9 Exclusive Twitter Tips & Secrets (#84-92 from the free Twittin' Secrets series)

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This educational HubPage article is an authorized excerpt from a series of Twitter HOW-TO TWITTER TIPS by internet strategist and mobile marketing expert, Dan Hollings (that's me). These exclusive Twitter tips are not published anywhere online except here at HubPages.

Twittin' Secrets has received raved reviews and has been mentioned on Cnet news, Sirius Radio and other publications. You will learn step-by-step how to increase your Twitter success, achieve more followers and more tweeting bliss. 100 Twitter tips; 100% free.

Twitter tips #84 through #92 are found ONLY here at HubPages. This entire series is free. (No catches, No email required, No bull!)

The Twitter Idea Bubble (Background Image Trick). Twittin' Secret #11 covered the importance of your Twitter background image (or Twitter wallpaper). However, with creativity, you can go many steps beyond "interesting." In fact, you can reach clever, cool, wow, and even really practical.

• TAKE A LOOK:
• Twitter Bubble

If you have been going through my numerous Twittin' Secrets, you've already seen this. But I've not, until now, talked about it. The "idea bubble" just below my tweet is a combination of clever, cool, wow and really practical... agree? It reads (at the time of this writing):

• "Love Twitter? Marketing & Mobile? FOLLOW ME and click STAR to save favorite tweets!"

Of course, this can be easily changed from time to time if you like.

My current "idea bubble" background image is like a mini-bio and tutorial for visitors that discover your static pages from social bookmarks, search results, sharing and direct links you've provided. With a little bit of "strategic placement" within your Twitter background image, this message or "idea bubble" is largely hidden except on Twitter static page views. Keep in mind that various viewers have smaller monitors and experiment with other variations of this idea you feel are worthy.

Planning Your Twitter Purpose. Along the Twitter highway, you will be told by other well-meaning Twitter drivers (and an occasional Twitter rage jerk) that you are not a good Twitter driver (ie: you are not using Twitter properly - ha!) Almost funny, that others think they have been self-appointed as Twitter Cops.

I have a rule of thumb about Twitter and all "laws" of internet usage and driving strategy in general: As long as what you are doing online benefits you, your business, your purpose and that of others in your desired audience; without infringing upon, spamming, taking advantage of, or hurting others; AND as long as you are conducting yourself openly and honestly; go forth, do YOUR thing, and ignore the well-meaning cops, muddlers and advisors.

Twitter is no exception, and in fact has a simple stop following button for anyone that does not wish to follow you - in fact, you can even BLOCK. So... Twitter is YOURS to use as you and your followers prefer - as long as you don't spam or abuse the system.

Twitter asks: "What are you doing?" - think about it... are ALL the billions of tweets out there literally answering just that question? If not, does that mean we are all breaking the rules? If so, we are going to need one big Twitter jail :-)

Twitter is a great tool for "conversation" - I encourage that; however no rule forces you to have conversations publicly - you might prefer no conversation via Twitter or use all direct messages. You might use Twitter as a "To-Do List" - that's not a conversation. You might use it to share event or meeting highlights? You might use it to drive a political campaign, like Barack Obama, the #1 followed Twitter user as of this writing (Sept 2008). Yes, Obama is #1, yet he is not using Twitter for public conversation and Obama has zero favorites.

You might use Twitter to help people with tips and ideas (as I often do), including light conversation publicly. In the end, Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, and we all know that blogs come in all varieties and bloggers blog to their audience in the style and manner of their choosing. Go forth, do good, and let the Twitter cops, well... do their thing too!

Stir up some TwitterSplit Soup (Frameset Replies or Split Screens Comments): Occasionally a conversation or topic requires more than a 140 character response. An interesting strategy is to use an HTML frameset to elaborate on the topic and potentially drive more conversation or interest. Variations on this idea are limitless, but one I've toyed with is called TwitterSplit Soup.

• EXAMPLE:
• TwitterSplit Soup

In this example, I expanded upon an interesting comment made by a fellow Twitter user and started stirring the Twitter soup (so to speak) to engage discussion around the question... "Is Twitter Just a Conversational Media Site?"

You'll note that the upper frameset in my example is the fellow Twitter users post (from their a static Twitter page) and in the lower frame my response is a page on my server which uses a template similar to my Twitter page design. For the most part, my TwitterSplit Soup reply is Tip #85 above (it was the perfect soup starter).

Using throw away phone numbers with Twitter. K7, the world's leading web-based unified messaging system provides free voicemail and fax messages directly to your e-mail. Yes, you heard it right, K7 Unified Messaging provides you with a free phone number. This number enables you to have your voicemail messages and faxes delivered directly to your computer. You also have the option to view and listen to your messages from the K7 Web site. http://www.k7.net/

So, what does this have to do with Twitter? Well, let's face it, you likely do not want to immediately pass a personal phone number along to the public or a stranger on many occasions, yet there are times when offering a way people can call is desirable. K7 offers a solution that can be temporary or permanent based on your needs and you can't beat the price.

In your efforts to build followers and relationships via Twitter and perhaps build a database, you might explore weaving a phone call into your strategy... people are usually more likely to leave their phone number on your voice mail than post it via Twitter. I'm pointing the way here, just add your creativity.

Get listed in the Twitter Yellow Pages: Twellow (www.twellow.com) You may already be listed at Twellow, but if you search for your Twitter Username there, you can enhance your profile, add numerous links, up to 10 categories and and an extended profile bio. Go here to add your listing: http://www.twellow.com/user_add.php Next, link to your listing, add it to Google Local, other marketing materials and tweet about it too. By the way, Twellow is a great place to find followers and people to follow (by category).

• EXAMPLE:
• http://www.twellow.com/user/dhollings

The Twitter Treasure Hunt Strategy. This works best when you have enough engaged Twitter followers to pull it off. But, WOW... is this a powerful strategy.

Let's say you want to create a buzz about something (a book, a product, a report, an event, or whatever). You post on Twitter (or send out an announcement to your list) that you want 10 participants to join in on a "Twitter Treasure Hunt." The benefit of joining in can be the traffic and followers that participants will get or perhaps you might offer a small prize.

Next, have EACH participant tweet/post ONE of your "Treasure Hunt" clues AND optionally, mark the clue as a FAVORITE within their Twitter account. You'll need to carefully craft these posts and give ONE to each participant with instructions to post (unedited). Each post will have a correlating clue NUMBER and the NEXT participant Twitter USERNAME. This connects all Treasure Hunt posts together and includes a link to contest rules in every post.

POST EXAMPLE #1

• Twitter Treasure Hunt: This is clue #1 from @dhollings Next clue hidden at @participant-username Find all 10 clues & WIN http://is.gd/yourURL

No matter where someone starts the Twitter Treasure Hunt, they must find the USERNAME of every "clue holder" along the way. So YOU start the "hunt" by tweeting a public post that mentions clue holder #1. Clue holder #1 has a post already up that mentions clue holder #2 and so on... ultimately, clue holder #10 (or your final clue holder) mentions clue holder #1 so you've created a complete Treasure Hunt loop. Make sure that ALL your participants have posted their clues before you post to start.

ALTERNATIVE EXAMPLE #2

• #TwitterTreasureHunt-10: This is clue #1 from @dhollings Next clue hidden at @participant-username Find all 10 clues & WIN http://is.gd/yourURL

Your in-tweet URL (http://is.gd/yourURL) should go to your contest details/rules plus describes the prize. You should require all participants become followers. You can structure your Treasure Hunt so only the first person wins, or the first 10, or ALL.

Winners must post to their Twitter page, the usernames where they found each clue. This will date the submissions (and of course, add to the viral overtones of this strategy).

Of course, you can also use Twittin' Secret #80: "The Twitter Tease" and/or #81: "The Twitter Countdown" in conjunction with "The Twitter Treasure Hunt" to maximize participation.

SEO SEO SEO. When much of your focus in creating a Twitter post goes into squeezing things into a 140 character girdle, thoughts of keywords and search engine optimization often and understandably fall to the wayside. However, amid your Twitter conversations and various posts, in the back of your mind (and occasionally as forethought) keywords and SEO should be considered.

Yes, Twitter posts get spidered, they show up in search engines, PLUS lots of people search Twitter posts by keywords seeking topics and people they might follow. With that in mind, not thinking SEO and keywords only hides your great Twitterings from the very people that could be seeking you out.

The most important part of your post for keyword/SEO consideration is the beginning, literally the first 27 characters or so. It's this first part that becomes part of the <TITLE> on your Twitter static pages.

EXAMPLE (look at top of browser at TITLE):

• http://twitter.com/dhollings/statuses/898958886
• The HTML source code displays this:

  <title>Twitter / Dan Hollings: Does God Twitter? http://tw...</title>

It appears that Twitter uses the following <TITLE> format:

• Twitter / Your Username: 27 characters ...

With this in mind, if one of your goals in using Twitter is marketing and/or follower acquisition, a little thought about the keywords that best match your post content/purpose is a good investment of time - perhaps worthy of at least 140 seconds :-)

Twitter Link Love. This is perhaps not a biggie, but it is worth mentioning. Search engines follow, explore and rank web pages based to some degree on the links that point to a page. In general, the more high quality links pointing to a particular web page, the better that page will rank within the SERPs (search engine results pages). While many other factors are thrown into this page evaluation algorithm, there is no question that this "link love" is important.

Many sites, including social media sites such as Twitter employ what's known as "Nofollow" on the links that you publish. Yes, for the most part, the hyperlinks within your Twitter posts offer no link love at all. Don't cry, it's probably a good thing, because unfortunately spammers have an affinity for unmoderated or uncontrolled social sites that let link love turn into a den of link-iniquity.

If you are curious about which of your links are not neutered with the "Nofollow" attribute (at Twitter or any web page), I recommend this Firefox browser plugin called SearchStatus - http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

Twitter Twinkies. There is little question that folks that do Twitter, love Twitter, and almost anything you post, related to Twitter, has the potential to catch a followers eye. "Twitter Twinkies" are tweets that feed followers (and potential followers) with the essential high calorie fast food Twitter delights that many Twitterers love. In fact, if your "Twitter Twinkie" is really high calorie, fellow tweeters will retweet. Thus begins that viral or "Tword of Mouth" Twitter magic.

My "Twitter Twinkie Strategy" can be implemented by simply staying alert to "All Things Twitter" and sharing this stuff with your followers from time to time -or- better yet, bake up your own creative Twitter Twinkie recipe and share all the Twitter Twinkie lovers of the Twitterverse.

NOTE: Twinkies need not be exclusively Twitter related; you be the judge of what your followers will eat up and feed it to them one cream filled sponge cake at a time. Have fun!

TWITTER TWINKIE EXAMPLES:

• Twoubling Twitter Tongue Twister or "The Twitter Sobriety Test"
• Twitter Invented in 1935? Who would have thunk!

SUPPORT: TWITTER TIP #92 AT "GET SATISFACTION"

• Tip 92 not clear please explain? SUPORT ANSWER