice about you and your product.

Hope that helps!

Cheers
Christine

... I have trouble with Twitter is because I feel like I'm spamming.

I struggle with this especially because when I'm not in bootcamp I pretty much only tweet about social justice issues, charities, interesting news, etc. So to then start spraying my little following with 10-20 advertisements a day...

So, maybe the problem is mixing the two worlds in one Twitter account??? Or maybe it's that in my mind, there is a place for sales and advertising, and it should be where people have put themselves in the path of it.

I don't know, is there something I'm missing here? Does anyone have similar issues that they've reconciled somehow?

[storybeader]

yea - I got the quote box to work!  

Maybe for the first while do more reading than tweeting, start with retweeting and then jump in evenuatlly with a stronger voice about you and your product.

anyway, that (above) makes a lot of sense.  I've been having the same concerns.  Thanks!  {:-Deb

[Weezi]

I have been trying different things on my tweet deck today. Couldn't do too much as as I wanted as the store was really busy( thank goodness!)
Will try more tomorrow....

I enjoying the learning the lingo etc. and actually "getting" how this can work
Thanx for all the helpful hints!

[GalleriaLinda]

.. I have trouble with Twitter is because I feel like I'm spamming.

I struggle with this especially because when I'm not in bootcamp I pretty much only tweet about social justice issues, charities, interesting news, etc. So to then start spraying my little following with 10-20 advertisements a day...

So, maybe the problem is mixing the two worlds in one Twitter account??? Or maybe it's that in my mind, there is a place for sales and advertising, and it should be where people have put themselves in the path of it.

I don't know, is there something I'm missing here? Does anyone have similar issues that they've reconciled somehow?

I'm so excited to see so much interest in twitter - good questions and concerns. Just wanted to jump in here with some suggestions. ZsKnees is right that promoting her shop to her current followers may not go over because they followed her for other reasons.

While I think a promo tweet here and there to her current followers can be interesting to them, they are not there for that.

I have three twitter accounts and is why I love http://www.hootsuite.com that makes it so easy to see all three at once, easily RT with any one of them or all of them at once, has it's own link shrinker AND you can set up tweets to post on a timed schedule!

I have my GalleriaLinda shop account, my IndieCEO artists/crafters biz/marketing blog account, and my Linda Harrell marketing consultant/real estate day job account.

Each draws different followers. While the GalleriaLinda and IndieCEO accounts draw from the same pool of handmade communities, people follow each for a different reason. I try to post more marketing/biz things from IndieCEO and more jewelry interest posts to GalleriaLinda. There is nothing wrong with several accounts and actually can be a sound business move if you have different interests or even different shops.

A couple of tips I have discovered:

~RT (retweet) other's tweets, especially their blog posts or new listings and you have a friend that will RT yours too.
~Participate in #ff (follow friday) retweeting and make your own #ff list of suggested followers. I try to #ff iCraft tweeters of those I know of.
~Engage in a short conversation with a follower by commenting on a new listing or someone's comment about their day. It makes you personal and a friend.

The way to RT is to [make any comment first], [then the "RT" goes next], [the @name of the person you are retweeting], [then the copied message]. Of course watching your character number. Such as:

Awesome pillow!-love it! RT @pillowthrowdeco worth following to see "Geek-almost-talks-personality-pillow"

http://bit.ly/Fy2M5

It is nice to condense an RT if you need to because of the added RT or your message. You do not have to make a comment to RT.[/list]
Hashtags

For FollowFriday (#ff) you can list names in any way you want as long as the #ff is somewhere in the tweet.

To to

http://www.tweetchat.com and put in your #whatevertopic, such as #ff (these are called hashtags) and you will see the real time postings of everyone hashtagging that topic.

I also use #handmade a lot for my listings posts - so handmaders will see it.[/list]
Well, here I have written a novel. LOL! Sorry! There is no such thing as "25 words or less" in my vocabulary!

[Winged Heart Studio]

Wow! Lots of great advice about Twitter! I think one of the problems with understanding how to use Twitter is that some people use the web page at twitter.com, while others use TweetDeck or some other device. I really like TweetDeck myself because it is simple to retweet and it autocompletes addresses.

How do you get clout on Twitter? RTs others, FFs, and being retweeted will up your clout factor.
http://www.twitalyzer.com/twitalyzer/glossary/definition.asp?t=Clout

Follow @mashable for great Twitter advice!

Apologies if these have been mentioned.....I've tried to read every word!f

If all you do is tweet what you just listed. I will stop following you out of boredom. If you talk about yourself, where you live, say funny things or share good quotes or relevant links, then mention that you listed something, I might check it out and even retweet you. And that is the big goal of Twitter....to be retweeted!

I follow people who live in my town, crafty types who I admire, my fave authors, magazines and companies I like, some movie stars like @kirstiealley, who is a hilarious tweet, btw. I have been replied to by Kirstie, Clive Barker, Kathy Ireland, Wyclef, Neil Gaiman, plus many of my craft heroines!  Where else but Twitter could that have happened! It's fun and sometimes, exciting! I think that my most valuable career contacts have been made on Twitter too. So there ya go!

Good luck with Twitter! It is invaluable! Tweet me at wendytgibson.