Girl Goes Tech

20 Ways to Get Ignored on Twitter

Helena@ggt — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:37:06 +0000

1. Auto DM.

2. Use a generic Twitter layout.

3. Don’t upload an avatar.

4. Make very mysterious tweets.

5. Never @reply.

6. @reply too much.

7. Talk about yourself.

8. Leave your bio empty.

9. List “social media expert” in your bio.

10. Never talk about yourself.

11. Link to something in every of your tweets.

12. Tweet sayings.

13. Write everything in CAPS.

14. Don’t bother to spellcheck.

15. Add many exclamation and question marks.

16. Try to sell something desperately.

17. Don’t follow back anyone.

18. Don’t tweet for a month.

19. Tweet more than 6 times a day.

20. Repeat yourself.

There you go

Chatroulette Improv Piano Sensation [VIDEO]

Helena@ggt — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:46:52 +0000

If you haven’t gotten a chance to take a look at Merton the new viral sensation who improvises songs about random people on Chatroulette, you can view this video now on YouTube (the previous version was removed apparently):

I do feel a little sorry for the first guy though, bet that meanwhile he regrets not having put a shirt on that night

Mashable managed to interview Merton (with an extra song!) and here’s a link to his YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/PianoChatImprov

HOW TO: Auto Publish Your Twitter Updates on Your Facebook Fan Page

Helena@ggt — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:25:30 +0000

While creating GGT’s Facebook fan page the biggest problem I was presented with was republishing my Twitter updates automatically on my fan page wall. Neither the official Twitter app nor Facebook’s Twitter sync did the trick – the official Twitter app only updated the status message of my personal profile. After researching for hours I finally found two suitable apps, depending on what you want to:

Non-Selective Republishing of Twitter Updates

1. Inside the search field on top of your Facebook fan page enter the term “Smart Twitter for Pages“.

2. Click on the application that is shown as search result.
3. On the fan page of the app click on “Go to Application” right under the profile picture (Click here for a direct link if you don’t see the button).

4. On the next page the application asks for your permission to access your profile, click “allow“.
5. Now you need to enter your Twitter profile information. Click on “Set Twitter Account“.
6. Enter your Twitter screen name and click on “submit”.

7. Next you’ll see three pop-up windows asking for your permission to publish data on your wall etc. Click ”allow” 3 times.
8. You’re done! Now your Twitter updates are pulled into the status message of your Facebook fan page automatically looking like this:

Selective Republishing of Twitter Updates

1. Inside the search field on top of your Facebook fan page enter the term “Selective Tweets“.

2. Click on the application that is shown as search result.
3. On the fan page of the app click on “Go to Application” right under the profile picture (Click here for a direct link if you don’t see the button).

4. On the next page you simply have to complete one single step: Enter your Twitter screen name and save.

5. Next you’ll see a popup-window asking for your permission to access your profile, click “allow“.
6. From now on every tweet which is followed by a “#fb” will automatically be published to your Facebook fan page (and only those tweets!):

Please note that Hootsuite also offers the possibility to publish your messages to several social networks at once (you can select the networks by checking the icons next to the text editing box right at the top of the client).

How to Make a Winning Facebook Fan Page – The Best Guides

Helena@ggt — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:40:38 +0000

Right now I’m in the process of creating and tuning GGT’s Facebook fan page which of course means that I went through a whole lot of guides, searching for tips and strategies on how to proceed. In this post I’d like to share the most useful guides with you:

- 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page

- 10 Ways a FFP Can Help Your Business

- HOW TO: Set Up a Winning Facebook Fan Page

- Fancy Facebook Fan Pages – A Step By Step Guide

- How To Create the Perfect Facebook Fan Page

- Facebook Fan Page Best Practices

- How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions of Fans

8 Ways to Take Your Company Further with Twitter

Helena@ggt — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:20:24 +0000

If you’re running a business, chances are you came across the term “social media” or heard of Twitter as the new “thing” you absolutely need to have – just like your competitor. But did you know that – if used right – Twitter can be a powerful tool to help you raise sales, poach customers and collect strategically important information? The following 40 companies are great examples of corporate twittering done right. If you’re wondering right now whether these best practice cases can be applied to your business too – the answer is a definite yes. Certainly every company is unique and you’ll be able to implement some strategies better than others but here is a list of 8 tips to enhance your business using Twitter, for you to chose from:

1. Create a coupon campain

The most famous example of a company using Twitter heavily for coupon campaigns is Dell. They were among the first to discover the social network as a separate sales channel and Twitter had made Dell over $ 1 million in revenue already in 2008. That’s why Dell started offering exclusive discounts to their followers on Twitter over the @DellOutlet account. That way they not only managed to get more followers and traffic to their site but the immediate result was a direct boost in sales. And what could work better to spread the word about a coupon campaign than the fastest communicating social network?

TwtQpon is an online tool that can help you set up your campaign:

2. Go viral using giveaways

Viral marketing is probably one of the terms that’s used the most while talking about Twitter as a marketing tool. The reason is self-evident: The tightly knit network, with its millions of users that communicate in real time using short 140 character messages is perfect for spreading the word about anything. Especially sensational news or giveaways – in short, things that could wake the interest of about anyone. The network’s technology as well as the one of professional Twitter clients facilitates sharing news by using the retweet mechanism in conjunction with #hashtags. Attaching giveaways to your viral campaign will make sure that your message is going to spread like a wildfire (especially if you hit Twitter trends). Even if you’re hesitant to spend money on let’s say 5 Macbooks – the example of Moonfruit shows how such an investment can have a huge impact (even for a 10-year-old website building service). You’ll probably get back the costs quickly and the boost in traffic / sales / attention will last for a long time, if you do it right. Here are a few tips:

- Collect followers/email addresses: Do not simply use Twitter to “announce” a giveaway or drive traffic to your site. Use the network to collect followers or newsletter subscriptions. The emails or followers you’ll get this way represent an incredibly precious list of potential customers you’ll be able to contact at will – whenever you have a new event coming up. And make sure to keep up the interest of your subscribers (that’s one thing Moonfruit failed to do).

- Have a great prize: The hype won’t be big if you give away $ 10 iTunes gift certificates. The bigger the prize the more retweets you’ll get.

- Communicate with people: Respond to feedback and questions and make sure to smash negative rumors about your campaign being spam.

3. Respond to complaints directly

Did you know that a customer develops a much closer relation to a company or a brand if they actually happened to have a problem and the issue was resolved through customer service? You should use the network to search for complaints in real time. Some issues can be responded to really easily and showing initiative this way will go a long way in raising customer satisfaction. The easiest way to track negative feedback is to set up a column with a keyword search inside Hootsuite:

When you open Hootsuite you’ll automatically see all tweets collected in a column containing those keywords. You can then reply to them directly using @reply.

4. Conduct surveys and collect customer feedback for free

Yes, customer feedback on Twitter is entirely free of charge. A social network where people talk openly just about anything in real time 24/7. Using Twitter search you can track tweets whenever your company’s name is used (see above) and see how people react to new products, changes in structure and new campaigns.

Twtpoll can help you conduct surveys and polls on Twitter:

Twtpoll Demo from Felipe Coimbra on Vimeo.

5. Spy on competitors

With Hootsuite you can set up columns for the following things:

- Collect tweets from your major competitors and see what they’re up to. If they launch a giant viral campaign (e.g. with discounts) you can make sure to react accordingly and beat their offer in your next/current campaign.

- Collect tweets with search terms involving variations of your competitors’ names as well as negative words like “sucks” or “hate”. That way you’ll be able to @reply to or DM dissatisfied customers and poach them directly, proposing your own offer as alternative.

6. Find employees

Many people react with strong skepticism when they hear about Twitter as recruitment tool. But in fact recruiters as well as big companies are using the network since a long time already to scout for talents. The most important thing is to use Twitter in this way thinking LONG TERM. Slowly build up connections within your industry, organize those contacts and get to know them better (spotting potential), when the time has come post about job offers and maybe even shoot a DM to particularly interesting candidates. Twitter is used heavily by people in just about any industry and the profile of a person can give you great insights about the kind of information she or he most frequently shares with their followers, how the person communicates and how the potential candidate makes use of 140 characters to pass on the most important facts in a succinct manner.

7. Raise capital

Ok, at this point you’ll probably think “this sounds far fetched”. But it isn’t as unrealistic as you think. Apart from the fact that Twitter offers you a great opportunity to network and get to know potential investors, the social network is often used to raise funds and collect donations for good causes. For example Mashable partnered with Twestival to promote the world’s largest Twitter fundraising drive and together they managed to raise over $250k for charity (water). They managed to secure themselves powerful partnerships and supporters on the way:

Tipjoy – Fundraising Partner @tipjoy
Amiando – Event Registration Partner @felixhaas
Live Earth – Video Broadcast Partner @liveearth
Noonan Media – Live Streaming Partner @briannoonan
Mashable – Media Partner @mashable

8. Raise Brand Awareness

There are many ways in which Twitter can help your company to raise awareness for your brand. A seamless integration of your corporate identity into your Twitter profile is just a start.

Using the network actively (campaigns, events, announcements) and searching to converse with your followers / potential customers are things that will cost resources and time but they’ll help to establish a real community around your brand and make your company feel more “human”. This is also to be seen as a long term investment that will alter the image of your company, make customers feel closer to you and give you a precious source of feedback – if done right. Keep in mind that Twitter is a highly exposed channel where every message and and tweet counts as it can spread in no time; so, be careful.

TOP 15 Keyboard-Shortcuts to Boost Your Working Speed (Windows)

Helena@ggt — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:51 +0000

Here is a list of 20 shortcuts for Windows that can help you work a whole lot faster if you get used to them (sorted by frequency of personal use):

ALT+TAB (Switch between open windows)
CTRL+C (Copy)
CTRL+X (Cut)
CTRL+P (Paste)
CTRL+Z (Undo)
CTRL+F (Search inside programs like Excel or Firefox)
CTRL+A (Select all)
Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop and minimize all windows)
F2 (Rename the selected item)
F5 (Refresh current page, e.g. in a browser)
CTRL+SHIFT + any of the arrow keys (Highlight a block of text)
ALT+F4 (Exit current window or program)
SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing it in the Recycle Bin)
ALT+ENTER (View properties for selected item)
CTRL+ESC or WINDOWS key (Display the “Start” menu)

5 Exciting Ways to Use Twitter

Helena@ggt — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:19 +0000

When I started using Twitter, I didn’t realize that the network’s potential actually goes far beyond simple micro-blogging. Unfortunately Twitter is often caricatured by quoting the typical “I just ate a burger ‘n twas good” guy. Without a doubt there are many Tweeps using the network to share personal, rather uninteresting information. However the following examples, showing exciting uses for Twitter, do make you think twice about not taking this social network seriously:

1. Use Twitter for journalism

Many online news resources and popular webblogs like RWW and Mashable have discovered the use of Twitter for journalism long ago. Twitter is simply a great platform to discover breaking stories, perform interviews and quality assurance as well as to promote your articles:

How to use Twitter for journalism

How to promote on Twitter without pissing people off

2. Going viral on Twitter

Taking “promote your articles” a step further: There is no better way to grasp the power of Twitter than to have an article retweeted about 200-500 times in a couple of hours, making your site’s traffic explode all of a sudden. You do not even need to be “famous” or “known” in any way for this to happen. There really is no quicker and better way to spread the word about something and to generate a buzz than using Twitter’s virtual “flock of birds”. The traditional link sharing that used to be done by blogs a few years ago keeps on moving towards the popular micro-blogging service. Here is a great guide that explains how to get maximum exposure for your articles and potentially launch an “avalanche” of traffic:

5 steps to go viral on Twitter

3. Find a job on Twitter

Yes – believe it or not – nowadays Twitter is even used for hiring people and consequently you, too, can use it to find a job. Twitter has one great quality: It’s a platform where your potential employer can see at a glance how you promote yourself, how strong your network is and how you manage to put across valuable information if you’re limited to 140 characters. There are already many tools to e.g. help you write a Twitter resume and also many accounts of head hunters actively searching Twitter for potential candidates. Here is a post from Mashable to help you get started with your Twitter job search:

How to: Find a job on Twitter

4. Immediately get an answer to your questions

Yes, we all know Yahoo! Answers. How would you like it though, if you were to receive the answer to any possible question instantly? Twitter makes it possible:

http://www.mosio.com/twitter/

Or simply tweet your question and see how quickly your network reacts!

5. Get to know yourself better

Twitter can even help you to get information about yourself. The following service parses your tweets and lets you visualize the data to find patterns and trends that will help you get to know yourself better (moods, progress on certain topics, time sinks, habits, the time of the day where you are the most productive etc.):

http://www.grafitter.com/

5 Tips to Attract More Followers With Your Twitter Bio

Helena@ggt — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:00:50 +0000

1. Upload a picture

There is nothing worse than seeing the generic Twitter bird as a profile picture. Whether it is “fair” or not, pictures are an easy first criterion when deciding if you want to follow someone or not. They attract our eyes as soon as we hit someone’s profile page. It is the most important part of your first impression. If you can – really – add a real picture of yourself. It goes a long way in establishing trust with your follower base. If for some reason you do not want to, there are alternatives. You could also add the logo of your site/blog but even companies should to try to put a face on their Twitter page. After all Twitter is about communicating and generally you do want to feel as if you’re talking to a real person.

2. Provide a link to another profile, site or blog

Try not to include a link back to your Twitter page as the URL of your profile. It’s best if you can share a link to your site or blog where people can grab more information about another project you’re working on. Already the fact of having a real URL in your bio makes your profile look more authentic.

3. Mention qualifications

Of course it always depends what kind of audience you’re trying to attract on Twitter. In most cases people will read the first sentence of your bio while looking for something in there that could be a reason to “listen” to that person. Your current position in a company, achievements, skills and general qualifications can be keywords that will help to establish trust as you’re making your first impression. Simply make it a brief explanation of why you think you’re qualified to tweet about certain topics and maybe what really differentiates you from others.

4. Use your real name (or part of it)

Ask yourself a simple question: Would you follow someone called e.g. “startreckfan55″? An alias can be useful in some cases but mostly people will want to see a real name.

5. Be transparent

Most of the above mentioned points are part of a rule you should always follow. Try to be transparent on Twitter. People aren’t interested in someone who is anonymous. There is simply no reason for it with millions of Twitter profiles. Why should you chose to follow someone who has no apparent credibility?Any shady and/or left out facts will almost certainly result in a number of potential followers turning away.

2 Cool, Completely Unrelated Videos (HTML5, Flash, OK Go…)

Helena@ggt — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:40:21 +0000

Ben Paar from Mashable has interviewed Adobe’s group product manager for the Flash platform – Aaron Fisher. You can see the full interview here (with an insider opinion on the HTML5 vs. Flash “war”):

And on a completely unrelated note – great idea for a music video

13 Twitter Tips for Bloggers

Helena@ggt — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:52:54 +0000

Ever since I got started with Girl Goes Tech I’ve always promoted my Twitter account along with my blog and put just as much effort in keeping it active. There are several reasons why I do that but the main reasons is that I see Twitter as the most powerful tool to build a strong community which can be directly attached to your site or your brand. It sort of breathes life into a stiff blog or site and offers a great resource for gathering information, getting feedback from your readers and it simply allows you to show some personality (which is extremely important if you ever want to differentiate yourself from the mass of other bloggers). You get to connect with interesting people from your niche and see which topics are being talked about there the most currently. It goes without saying that this puts you at a big advantage compared to similar blogs and that the network offers a great additional source of traffic. You’ll see that if you use Twitter the right way, it’ll become a secret weapon to help you reach your blog’s full potential. Here is a list of 13 tips to help you with that:

1. Get targeted followers

One of Twitter’s strengths is that due to its sheer amount of users you’ll always be able to connect to people that are interested in the same topic as you blog about. On Twitter you can identify those people clearly by the subjets/keywords they tweet about and by information inside their bios. Imagine building up a large follower base of people who show a genuine interest for the niche you write about; it’s much easier to get started on building a community, to get targeted traffic to your site every time you publish a new article and to gain some authority as you help those people by sharing interesting information.

Basically there are two ways to build such a “targeted” follower base. Either you do it manually by using some tools 0n this list. Or you use a program that does it automatically for you, based on e.g. keywords used in real time.

2. Engage in conversations to build a community

One of the most important things to remember is that if you’re going to make an account just to post a link to one of your articles once a week, you may just as well save yourself the time and effort. People generally won’t follow someone who uses their Twitter account in a self-centered manner. What people look for is:

- interesting/unique information

- people to exchange with on certain topics

- a channel for networking

Twitter really works like a large community and that’s exactly how you should use the service. Get to know your followers, evaluate their potential, react to their tweets and questions and engage in conversations to tie those people to your “brand” and to wake some genuine interest for your project (those followers will be MUCH more inclined to share your tweets with their own followers and maybe even promote your blog/site outside Twitter). Professional Twitter tools like Hootsuite really make it easy to track people that currently talk to you using @replies and to keep track of conversations as it always displays them along with the @reply inside a column:

3. Use Twitter to stay up to date

There are many ways you can use Twitter to stay informed about the topics people talk about in your niche currently. I’ll make a separate guide for this in the coming days but here are some great tools to help you stay up to date and gather valuable information / material for writing articles on just about any given topic:

- Use lists

- Twitter search

- Hashtags

- Columns (with certain kewords) inside professional Twitter clients like Hootsuite

- Following the right people

4. Try to be useful

Think about the first time you deliberately decided to start following somone on Twitter. Chances are that this was because you saw an interesting article or tweet the person shared and wanted to see more of that in the future. Sharing information doesn’t only help to get retweets and to attract new followers, it also helps to make sure people keep on following you. You’ll be added to lists and visitors will return to your profile every now and then in hope to find more interesting stuff. Over time awareness for your Twitter account will grow, people will be converted into faithful readers and start seeing a true value in following you. Simply make it a habit to gather links to useful articles inside Evernote for example and schedule those items as tweets using Hootsuite to share them with your followers and keep your account active constantly:

5. Tweetmeme

I can’t stress how important it is to create a Tweetmeme account and to add Tweetmeme buttons to your blog. These adapted tools will help you to seamlessly integrate the little boxes inside every article you post. This is essential because people are used to the simple functionality of Tweetmeme (a click will automatically display a Tweet with shortened URL etc., detect the Twitter account someone is logged in to and will post the tweet to that account directly). Beside that the network is used to rank articles that are currently being spread through Twitter by the amount of retweets a certain link has received. This helps to identify “buzzes” and spread useful information more quickly. Over time Tweetmeme can hence become a valuable source of traffic.

6. Make it easy to follow you on Twitter

Be sure to add a visible button that helps people find the Twitter account belonging to your blog immediately. If you’re using WordPress this plugin will automatically display a flashy button for you. A beautiful example (for several social networks) can be found on Mashable’s site:

7. Promote your Twitter account along with your blog

When you talk about your blog make sure to provide a direct link to your Twitter account along with it. That way you make sure that people notice both elements immediately. How you prefer to do that is entirely up to you. Adding links to your forum/comment signatures, printing both links onto your business card or spreading the word to friends and colleagues in real life are all great possibilities.

8. Networking

As you keep on using Twitter you’ll identify people who contribute valuable information and who already established a certain authority in your specific niche. You’ll be able to connect to those people, exchange with them on certain topics and maybe even establish stronger professional relationships that can help you on your journey with your project. The important thing is not to stay passive in this regard. Identify such people, follow them and try to engage in conversations with them. You can even use Twitter’s favorite tool to mark them or you can add those tweeps to a customized list in order to see all their updates inside one separate stream.

Many people also expand Twitter to real life by participating in events like Twitter meetups.

9. Show your personality

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that it pays off to show some personality. You must not be afraid to voice your opinion, to use the language that is unique to you as a person and to let people know who the individual behind the Twitter profile is. This alone can set you apart from the crowd and show that you’re not a simple, boring news bot. Odds are that you will sometimes receive negative feedback but that is absolutely normal. People disagree with each other and everyone is entitled to their own view on things. As long as you don’t write disrespectful things you are on the safe side and you should never take criticism too personal or let it discourage you. Just consider it as normal and if the person really makes a point, you get to learn from your error and improve. Also always remember: negative feedback is sometimes good publicity.

10. Stay active and be consistent

Just like with your blog you’ll want to make sure to show constant activity. Why is this so important? If people liked what they saw on your blog or your Twitter account, they’ll return at a later point for more and if they don’t see an update in a long time, they’ll stop coming back. This is how you can make sure to fit in your Twitter activity with your daily routine:

- Set some time apart (e.g. an hour in the evening) where you read tweets, @replies and do your research on new & interesting topics.

- In that hour make sure to reply to @replies and DMs.

- Use Hootsuite to share interesting links with your followers and schedule them every time you stumble upon something. In one evening you can schedule 3 tweets for example which will be tweeted automatically during the day at a given time. That way you can make sure to only tweet at peak times too (which you should do anyway).

11. Reinforce your brand

I’m sure that by now you’ve heard of the famous “seven seconds to make a first impression”. Basically it’s the same thing with your Twitter account. You’ll want to make sure that your profile page, your avatar and your bio are unique, that they look interesting to a new visitor and that all elements reinforce your blog’s brand. You should use a similar style/color of font and make sure to integrate your logo into the background picture for example. Just make sure not to use colors that are hard to read or that make you want rub your eyes right after seeing them. A great example can be found on @sitepointdotcom ’s account:

12. Lists as indicators

This is something I found out not so long ago. If you look at the followers of a Twitter account, you’ll see the number of lists that person has been added to right next to it:

This is a great indicator for the “quality” of the content someone shares. Someone that has just as many followers as you can be part of many more lists simply because the tweets he/she shares are considered to be more “valuable” (or can be more “mainstream” in some cases). Being part of lists is important because people follow these just like they follow a simple account and use them to stay informed on a certain topic. It’s an important step to start gaining authority in a certain niche. Furthermore the types of lists you’re added to show how relevant your tweets really are to the keywords you want to receive followers/traffic from. If you do not find your main keywords in the names and descriptions of the lists you’re being added to, you’re doing something wrong:

13. Let your account grow naturally

Do not rush things. Building a strong and valuable Twitter community simply takes time (we’re talking months…). Your followers need time to get to know you. You won’t gain authority over night and you wont be valued by people over night. I know that there are many products and services promising that your Twitter account will explode in a week or so, but all the followers in the world won’t help you if those people don’t have a clue who they’re they’re actually following .

Do you have some good advice yourself? Then please make sure to share it in the comment section!