1. FriendorFollow

When I signed in to my twitter account this morning I realized that I could not follow 3 people who had recently followed me. Since I tend to follow folks back I had a problem with randomly selecting people from my list to make room for the new ones and I didn’t want to unfollow folks who follow me - this is where FriendorFollow comes in.

This service populates a list of the twitter users you’re following but are not currently following you.

2. WeFollow

If you’ve ever been looking for a way to target twitter users within your market or niche then you have to try out WeFollow it’s a user powered twitter directory where you can find new followers based on your inputted keyword.

3. Twitterless

Twitterless tells you who stops following you and graphs your follower history over time, making this info available in a variety of useful views.

4. Just Tweet It

Just Tweet It is a user directory for Twitter organized by genre to allow for users to easily find other Twitter users to connect with.

5.  MyCleenr

MyCleenr is a unique way to sort your friends by their last tweets. It allows you to get rid off all the inactive and useless accounts that you are following!

6. Nearby Tweets

Launched as an early–stage beta January 20th, 2009, the Nearby Tweets project was developed by Brian Cray to extend Twitter’s capabilities into its true potential: a geography–centric social tool for networking and a business tool for building customer relationships and monitoring real–time buzz. With Nearby Tweets’ sophisticated geographic layer on top of Twitter people and businesses will find Twitter more relevant, manageable, and fun!

7. Twitblocker

Are you being overwhelmed by twitter friends who can’t stop talking, but they’re like… still your friends? Install this greasmonkey script, then double clicking the chattering peeps will temporarily remove their tweets from your timeline. Restart your browser to get them back. Simple eh?

8. Tweepsearch

TweepSearch was created to allow people on Twitter to search their followers bio and location information. Twitter doesn’t currently have a bio search and as your Twitter network grows, it’s nice to be able to look through your tweeps.

9. Social WhoIs

This website is a proof of concept that a better Social Media can exist ; a social media based on interests and “personal relevancy” instead of popularity. And this, really is the next step in social media!
Here is what it can do for you:

• Help you decide whether to follow someone or not
• Help you find people who share your interests
• Start or participate in disucssions about your interests

10. UseQwitter

Qwitter e-mails you when someone stops following you on Twitter with a message.

Technorati Tags: Twitter Tools, Twitter Sites, Twitter Marketing Tools, Qwitter, SocialWhoIs, myClnnr

Running a professional, business or niche focused blog comes with expectations - these are 3 of many points to consider when running a blog for business and even if you’re doing it as a  hobby.

Your About Page

It’s fairly easy to get into bag blogging habits - one of the worst habits is to ignore your “About Page” - this page is extremely important because it lets your readers know who you are and helps them to establish some sort of online relationship with you as the author of the blog. It helps them to understand your vision for the blog, and tells them a bit about who you are as a person and as an expert or authority within a particular field or niche. Believe it or not, most folks check out the about page and when they find the generic page provided by wordpress you can kiss them goodbye, so to speak.

Use your about page to tell your readers who you are and why you are qualified to write a blog within your particular niche market - it helps your readers to understand why they should believe or support what you are saying.  Once they become supporters, they will return to your blog.

Claim your Blog on Technorati

Have you claimed your blog on technorati? when you claim your blog on this service you’re registering the site as yours. It can help to improve your traffic. It takes a little while for new blogs to get a decent amount of traffic and you want to attack every possible avenue within your reach to ensure you’re getting a decent amount of readers.

Host your blog on your domain

It’s easy to set up a blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com but you have to remember that although there is no difference on incoming traffic or ranking - hosting your blog on your own hosting account establishes credibility as a professional or authority within your market. When running your blog on these hosted services you have to remember that those companies are ultimately in control of your blog and if you break their terms you run the risk of losing your blog and content with or without notice.

Technorati Tags: blog, super blogging, power blogging

Do you hear them? the sounds of the waves in the ocean.

You’re sitting a the beach on the most relaxing chair you’ve ever sat on…you’re taking in the fresh ocean breeze as you think about how you were due for this vacation a long time ago. The wind is blowing on your face and as you look to your right hand side you notice an iced and cool bottle of beer next to your favorite cocktail waiting for you.  As you watch and take in the peaceful environment that surrounds you you notice the beautiful women and handsome men that surround your immediate area and they are all serving you. You realize that you’re here because of sponsored tweets and you’re very happy they chose you to to be the winner of the following contest…….

They’re calling all supatweeters or bloggers to participate in the contest and you can claim your prize assuming you’re eligible. It’s like they say when speaking of winning the lotto - you have to be in it, to win it.

Sponsored Tweets Referral Contest

From the Source: SponsoredTweets

The Challenge

• * Use your referral link inside Sponsored Tweets to sign up new Tweeters to the system. You can use the standard tweet, display ads or get creative and make something new.
• The challenge starts today and ends October 1st.
• The person with the most valid referrals during the contest period will win.
• Your referral Twitter accounts must be over 120 days old by contest end (you can’t just setup a bunch of Twitter accounts and refer yourself).
• Valid to U.S. Residents 18 years of age and older only. Void where prohibited by law.
• The winner will be announced at IZEAFest.

From the Source: SponsoredTweets

The Awesome Prize

• Round trip coach airfare for two to the Dominican Republicl
• 5 nights for two at the Excellence Punta Cana all-inclusive Resort
• Unlimited premium and domestic alcoholic beverages
• Unlimited natural fruit juices and soft drinks
• Full breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks each day
• 24-hour room service
• 2 giant swimming pools
• Daily activities and nightly entertainment
• Horseback riding (30 min. included per person per stay), bocce, aerobics & water aerobics, water polo, fitness, yoga, jogging, Spanish lessons, dancing lessons, cooking lessons, theme nights, beach volleyball, beach football, tennis, basketball, bicycles, squash, table tennis, darts, billiards, board games, archery, air rifle shooting

Read more about the contest here: http://sponsoredtweets.com/about/supatweeta-challenge/

Technorati Tags: sponsored tweets, spnsor tweets, sponsor tweet, sponsor tweets referral contest, sponsored tweets refferal program, sponsored tweets affiliate contest, sponsored tweets affiliate program, make money online, make money with twitter, sponsored tweets money, sponsored tweets dominican republic, sponsored tweets dominican republic vacation, dominican republic vacation free, free vacation contest

Blogging has become so powerful, however, it’s still very common to run into blogs that are not yet applying the basics. I wanted to take a moment to share a list of 55 blogging tips that cover the basics to help improve your blogs performance.

55 Blog Marketing Tips

1. Blog about a niche your passionate about.
2. Choose an Easy to Remember and Marketable Domain Name
(Use these services to help you out: domainsbot.com, domainpigeon.com)
3. Stay focused on your topics.
4. Brand every aspect of your blog.
(Create a custom FAVICON to give your blog a personal and branded feel, Choose a color & stick to it)
5. Do your readers know? It’s important that you add a photo of yourself somehwere on your blog.
(adding a photo adds a personal touch and feel to your blog in the eyes of your audience)
6. Where is your about page?
(I’ve ran into countless blogs missing about pages, this is a big mistake)
7. Are you making it hard for your audience to contact you?
(make sure that your readers can reach you if they need to)
8. Use Search Engine Optimization Plugins if you’re running a wordpress blog.
9. Backup your blog’s database.
10. Tweak your blog often, add images, test ad locations, update it with the newest social media buttons.
11. Don’t clutter your blog with advertising or too many widgets, it makes it look messy & not very professional.
12. Get involved and active on other blogs and forums, this is what we call blog networking.
13. Make sure you submit your blog to popular blog directories like BlogCatalog, BlogTopSites and Blogs.com
14. Get involved in article marketing, tweak some of your content and add it to the article directories.
15. Write and submit press releases to press release sites.
16. Become a better headline writer.
17. Make sure to write how to’s,tutorial’s, list’s, and guide related post.
18. Share your experiences with your readers, and especially the ones you have been successful at.
19. Post questions for your readers within your articles, engage them in conversation.
20. Make sure you’re using the best colors for your font, a light grey color font may be bad for folks with bad sight.
21. Make sure you’re using images in your post, this makes your post stand out.
22. Are you involved in blog carnivals? get involved.
23. Provide a section where folks can see which are the most popular articles on your blog.
(this wordpress plugin will do the trick:  )
24. Give credit where credit is due.
25. Creat and launch an e-book related to your niche.
26. Run contest to engage your blog readers.
27. Get yourself signed up to the blog social networks. (ex: MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog)
28. Make sure you’re enabling your readers to submit your articles to the popular social bookmarking sites.
29. Wordpress automatically pings your blog, but make sure to do it manually as well.
30. Set up your RSS feed with feedburner to help you deliver your feed to your readers.
31. Help your readers out if they are unsure about something.
32. Offer freelance or consultant services to your audience.
33. Make sure you’ve added a ReTweet button to your blog post.
34. E-mail bloggers within your niche and develop a relationship with them.
35. Submit your blog to “alltop” for the category pertaining to your blog.
36. Submit your RSS feed to RSS directories.
37. Make sure you’re using the right anchor text keywords and phrases on your backlinks.
38. Make sure to follow DailyBlogTips.com and Problogger.net for tips on blogging.
39. Divide your post into paragraphs that are easy to read.
40. Sign up to Google News Alerts and make sure you’re updated on the news within your niche.
41. If you’re thinking about blogging, I suggest self hosting the wordpress platform
42. Get involved in social media sites like facebook, twitter and myspace.
43. Publish Regularly.
44. Write quality content your readers will enjoy.
45. Make reference to other bloggers in your niche and let them know you’ve mentioned them.
46. Start using the trackback function of wordpress to notify other bloggers when you’ve mentioned them.
47. Make sure you install the All In One SEO plugin.
45. Use google adwords keyword tool to find keywords and tags that you can use on your articles.
46. Search for competition on those keywords by going to google and typing the keyword in between “quotes”.
47. Learn about other methods of marketing, article marketing, forum marketing, blog marketing etc.
48. Tweet links to all your post so you’re followers can read.
49. Create an advertising page on your blog so others can learn of advertising options.
50. Advertise on other blogs that pertain to your niche.
51. Use google adwords to advertise your blog to the google search engine users.
52. Read self help books that will help you to stay focused and positive about blogging.
51. Create a schedule for your blogging responsibilities.
52. Know who you’re readers are, sign up for google analytics and quancast.
53. Download the Make Money Blogging E-book by Daniel Scocco of DailyBlogTips.com
54. Download the ProBlogger E-book by Darren Rowse
55. Make your audience feel comfortable.

I’ve said it before, Twitter is a great branding tool and it’s important that your twitter background and theme match both your personality and your blogs design. You want to keep in mind that choosing a background that is consistent with the design of your blog is the ideal thing to do. Those of you landed on this page but are not using twitter for branding or business purposes you want your profile to say something about you and your personality and this article will walk you through the process of changing the look or theme of your twitter profile.

I created a step by step video tutorial that you guys can follow to change your backgrounds. If you’re having sound issues or cannot view the video you can always scroll down and follow the written steps I’ve provided for you.

Where to find Proffesional & free Twitter Backgrounds? Follow the link below….

Custom Twitter Backgrounds

Step 1

Go to Twitter.com and sign in to your account.

Step 2

Once you’re signed, you will notice menu links on the top right hand side of the twitter home account home page. When you find this menu click on the “Settings” link.

Step 3

Once the settings page has opened, you will notice a few options in the submenu provided, you want to click on the “Design” link provided.

Step 4

In this step you will notice several pre-installed twitter background and themes, these are a bit boring and kind of played out but if you like them, all you have to do is click on them and save the changes. Those of you who have your own custom theme or custom background, scroll down and click on “Change Background Image”.

Step 5

Click on the browse button and look for the location of your background on your local hard drive. Once you find it, select it and you will notice that the location of the background image will display int he browse field.

Step 6

Click on Save changes, and your new background image will be displayed on your twitter profile.

Step 7

Click on the link “Change Design Colors” and you will have the option to change the text, background, sidebar, links and sidebar border to colors that blend well with the custom background image you have added to your profile. Once you’ve selected matching colors save the changes and your new background and theme have been installed.

Technorati Tags: How to change twitter background, how to change twitter theme, how to change look of twitter profile, my twitter profile, twitter, twitter backgrounds, twitter theme, twitter account theme

Twitter is a great networking tool, however, not if you’re annoying your followers. I’ve been wondering what the top reasons people unfollow an account would be and the ones below are the first 8 that popped in my head. I took a few minutes to research other opinions on this subject and found these reasons to be pretty consistent across the board.

Twitter is pretty new and the ethics of how you should behave on this social network are still developing but I feel that it’s no different than the way you would behave on facebook or Myspace. Think of the twitter stream as your Myspace bulletin board or your facebook wall. Whatever you would there to avoid being taken off a friends list is what you should do to avoid being unfollowed.

Here are the reasons:

The top 8 ways to Lose your Twitter Followers

1. Where’s your avatar?

It’s a pet peeve of mine to follow someone who does not have an avatar. I tend to accept and follow the faceless tweep back but when I go over the list a few days later and I’ve noticed you’re still a brown square with googly lines - you’re probably going to get unfollowed.

2. Over compulsive Tweet Disorder

I get that we use twitter to update our followers/friends with the things that are going on around us and in our lives but there is no need to tweet compulsively.There has to be a limit. When you do this you annoy me. I dont need to know that 5 minutes ago you went to the store, to read a tweet from you 2 minutes later telling me that you just walked in your house(um…you get the point).

3. Are you auto-responding?

If I follow you and the first direct message I get from your account reads something like: “Thanks for the follow, want to learn how to make 6 billion dollars in 2 weeks follow this link: http:abc.abc” - guess what you’ve been unfollowed. I’m not totally against the use of auto responders, however, if you’re auto responding to me with a sales pitch it turns me off and I probably will unfollow you right away.

4. You never reply or address your followers?

I understand that some folks have a hard time replying to messages because they may have about 100,000 followers or more, but eventually I would hope to see some sort of reaction to my message…if Chris Brogan can reply to tweets and he has close to 100,000 followers there is no excuse for the tweep that has 500.

5. Me, Me, Tweet Me

I log on to twitter and when I take a look at your twitter stream, it’s all about you - there is no engaging your twitter community. You never RT anyone’s messages but your own. Obviously you’re self centered and probably arrogant so I have no idea why I need to keep following you. Oh and another thing, stop asking for Re-Tweets…if folks appreciate what you’ve shared via the twitter stream, they will re-tweet on their own.

6. Where’s your Bio?

If you follow me and I check your twitter page and find that you haven’t taken a few seconds to add a bio about who you are and what you’re interested in, you’re probably going to be unfollowed. It only takes a few seconds.

7 Are you political?

I’m all for having a political convo here and there, but political conversation is very controversial. Most people are sensitive about their political views & opinions and sometimes cannot handle a political tweet. Keep this to a minimum, in fact don’t do it all to avoid being unfollowed. Unless, that is your niche and that’s why people followed you in the first place.

8. Choose your twitter app’s wisely

A couple of months ago I signed up to SNODS - it’s a twitter game that can be somewhat entertaining, however, this game constantly tweets your gaming activity to your twitter followers. This will turn off your twitter followers and will get you unfollowed. Make sure this is not happening to you.

Technorati Tags: reasons to unfollow, 10 reasons to unfollow, list of reasons to be unfollowed, why were you unfollowed, lose your twitter followers, how to lose twitter followers

The idea behind sponsored tweets is getting your message,service or product in front of a large number of twitter users and in order to be successful in choosing the best sponsor it’s a good idea to understand the metrics and stats behind those sponsors. You don’t want to waste money by purchasing a sponsored tweet to find out that the reach and other factors weren’t all that you expected it to be.

Are they Active?

It’s also a good idea to learn what their follower growth rate is because this will help you to determine how active this sponsor is within the twitterverse. A consistent and strong growth rate means that this tweep is pretty active, regardless of the actual follower quantity. If the follower growth rate doesn’t convince you of how active this tweep may be then perhaps having a graph that displays the day to day interaction this tweep is having would be a good indication in determining your purchase.

Tell me who your friends with and I’ll tell you who you are

Another factor to consider is the circle of tweeps that the sponsor interacts with because this will help you to understand the relationships he’s built. It will help you to understand the social status of this twitter sponsor in addition to help you determine his or her credibility. Perhaps understanding this can also help you to find another sponsor that may be offering a lower price to tweet but is still within the target market you’re trying to reach.

Are your sponsors CelebriTwees?

It’s probably a good idea to purchase a tweet from celebritweeps because they will probably have a larger following and automatically a larger reach. Of course if your targeting the blogger audience, you’re not going to pay for a playboy bunny to tweet an offer about making money blogging because their followers are not the audience you’re trying to reach.

How do you determine if someone is a celebritwee?

There are several factors. One would be the most obvious which is the number of followers this particular twitter user has. It’s also good to note that there are a lot of robot made accounts or accounts not really managed by real users that have hundreds to thousands and thousands of followers so this concept or idea is not necessarily the strongest deciding factor on a user being a celebrity twitter user. The strongest point in figuring out the celebrity status of a twitter user is figuring out how many mentions he or she  gets on a particular day - if you notice this number to be pretty high, then you can guess that people are trying to get their attention and this is a clear sign of celeb status. Sometimes the mentions may be a re-tweet so it’s a good idea to learn how to figure out which of these mentions are unique and which are not.

How active are the followers?

It’s pretty clear by now that Twitter has thousands of inactive accounts, and the last thing an advertiser wants is to purchase a $300.00 tweet to find that the followers or most of those sponsors followers are inactive and the tweet will not have the reach or effect the advertiser is hoping for. How do you determine the follower activity, keep on reading and I’ll give you the answer soon.

How many of those followers are online at a particular time?

This is particularly great because if you find a pattern of online activity by the followers of your sponsor you can have a better idea of when would be the best time to broadcast that tweet. Obviously the more twitter users are online for the sponsors accounts at a particular time, then the better your reach. eh?

Wouldn’t it be great if all of the above can be found in one service? in marketing and advertising stats and metrics are extremely important in determining the value of the service being provided. If the above are points you’re concerned about or points that you agree are important to consider in the purchase of a sponsored tweet then let me present to you a service called “TwitterAnalyzer”.

I recently found it while Google’ing twitter analytics and I find it to be extremely useful, there are other services that provide similar stats but i believe TwitterAnalyzer to be the most complete and strongest of the twitnalytics services out there.

Below I’ve listed a few of the main features they offer:

• How many followers are online right now, in real time? Probably think it can’t be done? Wrong, they have it.
• How many twitter users or readers have seen your message? Very important, no? Guess what they have it.
• Curious to know the tweet habits of your prospect sponsor? Of course and guess what they have it.
• Wondering how many retweets this sponsor has on average? Yep and they have it.
• You’re probably curious to learn of the follower growth rate, they have it.
• How popular is the sponsor? get it at twitter analyzer.
• What are the sponsors followers doing?

Hope you make the best of this service because with the evolution of twitter, it’s best we learn of services to support our twitter usage.

While you’re here, follow me on Twitter @RRicart

Technorati Tags: twitteranalyzer, twitter analyzer, twitteranalyzer.com, twitter analytics, twitter metrics, twitter statistics, sponsored tweets, help in choosing sponsor for sponsoredtweets, twitter analizer, twitter monitor, twitter  metrics, twitter management, twitter life cycle, metrics marketing, twitter testing, metrics convert, twitter quality, twitter development, twitter implementation, twitter management, twitter process, twitter measurement, twitter performance, twitter measure

Recession,Recession, Recession isn’t that all you’ve heard in the last few months? I know I have and I think it’s overdue for a vacation so I’m sending it away. I’m thinking an island in the Bahamas, a place where the sun can shine on it and maybe when it comes back, it will be so relaxed and positive that it wont continue to reak havoc on us.

Once it’s back in the states maybe we can utilize Twitter as a therapist to keep this animal under control. To do this it’s important that we understand twitter and how it will function in this regard on your behalf. Twitter is a social networking tool that may be utilized in a hundred different ways depending on who the user is. If you’re one of the users who has been affected by the recession wave and you’re blogging your way to the income you want, that’s totally okay but you have to remember that while you get there you need to make some money. It’s important to understand this because if you’re not making a significant amount of income from your blogging, then this lack of funds may have a negative effect on your strides to success.

I read somehwere that 73% of executives find jobs via social networks. I don’t know how accurate that number is but if you think of social networks like LinkedIn, MySpace & Facebook it’s definitely possible. These networks have served millions of users throughout the years and many companies have come on board to recruit members of these social networks and guess what Twitter is not far behind.

Twitter has been ranked as the number 3 social networking site by “Bloomberg” and after looking at it’s growth rate it’s only a matter of time before co-workers are talking about finding opportunities on Twitter as well. It’s actually already happening on a smaller scale and if you’re looking for a job then it’s time to think of using twitter as a resource.

Here are some general suggestions for the twitter job hunter:

What You do

When on social networks like Twitter it’s important that you post about your skills and what you can offer a company versus the fact that you’re looking for a job. Companies on twitter are not interested in personal whining, they want to hear why they should DM you with a great opportunity. Tweet about your skills.

Twitter Job Hunters, here is Who you should be following:

@SimplyHired
Simplyhired : A vertical search engine company based in Silicon Valley with one of the largest job database.

@Jobacle
Jobacle : Get useful 411, expert interviews and a forum to speak your mind on everything work related.  The blog is updated daily and the Working Podcast is produced at least twice a month.

@execSearches
Execsearches : A job board that has been serving the nonprofit, government, education and health sectors since 1999. Our goal is to be the most efficient, online source for connecting mission and talent.

These are only 3 of the accounts you should be following,the link below will give you a wider list of suggested tweeps: http://applicant.com/30-must-follow-twitter-profiles-and-sites-for-job-hunters/

Looking for a Job?

You may also want to check out:  Twitter Job Search, it’s a twitter real time Job Search Engine that pulls opportunities as they are posted in real time. This article shows you proof of several tweeps who’ve found jobs using Twitter, you can too.

These social networks offer you the chance to build a network of contacts that are relevant to your industry,interest and experience. Expand your network, follow these accounts and stay active on twitter - you never know if you will be the next tweep hired via the social network.

Technorati Tags: Twitter Jobs, Twitter Job Search, Twitter Careers, Twitter Job Recruiting, Twitter for Recruiters, Twitter for Head Hunters, job hunters, social networks, career and social networks