The selection of the user name to be displayed on Twitter and other Web 2.0 properties is often ill advised and reduces your real visibility and is detrimental to your recognition. The first key element to keep in mind is that Web 2.0 is about the people and not businesses.
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The more you insist on yourself and your personality the easier it will be for you to also be recognized for what you do. Businesses are made of people therefore there is nothing wrong in talking about what you do an promoting your activities on Web 2.0 sites, but people will first and foremost connect with you as an individual and then they will become maybe interested in what you do.
Therefore the first safe bet for promoting yourself on Twitter, Facebook and all the other Web 2.0 sites is to secure the possession of your first and last name just as they are in normal life. If you have a common name and somebody else already took it up, then you can change it just a little by adding to your name some short word that better describes your personality. There is one exception to this. If you are well known with some other name pseudonym then you might prefer to use that one as your universal screen name. But be honest with yourself, if the pseudonym is not already well known then you should still set up your main account using your real name.
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Inside the Twitter biography information always use your full name (first and last) separated by a space, no matter what is the “screen name” you have chosen. In this way Google will find you when people are looking for you. Some people, even experienced Internet marketers, place something else in there or write firstnamelastname with no separation (just as it is in the screen name). Don’t do that! Google won’t find you!
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Last word of caution: Twitter fights against the practice of developing an account and then selling it to somebody else. Therefore if you chose a screen name like “cocacola” you are very likely to be shut down. Your account can also be suspended down if you suddenly change your screen name after you have developed a sizable list of followers. Usually you can get it back within a day or so, but it isn’t pleasant. Therefore chose the right name from the start!
Twitter is becoming one of the most popular Web 2.0 sites and a very effective way to keep in touch with other people and finding new friends, but it also become one of the main targets for spammers and hackers in general. For this reason the Twitter staff is becoming tighter in enforcing anti-spam rules and suspending accounts. Sometimes these rules change day by day, so you might end up having your account suspended because of somebody else’s actions.
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It is very easy to impersonate anybody while generating a tweet. Let’s say I want to create a spam message but I want to attribute it to you. I simply build a tweet that looks like this: “RT @yourtwittername spam text spam link” and send it from my account. People who read it will believe that the message was originally created by you and that I am simply re-tweeting it because I find it interesting. If anybody were to come to your account and look for the original message, they wouldn’t be able to find. But goes to all the work of checking it?
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Additionally the spammer will cover up his tracks by canceling the re-tweet message from his own account history after having sent it so nobody will be able to trace it back to him and Google won’t have the time to index it. Yet he will have obtained his result of spamming all the people who are following him, and using your Twitter name in doing so.
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I have personally observed this on my own Twitter account and the only remedy is to be on the watch. The danger here is of looking like a spammer while you are not and the fake Tweet could also contain a link to a site that has some kind of malicious software into it (like a virus). If this happens, Google picks you up as source of contagion, they report you to Twitter and Twitter suspends your account until the link with the virus is removed. So keep an eye on the @reply section of your account and change regularly the password to you account.
What would be your first impression in meeting with someone who conceals his face or wears a mask and tries to sell something to you from the get go without even introducing himself? Disgust, rejection, annoyance and maybe also a bit of fear.
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So how do you believe people react to you when they first meet you on Twitter and try to find out who you are? The information you put in your biography, the picture you publish in your profile and the name you record in your settings can make all the difference in the world and can prevent you from being banned! Read carefully the following instructions!
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Your Twitter profile is very important for your success in social media and there are some major mistakes that can prevent you from gaining credibility or followers:
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A suspect username
Your Twitter username will always be present in any contact or communication you will do. Some people use their own first and last name, some use a “brand” name that communicates what activity they want to perform, others use the name of their company or site, and finally some chose just a fantasy name. These are all fine choices, but make sure you don’t get mistaken for a spammer: they usually use a girl name followed by numbers or a gibberish combination of letters and numbers, like “jhyudh265”. These are all fake accounts that get shut down and that people avoid.
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Omitted or altered real name
Whatever the username you chose, make sure you also add your real first and last name in the profile, and that they are SEPARATED from one another (there is a space between the first and last name). People will search for you on Google and will find your Twitter profile(s) only if they contain your real name, spelled as in real life.
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No image
People will decide whether to connect with you in a few seconds. If you have no photo of yourself or no image whatsoever, the vast majority will stay away from you. This is true of every social network, not only Twitter.
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Missing site You will lost most of the benefit of connecting with people if you don’t have a site, blog or simple page where they can find more about you and if it doesn’t come up in the profile.
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Photo of an object You are on Twitter in order to connect with other people, true people. They don’t want to talk to an object and you’ll appear as somebody trying to spam them about a product. Exceptions: it is fine to use objects when you are providing some kind of service which is best described by the object, like the many “bird” picture that coemn up on Twitter related services. Again, be careful as you will be more easily tagged as spammer.
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False location or identity
The fastest way to get banned from Twitter and lose your followers and credibility is to pretend to be somebody else and to live somewhere else than where you actually live.
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Pretty girls Spammers know very well that people respond better when they see a picture of a nice girl, even better if she is half naked. So they use this trick continually and people have come to recognize it. If you do happen to be a beautiful lady or girl, make sure you have a picture that looks personal and natural.
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Somebody else’s photo It is usually a bad idea to show somebody else’s picture, like a very well known character or popular figure. If you really don’t want to show your face, you can use a picture that of you at a distance or you can use the picture of a kid, pet or family. Kids and pet create strong relationships and can be also used for the background of your Twitter page.
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Sad and bad quality pictures Would you put a low quality photo on your resume? So why use it on your Twitter profile? A smile can go a long way. Get a professionally done photo.
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Crowded or bad picture You have a very limited space, so avoid using pictures that contain too many elements that make it impossible to recognize you. This includes group photos, holding your face in your hands, objects that are in the background and so on.
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Avoid these mistakes and you will have much better results and, most importantly, you’ll avoid being banned from Twitter.
Twitter is a microblogging platform: it allows you to publish short messages called tweets. The tweets are 140 characters long at the outside, only text. They can contain information, a call to action and possibly a link (URL). The tweeples, which is the name by which you designate the people who are on Twitter, are used to click on the link when they find an interesting tweet. Here are 3 rules you can follow in using this powerful tool to direct people to your blog.
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Take short meaningful sentences from your blog post and format them into tweets that people can digest and understand immediately and add a link to that specific post.
Use an URL shortener to keep the link size to a minimum so that you leave as many of 140 characters available for your message. I personally use budurl because it is free, it does an excellent job at shortening any kind og URL and, if you register on the site, you can keep track of any link, looking at how many people clicked on it.
Avoid putting more than one link in a single tweet. You could do it, but it is somewhat confusing and you might look like a spammer.
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Twitter is a very powerful environment and it can bring lots of traffic to your blog throughout the day if you manage to engage the people who are online and who are following you.
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I suggest to make at least 5 tweets during the day pointing to your blog post, using different words and concepts, although some repetition is allowed. Scatter the tweets evenly during the working hours and you’ll get the best results.
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Roberto Mazzoni
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P.S. Go to www.budurl.com and create an account, you can use it to shorten any type of link and it is very convenient also for e-mails and newsletters.
Recently I have been reading the idea from an online marketer, Peter Drew, that Twitter works like a radio station: you have your own audience, your followers, that listen to your “talk” and that can switch from one “channel” to the next with ease while tracking their favorite music (by the use of keywords). I have expanded on that concept by doing some testing myself and I have noticed seven key elements.
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You have only a portion of your followers actually listening to you in any given moment and most of the “listening” happens between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m from Monday through Friday. Ou also have a night crowd but it seems to be different from the people that are listening during the working hours.
When you post a tweet (short message) on your Twitter account, your followers have about 10 to 15 minutes to catch it before it fades out of view. Those who will catch it, because they are tuned on your “channel” will respond to it within a few minutes.
You can successfully repeat the same tweet at different times of the day, finding a different public every time. I would suggest not repeating the same tweet more than 4 or 5 times, well staggered during the day.
The same message can be repeated with different words, so catching a different audience withing a shorter time span (15 minutes, half an hour to one hour).
People will respond much better when you “are on the line” giving some personal and unique content, even if it is somebody else’s content that you are simply retweeting.
If you are saying something interesting they will retweet your content right away giving it more exposure and sometimes marketers invite directly people to retweet their short messages.
You will also have somebody occasionally commenting on what you say few minutes later, joining the conversation with some original content.
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So Twitter does have some similarities with radio in that you have different audiences during the day and they tune in on different streams of conversation, depending on the content. Like radio, they shift very fast from one stream to next and respond better to the subjects that entertain them the most.
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But overall I find it more similar to a town plaza, where people like to hang together and you have occasional new comers joining in spontaneously. It is like when you go to an Italian small city and sit in front of the cafe in the main plaza, or close to some public garden: you will always find people hanging out together who know each other and spend some time chatting about information of common interest, telling jokes and plainly enjoying each other’s company.
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You can join or leave the group when you want and you can follow their conversations making your comments and your stories. And if you are just a stranger passing by and looking for help, you will feel more comfortable turning to this small crowd group rather than just anybody else. And they will always be more willing to help and open to you as compared to the regular guy that is simply walking down the street, minding his own business.
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