Twitter Tool Box – Updates

The Future is Twitter. What do you think? Check out Thomas Power’s arguments in the video on the right. If he is right, then the easier it is to make the most of Twitter and to be as efficient as possible, the better. If he is wrong, then it certainly doesn’t hurt to be effortlessly as efficient as possible. That’s the win-win benefit of the “Really Usefull Twitter Tool Box.”

As Twitter develops and grows, so will Twitter tools. Check back here often for updates, bookmark this page or subscribe to this blog (click the Subscibe button at the top right of this page) to help yourself make life easy and tweeting the pleasure it can be.

Added on 16 December 2009
Personalised Twitter Background: Your Anti-Spam ID

Do you care about your visitors’ experience when they land on your Twitter page? If you don’t, hmmm, you may want to ask yourself why you’re on Twitter in the first place. A recent book about online social networking and what it means for you and your business carries the title “Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me.” I guess that says it all. Spammers, as I wrote in my blog post, don’t personalise their Twitter profiles. It’s certainly not the only reason why no one likes them. But it’s how you spot them easily.

Sites offering an escape from Twitter’s homemade background abound. You can find lots of links in the graphics section of the “Really Usefull Twitter Tool Box.” Recently, I came across a couple more sites that deserve your attention.

KillerTweets.com is a really cool site offering backgrounds from free to $99 (custom background) with a great selection at $9 and $49. When I looked, I only found one free background. But that was definitely good enough for me to try it out (@twtrmastermind). I may well trade up to a $9 background. There are a few that have caught my eye.

Once you’ve established yourself on Twitter and on the Internet you may want to move up, bite the bu$$et and have a background designed for you.

Why should you have a custom background? It’s your brand. Whether you are on Twitter just for yourself or for your business doesn’t matter. You want to be instantly recognisable as you.

Have a look at a few examples: @joelcomm, the author of “Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time” practices what he preaches. So does @markshaw. Both of them are Twitter experts.

Joel is not only a Twitter expert but also develops apps for the iphone. His background says it all. Mark has carried his branding from his blog and website through to his Twitter profile. Just click on the link above his bio and you’ll see what I mean. Again, the theme is instant recognisability.

There are several sites in the “Really Usefull Twitter Tool Box” offering bespoke services. So does KillerTweets.com.

TootYourTwitter.com is dedicated only to customised backgrounds. They don’t do free or downloadable designs. So far, their range is not vast, but they have a special offer running for $99 (still valid at the time of writing).

One advantage of a bespoke Twitter background is that you don’t have to worry about getting the colour scheme right. Their designers will take care of it for you. If you are like me and go for a free or downloadable design, you could come unstuck and mess it all up thanks to a perhaps not very finely honed sense of colour.

Don’t worry, help is at hand if you don’t know which colour scheme to choose for you profile. I used this help, and I don’t think I’ve done too badly at @twtrmastermind.

ColourLovers.com will advise you which colours match. Go to http://www.colourlovers.com/colors and select from their palettes or patterns, and as long as you stick to their advice, you won’t go wrong. They also conveniently provide you with the Hex code and RGB values for each colour. All you have to do is copy and paste the code into the design page of your Twitter profile

Added on 28 November 2009
How to Add Retweet Buttons in Your PDF Documents

How do ‘things’ (ideas, marketing methods, fashion and whatever else you like) go ‘viral’? They spread by multiplying. Why would anyone want anything to go viral? Because it’s the cheapest and most effective way of advertising, not just a commercial product or service, but anything you’d want to communicate.

How could you make your Internet ‘things’ go viral? Add a retweet button to your pdf document. Because of their portable nature, pdf files (ebooks) are downloaded, shared, distributed, emailed freely. It doesn’t cost anything to share a pdf file. How about providing good content and allowing everyone who downloads your file to share it with all their contacts?

Given the explosive growth of Twitter, the easiest and cheapest propagation method of your ideas and your ‘landing page’ (whatever ‘product’ it may be) is by providing your readers with a retweet button that contains a link to precisely the place you want everyone to go. That is, in a nutshell, why you should create retweet buttons in your pdf files.

How is this done?
Follow the easy “6 Steps to Creating a Retweet Button in Your pdf File” superbly laid out by Michael Stelzner in his Socialmedia Examiner. I won’t reproduce his article here. Just click through to his blog and enjoy the wealth of information he provides: “How to Add Retweet Buttons in Your PDF Documents.”

Added on 27 November 2009
Mobile Twitter Apps – Tweetie 2 and Seesmic Mobile

Tweetie 2 for the iPhone

From the outset, Twitter was designed with mobile communication in mind. Tweetie 2 for the iPhone now takes this to a new level. Tweetie 2 is not just Tweetie with a few bolt-ons; it’s been rewritten from the ground up with a fast and powerful new core.

Here is a brief summary of its main features that should make iPhone tweeting pure pleasure:

• New tweet options — You can now easily geotag, search for hashtags to include in your tweets, and even search the people you follow to find someone to @reply to, in addition to options like retweet or mailing
• Integrated “Post with Tweetie” bookmarking for Safari and URL shortening
• GPS integration with Nearby Map View
• Integrated Tweet Translator and TextExpander
• A new offline mode allows you to carry on even when you don’t have a connection and then sync your tweets as soon as you are in range again
• Full landscape support, which is configurable, of course
• Drafts manager ensures you never lose a tweet
• Follow, unfollow, block and unblock from multiple accounts simultaneously
• Saved searches sync with Twitter.com and the upcoming Tweetie 2 for Mac

You can check out Tweetie 2 at  http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/

Seesmic Goes Mobile

A while ago, I switched to Seesmic as my desktop Twitter client and have been delighted with its performance ever since. Now, Seesmic is going mobile with Seesmic for Blackberry and Seesmic for Android. Both apps are free downloads. Have a look at the Seeismic website; you’ll find refreshingly short videos explaining its main features.

Seesmic for BlackBerry
groups all your Twitter timelines into a simple and clean interface. Here are some of its most appealing features:

• View all your timelines in one window
• Create and view saved searches
• View Twitter lists that you’ve created on twitter.com
• Shorten URLs and send photos
• Configure background  notification alerts for Direct Messages and @Replies that require your attention

For a free download of Seesmic for Blackberry go to http://seesmic.com from your BlackBerry.

Seesmic Android
is a simple and easy to use feature-rich Twitter application for the Android. Here are some of its most appealing features:

• View all your timelines in one window
• Share photos to yFrog & TwitPic, record and upload videos on the fly to YouTube
• Automatically shorten URLs with bit.ly and j.mp
• Share your location with Android’s integrated location technology
• Save tweets as drafts
• Configure background  notification alerts for Direct Messages and @Replies that require your attention

For a free download of Seesmic from the Android Market Place, click on this link from your phone:  market://search?q=pname:com.seesmic

Added on 19 November 2009
Autotweeter

Twitter wants you to interact personally with your followers, and that for good reason. Personal interaction builds relationships. Automated tweets don’t, or at least not as well as personal ones. Twitter’s intentions notwithstanding, there are a plethora of automation tools in cyberspace. Some of them are listed in the “Really Useful Twitter Tool Box” but new ones appear all the time (it’s time to fess up again: I am currently beta testing a really exciting automation product; more about it when it will be released).

You have to decide where your allegiance lies: to automate or not to automate your tweets. But even if you automate remember to follow the Twitter rules (see the last two pages of the “Really Useful Twitter Tool Box”) to avoid having your account suspended.

You are forewarned, so here goes:

Autotweeter is another offering that allows you to automate your tweets. The tool aims at a wide range of users: from people who simply start a fun service like joke-of-the-hour to the Twitter marketing and product promotion agencies. Here is a bullet point summary of its features.

Autotweeter

• is a light weight tweet scheduler desktop application
• can send automatic tweets to your twitter account while you are away from your computer.
• allows you to tweet, or send custom replies or follow people at a certain time interval to avoid being suspected of spamming
• lets you mass follow people automatically and slowly, so that your twitter account does not come under the spam scanner of Twitter; the tweet-reply-follow request can be scheduled with a time interval.

I haven’t tested the tool myself but I strongly recommend that you read the excellent review in TulsaMJ’s Tech Blog at http://tulsamjtech.blogspot.com/2009/09/autotweeter-pro.html. Autotweeter is available as a limited free trial version or as Autotweeter Pro for $20.

Still on the topic of automation, I suggest you have a look at TrueTwit.com, the validation service for Twitter (it is listed in the “Really Useful Twitter Tool Box”) if you want to protected yourself against following robots.

TrueTwit is designed to help you:

• Verify people from robots
• Avoid Twitter spam
• Save time managing your followers

Most of my following is manual, not automated. That’s why I invariably respond to TrueTwit messages asking me to verify that I am not a robot. It certainly helps build your followers’ trust in you.

Added on 11 November 2009
2 New Twitter Clients – ÜberTwitter And TweetGlide

ÜberTwitter

ÜberTwitter is a company devoted to delivering Twitter clients for mobile devices. Their first product for the BlackBerry aims to provide BlackBerry users with a fully featured Twitter client including:

• Integrated ability to upload pictures to a site dedicated to serving ÜberTwitter users
• Ability to optionally update your Google Talk status with your last tweet, making your tweets reach a wider audience then just people following you on Twitter
• Automatically update your location based on the cell tower information provided by your phone, no GPS hardware required, click here for an example
• Send videos embedded in your tweet
• See everyone who is tweeting near you

ÜberTwitter is available both as a free download and ads-free for $4.99.

TweetGlide

“TweetGlide is the next generation of Twitter desktop apps that not only makes Twitter easier to use, but is also the logical choice for anyone that has a website or does any kind of marketing online. I love it!”

Joel Comm, NY Times Best Selling Author – Twitter Power

TweetGlide is currently available only as a desktop app for PC/Mac but will soon be released for the iphone, too.

TweetGlide is a dual-purpose app: it allows you to manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts (like many other apps) AND it gives you the opportunity to go viral and earn affiliate commission simply from using it and telling others that you use it (like NO OTHER app).

Interested? Here is what TweetGlide offers (yes, I fess up, my TweetGlide link is an affiliate link – but this does not change the fact that it remains free and does not affect your use of and benefit from the app in any way whatsoever; in fact, I invite you to click on it and do the same on your blog/website/ Twitter or Facebook account):

1. The main, or Home Glide displays posts from all of your “friends” or followers. The @Mentions and DMs (Direct Messages) can also be turned on or off in the Home Glide or opened in separate Glides.
   A useful feature is @Replies becoming “threaded”, so when you read replies they are attached to the message being replied to. No more confusion or searching for the original tweet!
2. Sponsored Tweets – as the name implies, this is where you view ads by other TweetGlide members, as well as your ads. This Glide can be turned off, but cannot be moved from the second column as long as it’s turned on.
3. You can also create a Glide for Favourites, Filtered Searches, Groups and more. Open all the Glides at once, or toggle any of them on or off to create your totally personal Twitter experience.
4. Tweet more than 140 characters! The first 80 characters will be tweeted and the remainder will be posted to a blog with a direct link from your tweet to the blog post. This is a totally unique feature.
5. TweetGlide also allows you to see all of your followers in your Profile area, bulk follow them or bulk unfollow and block other users, select how often your Glides update, enter your Facebook information…and more!
6. TweetGlide has a built-in Short URL system that allows you to select between several such services, although bit.ly has not (yet?) been included in the automation feature.

TweetGlide is a free download.

Added on 7 November 2009
SocialToo Has Discontinued Automated DMs To New Followers

Earlier this year, SocialToo discontinued their automatic direct message service. They state that they took this decision “in order to favor a cleaner stream for our users and other users on Twitter and elsewhere. Because of this we are not a messaging company, and discourage the practice of auto-DMing new followers.” According to their own studies that they refer to, automated DMs have “a much greater detriment on brand image” than they help. There are, apparently only few cases where this is not true.

You can read more about the reasoning behind their decision at
http://blog.socialtoo.com/2009/02/28/time-to-take-a-stand-yes-were-ending-the-dms/.