It’s my 3rd guest post so far. I’m looking to writing more guest posts soon!

To view it, click here => 15 ways to get your blog comments noticed. I hope you’ll enjoy my guest post!

The comments will be closed below. If you’ve got a comment, you can post it there.

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I want to thank MBR for organizing this event, and Dato’ Danny Ooi for founding MBR. They have personal achievement records and group event records. The personal achievement records help encourage the person while the group records help to build the spirit of teamwork. I am very proud to be a Malaysian.

I am also very grateful to my mother and father for supporting my hobby and lifting it into the professional level.

First, Azrene, the Head of Research in MBR, emailed me to ask me to join the Malaysia Book of Records on July 13 after my appearance with the Prime Minister on the press on 11 July.

Then, they had to confirm that I am the youngest poet by checking the bookstores for poetry books that were written by kids no older than 9. None were found.

On 5 September, I was invited to their office and they asked me to write a funny poem based on the topics they chose on the spot. So, here is the poem (I took one hour to finish it):

My Kitty’s Adventure

My cat was bored of me because
I hug him night and day.
He chose to take a small break
and go for a holiday.

He jumped into my toy plane.
He doesn’t want to stay.
He buckled up his seatbelt
and he zoomed out of the way.

With great determination,
he went out my open door.
He flew into the big blue skies.
He just wants to explore

But there was a big thunderstorm.
The plane was struck by lightning.
My cat was gonna crash! Oh no!
I’m sure that it was frightening.

Good thing he knows how to swim for
he crashed into a river.
Bad thing it was the Angel Falls!
He then began to shiver.

He fell about 3,000 feet from
that high waterfall.
He fell onto a monkey that
thought my cat was a ball.

And with his strength, he threw my kitty
up into the sky.
I wish that I was him because I
always want to fly.

At that time, I was gazing at some
pretty clouds of red.
Then I saw my kitty flying.
Then it landed on my head!

“It’s alright my darling!” I said.
I was really so delighted!
”Meow…….” he gladly sighed as
we are reunited.

After finishing, I also acted out the poem on the spot in front of the founder of MBR, Dato’ Danny Ooi. After that, my mother chose this date (09/09/09) to receive the record certificate.

My mother chose 09/09/09 because number 9 in Chinese culture means ‘forever’.. After receiving the certificate, then my mother realized this date was really God-given, because my Chinese name is Teh You Heng. “You” means protection from God. “Heng” means forever.

Here are some photos from the event. I want to thank Simon Liew (A kind friend I met online) for helping me take all these nice photos (Yes, all photos here are taken by him).

MBR Founder Dato’ Danny Ooi presenting me my record certificate

Me performing my poem, “The Fly”, using the music and sound effects I composed on keyboard.

Me acting out my poem, “My Dad’s Obsessed With Elephants”.

Me with Simon Liew, the kind guy who helped me take all these photos.

Family photo.

 
My brother, Rockson, was invited to dance to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”, too.

Holding a personal record in the Malaysia Book of Records has certainly encouraged me to become a better person each day.

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Cheers!

Related Posts

• Gloson Photography (24 Photos)
• My Growth: Photos When I Was a Little Kid
• Poetry Talents
• My Poetry Book
• My First Poetry Book: Creative & Funny Poetry for Kids

A few months back, I’ve made a post on Gloson Blog, 7 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Blog (Most of which you haven’t done). Now, I’ve come up with 7 more things to do to make your blog better (Also most of which you haven’t done). So… here they are.

1. Frequently use pictures on your posts

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words.

Putting pictures on your blog posts, if you haven’t yet, is a big improvement you could have made. One single picture on your blog post could make a big difference.

It makes the blog posts colorful and will show up in social media sites (It might get a lot more favorites). It also stimulates the readers to read it. It might even make the readers like it more.

We, humans, like to see than read things. That’s the human instinct. So, why not put up the picture and get more views?

To find cool pictures for your posts, go to CompFight, a really cool flickr search tool.

2. Number your lists

like this. Making your list numbered helps people keep track of where they are reading and how far they are from the ending of the post. When I read unnumbered lists, somehow I feel that there is no end to this list. Does this happen to you too?

So, please make your lists numbered, especially long ones.

3. Modify your title structure

This is the default title structure of wordpress blogs: Blog Title >> Archive >> (Post Title).

Search engines has a limit for titles in their search results. So if your title is long, search engines will only show a part of the title.

To make the title: “(Post Title) | (Blog Title)”, or even just “(Post Title)” install the famous All in One SEO Pack plugin and it will automatically do everything for you. It will give you SEO and other benefits.

Oh, and blogger users, don’t worry, I have not forgotten about you. This post will teach you exactly how to modify our title structure like that.

4. Put your picture in your about page

If you haven’t put your personal picture in your blog yet, you should do it. Your readers are curious about what you look like. So put up your picture! It helps your readers get to know you and your personality better.

5. Stop using mailto links and install a contact form

Putting your email on your blog (It automatically becomes a mailto link) is one of the most common mistakes I’ve come across. It can be a target for spammers. You could put up your email address as a picture.

But still, a contact form is the best.
It conceals your email from people who will send you spam.

To install a contact form, I’d recommend Contact Form 7, a simple contact form plugin for wordpress.

For Blogger users, this post will help you.

Oh, and here are 10 Reasons to Avoid Mailto Links.

6. Install the Brian’s Threaded Comments Plugin

With threaded comments, you can directly reply to a comment and your reply will show right below the comment, making discussion easier.

Brian’s Threaded Comments wordpress plugin also automatically separates comments from trackbacks. It adds gravatars (The commentator’s picture. You can get one here.) too.

Blogger users, please don’t be sad, because I came across a post that teaches you how to enable threaded comments –> Threaded Comments in Blogger.

Your comments will be very organized.

7. Display Popular Posts

One way to show off your best content to your new visitors is to display popular posts in the sidebar. To do this install the “Wordpress Popular Posts” plugin. Then, you can configure its settings. Next, go to the Widgets section and enable the Popular Posts widget.

If you don’t want to install it, you can put up some posts that you think is best .

You can also make it stand out to catch people’s attention (like what I’m doing. Check it out at the sidebar).

___________________

There you go! 7 more things you can do to improve your blog! Be sure to check out 7 things you can do to improve your blog (Most of which you haven’t done) too.

If you haven’t done #1 and #2, do it in your next blog post.

But if you haven’t done #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7, I recommend you to do it now (or bookmark it), or not you’ll forget about it later.

It will only take at most 30 minutes (Unless if you’ve got a slow connection or if you are doing it slowly), and could be a very big improvement to your blog!

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One fine day, there was this beautiful purple sunset. It was spectacular! So, I decided to take a photo of it. I also took some other photos. Next, I enhanced the photos using Picasa (I only used it to make the pictures more contrast).

Then, I started my flickr account (Please add me if you want ) and uploaded the photos there.

By the way, today, 31st August 2009, is Malaysia’s 52nd National Day! So here are the photos of my beloved country

Purple Sunset

Building Silhouette
Shot on an evening (Same time as purple sunset).  I darkened the buildings using a photo editor.

Night Lights
Shot in the late evening outdoors when I was spinning my digital camera around

Then, the morning after the next day, I went cycling to take some photographs. Here are some best ones that I took.

Zoooom!
Shot while the car is moving. When the car came, I quickly hit the ‘snap’ button and turned the camera to the direction of the moving car while the camera was capturing the scene.

Car Reflection

Daydreamy
Shot of my bike while swaying my camera around on a morning.

I’ll Come Back Later

Flowing Ideas
I shot this picture on the grass while swaying my camera. Then enhanced it with a photo editing program.

The next day, I took more photographs Here are the best ones.

Green Peace
Shot while swaying my camera around the trees at midday.

Tree

Peace to the World

Don’t Blame it on the Sunshine

Love is Hanging Bright

Sucked Away
Swaying your camera around makes cool pictures, sometimes .

Love is Shining

Sleeping Cutie
My cat, White, sleeping. Awwwwwwwwwwwwww

The Four Seasons
Shot while swaying my camera around. Can you spot the four seasons?

Speedy Lorry

I took some more photos tomorrow evening when going shopping with my mom:

A Single Step to a Thousand Miles
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~ Lao Tzu

Speedy Taxi

Lonely Moon
That lonely moon is perhaps Michael Jackson.

Fruitilicious

Strings of Light

Peaceful Nightfall

There! I hope you enjoyed my photography!

One lesson I’ve learned from this is don’t underestimate things. I underestimated my cheap digital camera because it always takes low-quality photos and even moving it a little can cause blurs (But it has become an advantage because the blurs has made the photos more artful).

Just because a thing isn’t good doesn’t mean you can’t make good use of it!

Please don’t forget to add me on flickr! (I will be posting more photos).

See ya!

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• My Growth: Photos When I Was a Little Kid
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3 Years Old

3 Years old

3 Years Old

4 Years Old

4 Years Old

4 Years Old

4 Years Old

4 Years Old

5th Birthday

5 years old

Fast Forward >>>>>>

.

9 years old

10 years old

10 years old (Almost 11)

11 years old

I appreciate my father for introducing me to the computer and finding these photos. I also thank my mother for taking the time to nurture and take care of me when I was young. I hope you enjoyed my photos.

Cheers!

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• Welcome to Gloson Blog

By the way, the most common reason people stop blogging is because they don’t have a reason to do it. They don’t have a source of motivation. So, here are the list of reasons for you to blog.

Blogging will improve your…

1. Writing skills

One thing blogging has improved a lot in my life is my writing skills.

I have noticed that my writing skills started to improve rapidly during the first few months I started blogging. And soon, I realized that my writing was becoming more professional.

My writing skills improves because when I blog, I write. Writing is the best way to improve your writing skills, right? Obviously. And when I write, I need information and I go to read other blogs too. And reading is another essential for improving your writing skills.

2. Communication skills

When you blog, you get feedbacks. And when it comes to feeding back the feedbacks, you have to communicate. And when you learn to communicate, you improve your communication skills and learn to communicate better.

3. Tech skills

When I was 8, I started creating websites using simple HTML and created www.wholebrainlearning.net. I haven’t updated it since two years ago.

Now, I know basic PHP, CSS, and coding, and more HTML. It is because I have had to tweak my blog design to make it more unique, and also add more features to my blog’s theme.

Do you know that my other website, Poetry Talents, is using the same theme as Gloson Blog (this blog)? It’s only a matter of modification.

4. Thinking skills and creativity

Blogging can give your mind some good exercise. A good blog post takes effort to write, right? Right. And you can get creative with your blog posts too.

Blogging gives you the opportunity to…

5. Make mistakes and learn from it (experience)

You will make some mistakes as you blog, and that’s cool , because if you make mistakes, you will learn and will not repeat the same mistakes in life.

And even cooler 8) , you can turn your mistakes into killer blog posts . Mwahahaha…

6. Make friends

Blogging is a great place to meet people and make friends with them. As you meet and interact other bloggers, you make friends with them and help each other. But be careful who you make friends with!

7. Make money

I also got the chance to put Google Adsense to my blog and make a little money through it. Although I don’t focus on making money, some other bloggers do.

They make money though Google Adsense, advertising, affiliates, and even writing blog posts for other people. Some of them even make a living out of blogging! However, you need to use the right tactics and strategies.

8. Help others

By writing useful articles, you help other people solve their problems or discover something. Helping people gives you happiness. At the same time, you make friends.

9. Inspire people and make a difference

Blog posts also sometimes inspire people to do better. You could write an inspirational, motivational, or a thought-provoking blog post. When people see that I started blogging at 10, they might get inspired to start a blog too. Hee hee…

10. Build name/brand

If you write a lot of good articles and help a lot of people, you build your name/brand on the web. Blogging might even make you famous one day.

11. Listen and learn from feedbacks

You can find out your readers’ thoughts and suggestions about your stories or ideas by looking in the comments section. Sometimes, there might even be quality comments like constructive criticism, that teaches us to become better.

You can also post question posts too. I’ve made a post asking why my readers unsubscribe from blogs and received some interesting replies.

12. Experiment and research

Blogging gives you to opportunity to experiment and research. For example you could see which type blog post is more popular and why that is so.

13. Learn about what life really is

Sometimes, blogging gives you a perspective of life. For example, sometimes you get hate comments and there are people who will become jealous of you. Well, that is what real life is like too. In fact, I think most of the things in blogging apply to real life. Blogging also teaches you how to deal with that situation.

14. Become a leader

When you write useful articles and get lots of blog readers/followers, you are being a leader. With that, you can accomplish more and help others grow.

15. Create something new and valuable

By blogging, you can create something new, original, and valuable and share it in your blog with your friends.

Blogging is a place to…

16. Explore and learn

As you blog, you will learn more things. Usually people blog about a certain topic that they are passionate about. Blogging will expand your knowledge about that topic very much. Since I’ve started blogging, my knowledge about technology and blogging increased a lot.

17. Express and share

Let’s say you are passionate about something. And blogging is a great place to express and share your passions, and be heard.

18. Keep in touch

Personal blogs are a terrific way to keep in touch with your friends or family from different parts of the world, by posting stories, videos, pictures, etc.

Blogging is

19. A better use of time

Instead of using your free time for playing that favorite computer game of yours, why not write a new blog post?

20. A journey

When you post articles, you are like writing a diary or a journal. After some time, when you look back at your oldest posts to your newest posts, you can understand more about yourself and learn to improve.

21. Fun

You know, it’s fun writing articles on topics you are passionate about, helping people solve problems, and doing blogging stuff!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

22. Discipline

When you are blogging, you discipline yourself by finding the time to blog or sticking to a posting schedule.

It’s a good challenge to take up. It raises your self-esteem and gives you the ability to do more difficult tasks. (Yes, I’m not perfect in my blogging consistency. But I’ll try and try again to stick to posting at least once a week )

_______

Update (26 Aug 09) Bonus Reason:

Blogging teaches you to be patient

When I first started blogging, there were not much visitors, comments, or subscribers on my blog. But now, after a year already, I have a good number of visitors, comments, and subscribers. Blogging teaches us to be patient and tells us not to give up.

_______

So there you go, 22 reasons (or benefits) of blogging. If you think I have missed out some more points, please share it in your comments. I hope this post motivated or inspired you to blog! Happy blogging!

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It’s Gloson Blog’s birthday!

It has been 1 year after I have posted the first post (24 July 2008) on this blog. So, Happy (Belated) Birthday to Gloson Blog!

Sorry I didn’t make this post on time. it was because I was busy with my schoolwork and the audio version of my poetry book.

Phew! This year is the fastest year I’ve ever experienced in my life!

Anyway, I love you guys for all your support in making Gloson Blog what it is today!

Posts You Might Like to Read

I have written exactly 99 posts (including this) in my first year of blogging. Here are some good ones I thought you might like to read.

• Being Aired on TV3
• Meeting the Prime Minister and the First Lady of Malaysia
• A Beginner’s Guide to Getting the Most Out of Twitter
• 7 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Blog (Most of which you haven’t done)
• The Top 5 Reasons I Use Twitter
• View and Control Your Friend’s Computer With TeamViewer
• 35 Things That Amused Me The Most
• Google Chrome’s Unique Features

Milestones

Here are some milestones Gloson Blog achieved during its first year:

• 99 Posts (Almost a hundred! Aww man!)
• 474 Comments.
• Google PageRank: 4
• 36,000 unique visitors, according to AWStats
• 233,000 pageviews, according to AWStats
• 800 Subscribers

Acknowledgements

I want to say a big ‘Thank You’ to all my readers and friends who have supported and helped me. Below are my special friends to whom I want to give special thanks. None in particular order .

• Dr. Dora Dong
• C. A. Chan
• Linnet Woods
• Holly Jahangiri
• Claudia Broome
• Peter Kua
• Amanda Choe
• Ellie Chee
• Niki Cheong
• Kelly
• Shui Xing Lang
• Farrhad A

*Please don’t be sad if I accidentally missed you out. Please notify me about it…

I want to thank my beloved country’s Prime Minister and First Lady for giving me such recognition and encouragement on 10th of July 2009. I also want to thank the press reporters and TV crews for taking interest in me. I also thank my parents for motivating me to start this blog.

100th Post…

I’ll write about how blogging has helped me in my life on my next post, which is the 100th post, so, stay tuned!

It’s up! - 22 Reasons for You to Blog

Cheers!

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I got to know how they did the broadcasting and stuff.

My father recorded me performing “Superman”, but he captured only a short video of the interview because there was no more space in his borrowed video camera.

I had to arrive there at 7:00 am. At first, I was nervous and my knees were trembling like leaves because it was live and if I made any mistakes, it can’t be modified! But fortunately, the whole process was smooth and steady.

Then, I went for the interview. It was in Malay. I performed another poem, “My Dad’s Obsessed With Elephants” in the interview. Then after 5 minutes, my mother and brother came into the show and got interviewed.

Here are the video clips that my father took:

Here’s a quick look around the TV3 studio:

And here’s me performing “Superman”. I used the electric keyboard to make the sound effects.

Here’s a quick clip of the interview. It stopped abruptly because the space in the camera reached its limit.

__________

Update (19th July 2009): I have uploaded the video sTV3 contributed. I hope you’ll enjoy it. I am looking forward to translate it and give it English subtitles soon! Anyway, here they are!

Part 1 of 3

This is me performing ‘Superman’. I used the electronic keyboard for sound effects.

Part 2 of 3

I got interviewed by TV3 and performed my second poem, “My Dad’s Obsessed With Elephants”.

Part 3 of 3

My mother was called on unexpectedly to be interviewed. That’s why she felt so embarrassed that she had neither put on make up nor dressed up.

__________

And here are some photos taken by my dad.

Actually, my brother was invited to dance there, that’s why he was in his ‘Michael Jackson’ suit. But since my father didn’t bring along the music CD, he couldn’t dance. That’s why he looked a bit sad. Anyways, you can watch him dancing on YouTube.

I am looking forward to upload the proper video that TV3 will contribute soon. Stay tuned! (As you can see, I have uploaded the video that TV3 contributed. Just scroll up a bit to see it.

I hope you enjoyed the videos and the photos!

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This meeting came about after my mom passed my poetry book (Creative & Funny Poetry for Kids) to Datin Seri to read, because my mother believes Datin Seri is not only our First Lady, but also our Mother of Love for the children of Malaysia.

A few weeks after passing the book to Datin Seri, my mother received a phone call on the appointment time today.

I think our Mother of Love wanted to give me some encouragement to keep up my spirit of excellence in whatever I do, especially after completing my first poetry book.

I am really, really touched by her kind gestures to lift up my spirit to the climax.

It was a very exciting event meeting with our Prime Minister and First Lady. I performed one of my poems to them. They brought along some reporters of the media to introduce me to the people of Malaysia to show the “Malaysia Boleh!” spirit.

Here are some of the precious photos my father took during the event.   That’s my mother, me, Datin Seri Rosmah, and our Prime Minister. They were looking at my blog.

That was me acting out my poem, “If I Did Write a Poem”.

 
That was me doing the ‘Mighty King’ pose in the poem.

And that was Datin Seri Rosmah giving a present to me. Thank you! (Datin Seri told me to share it with my little brother)

__________
Update (12:30 am 11 July 2009): I just noticed that TheStarOnline.tv posted the video of me performing the poem I mentioned above. Here it is:

(If you have noticed, my voice did not go along too well with the audio in the computer. Because unfortunately, the sound from my laptop is too soft for me to hear.

So I couldn’t match it well. Fortunately, the audiences, the PM, and the First Lady enjoyed my performance and laughed aloud, nevertheless. I hope you will enjoy it too!)

Here is the words to the poem, as seen in the book.

__________

__________
Update: (11:30 pm 11th July 2009): Today, my blog was down due to low bandwidth limit and too many visitors. I’m sorry for all the trouble and have fixed it now. I hope you didn’t mind .

I have now got more photos to show you. Thanks to the reporters for snapping them.

By New Straits Times.

By TheStar.

 
By UtusanMalaysia.

Update (7:30 pm 12 July 2009): More photos!

 
By SinChewDaily
(That’s the Prime Minister and the First Lady looking through my blog post, A Beginner Guide to Getting the Most out of Twitter!)

 
By SinChewDaily
(That’s me, performing “If I Did Write a Poem”. My parents are at the back.)

__________\

__________
Update (18th July 2009): I finally scanned all the newspapers that featured me. Here they are.

Please click on the pictures to see their full resolutions (You can even read them at full resolution! ).

New Straits Times, 11th of July 2009. Gloson Teh, 11.

The Star, 11th July 2009. Gloson Teh, 11.

Sin Chew Daily, 11th of July 2009. Gloson Teh, 11.

Berita Harian, 11th of July 2009. Gloson Teh, 11.

Utusan Malaysia, 11th of July 2009. Gloson Teh, 11.

Nan Yang, 11th of July 2009. Gloson Teh, 11.

Guang Ming Daily, 11th of July 2009. Gloson Teh, 11.

__________

I am extremely grateful to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib and Datin Seri Rosmah for giving me this opportunity to meet them.

I am also very grateful to the reporters for taking interest in me and my poetry book, and for taking the time to interview me. Your confidence in me encouraged me very much too!

I would also like to thank you, readers, for supporting me. Each of you played a part in giving me this opportunity to meet the Prime Minister and First Lady of Malaysia.

Cheers!

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“How could I benefit from it?”

Well, twitter is very big now, and you have probably heard about it, but are still wondering what it is.

This article is going to tell you what twitter is, how to get started, and how to benefit from twitter.

So, now let me explain twitter…Ahem…

What is twitter?

1. Twitter is like facebook, except simpler, cleaner, less complicated, and easier to use.

2. When you follow (subscribe to) someone, their tweets (twitter messages) appear in your twitter timeline (Twitter homepage). They have to follow you in order to receive your tweets, too.

3. Those messages are limited to 140 characters, for simplicity.

4. You will see links like http://tinyurl.com/blabla or http://id.gd/link2post. Those are web addresses that are shortened using URL shorteners because of the 140 character limit, so that everyone can share links.

5. Twitter is what you make it.

Well, if you still want a clearer explanation of twitter, here is how twitip explained twitter:

Twitter is a tavern. You walk into a crowded bar and there are all kinds of conversations going on. At first it sounds like a lot of noise, but if you listen closely you’ll realize these conversations run the gamut – deep, serious, funny, irrelevant, irreverent – you name it.

Sometimes business deals get done. Sometimes you’re just killing time. You drift in and out of these conversations, but you always leave the bar knowing folks a little better, knowing what’s going on a little more. That’s what Twitter is like.

Or, precisely,

By the way, some avatars are green in support for the Iran Election!

Why should I use it?

Back in March, I posted an article on the top 5 reasons I use twitter, and I realized those are the reasons you should use twitter too. Here are the points I listed in that post:

1. Network

2. Driving Traffic

3. Share

4. It’s useful

5. It’s fun

To read more about these points, please head over to the article!

Getting Started…

1. Secure your name
If you don’t want to use twitter now, want to use it later, or never, you should always secure your name.

You are securing your name from name-squatters. People can easily find you. If your name is already taken, using your nickname or your blog name would be good.

2. Upload your avatar
One of the common reasons people don’t follow you is that you don’t have a avatar, or, profile photo.

Professional
Uploading a professional photo of yours, and not a photo you took in the bedroom, will give you a better impression.

Logo
If you are a company (or just shy), upload your brand logo. It is still better than no picture at all.

Better than nothing
If you don’t have any professional photos or logos, just use whatever photo you have. As I said, it is better than nothing at all.

3. Fill in your bio, web, and name
Another reason people don’t follow you is because you didn’t fill in your bio, web (if you have one), and name.

Humility is key
Humility is key when filling in your bio. Don’t include any words like expert or guru. You would get more followers by being humble.

4. Tweet a “Hello world!” tweet
”Hello world! I have just joined twitter! I look forward to learn more about twitter and help others! ”

5. Tweak your profile colors
Change your profile a bit to help you stand apart from thousands of other default Twitter profiles. You will look more unique and “professional”. It will also brand your twitter profile.

6. Follow people
This is what you should do to get some followers. You follow people, and they follow you back (Well, not all of them will follow you back, but if you build relationships with them they probably will).

To find people to follow, go to WeFollow, a twitter directory. You can also follow the most powerful users on twitter. Or, go to http://virl.com/250.htm to follow the top 250 users that are very likely to follow you back.

Here are the criteria to look for for when following people.

Interactive
An interactive twitterer makes friends easily. If you follow an interactive person, you are more likely to make friends with that person faster.

Does not spam
Would you like to receive annoying tweets? No. Then, you better not follow people (or bots) who like to spam. Although they might follow you back, they clog up your timeline and make twitter life harder.

Posts interesting/useful tweets
Not only should the people you follow not be annoying, but they should be useful as well. If they post tweets that interest you and are helpful to you, you are going to benefit a lot from twitter.

7. Build relationships…slowly
Yeah, I know, I was not following this rule when I first joined twitter. I followed as many people as I can, because twitter brought Gloson Blog lots of traffic!

Big mistake. I should have stared slowly, making quality relationships with my followers. I would benefit from twitter more if only I had followed this rule.

To build relationships, reply, retweet, and share (I will explain this further on).

8. Post beneficial/interesting tweets
Now, it’s time to give your followers some benefits. This will make your relationship with your followers closer. You help them and they will probably benefit you in return.

(I will talk more about this just a little further down.)

9. Get a background design
Finally, you should create a twitter background. You are free to put in whatever information you like there – more bio, other social media accounts, what your blog is about, etc. There is a service called twitbacks that allows you to create twitter backgrounds for free.

Or, you can check out these 13 tutorials that teach you how to brand yourself with a twitter background.

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Now, you have learned the basics, here are more tips.

1. Helping people and building relationship

Helping people is perhaps the best (and most productive) thing you can do on twitter. You make your followers and friends happy and they’ll probably help you in return. You’ll also make quality relationships with your followers, and benefit more from twitter.

1. Reply
Replying to tweets helps to build relationships between you and the tweeters. You can thank a person for tweeting a useful articles or retweeting your tweet. You can also help a person by replying to their questions.

To reply to a person’s tweet, click the “Reply” button (A little arrow) near the tweet and the person’s @username will appear in the tweet form. Type in your message and submit your tweet!

If you want a person in particular to see a tweet, add their @username in the tweet.

2. Retweet
Retweeting, in case you don’t know, is tweeting a tweet tweeted by another person, giving credit to them. It is usually abbreviated as ‘RT’. For example,

“RT @Gloson: A Beginner’s Guide to Getting the Most out of Twitter – http://bit.ly/twttrbgn”

It is known as the ‘ultimate thank you’. It helps their name to go out, and therefore, they might gain more followers. You are doing a favor for them, as well as benefiting your followers too.

You can also retweet via the ‘via’ way.

You should only retweet stuff that would benefit your followers (Viewing links before retweeting them), otherwise they would be ‘blind RTs’. Click here to go to an article all about retweeting for beginners.

3. Share
When I come across an interesting site/article, I’ll say to myself, “Must tweet this.”

Sharing an interesting tweet benefits you and your followers. Your followers benefit by learning something new. You benefit when your followers retweet you.

Here are some things you can share that will benefit your followers:

Interesting/useful links
These tweets often get retweeted (Retweeting means tweeting a tweet made by someone else and giving credit to them). So, if you ever happen to stumble upon a useful or interesting post, be sure to tweet it!

Quotes
Read an inspiring and motivating quote? Post it on twitter! It will motivate and inspire your followers. These get retweeted, too.

Jokes
Cheer up your followers by giving them a good laugh! They will thank you! Just be sure to only tweet clean and funny ones.

4. Always be humble
Everyone has heard the old saying, ‘pride comes before a fall’? Be humble as you can. For example, do not tweet about how many followers you have. Pride comes before an unfollow.

2. Benefiting from twitter

1. Ask Questions
One thing I like about twitter is that you can ask questions of your followers, and (most of the time) get useful answers.

Asking questions shows that you want to engage with your followers (and build more relationships). It can be also used as a research tool.

2. Block auto DM’s
Auto DMs are impersonal and all it does is clog up your twitter inbox. If you block them, your inbox will be cleaner and easier to sort out and organize.

Here’s how to block most of the auto DMs.

1. Follow @optmeout.
2. Wait for follow back.
3. Send a DM to him.
4. Unfollow him.

Must be done in that order.

Done! You are free of most of the auto DMs! You will still receive some auto DMs, but other robots that haven’t been blocked, but the majority of the auto DMs are gone.

3. Promote your site/articles
You can also promote your site on twitter by tweeting its articles. I usually tweet my blog post when it is just published. I also tweet some of my older articles that I think are interesting, once in a while.

While it is OK to promote your articles on twitter, do not overdo it. Overdoing it can be considered ‘Spam’ and it only causes unfollows.

3. Using Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is what I call ‘The ultimate twitter client’. It has a bunch of cool features, and is simply very cool!

1. Use Tweetdeck’s ‘groups’ feature
If you are following more people than you can handle, you may want to use Tweetdeck’s group feature. You can choose whomever you want to go into that group. You can create as many groups as you want.

Then, put the people you want to pay the most attention to in the ‘A’ group.

And as for the people whom you are interested in but do not follow as closely as the ones in the ‘A’ group, put them in the ‘B’ group.

And so on and so forth!

2. Tweetdeck filter
The Tweetdeck filter is located just below the columns. It can do a lot of things. Here are some amazing things you can do with Tweetdeck filter.

• To find questions (or requests, or links) from the people whom you follow so that you could help them, select the plus sign (+) and type ‘?’ or ‘please’ in the All Tweets column filter.
• To find great links, include ‘RT @’ in the all friends column filter. Retweeted links are usually great links. You can also include ‘via @’ for more results.
• To find links, type ‘http://’ in the filter.
• Filters can be also used to find a recent tweet you read in TweetDeck that you couldn’t find.
• Enter keywords in filters to find specific tweets (or links).
• To hide all #followfriday tweets, select the minus sign (-) and type ‘#followfriday’.

3. Twitter search in Tweetdeck
You can also do a twitter search in Tweetdeck, and it automatically updates the search for you to get the most recent results.

• Search for ‘?’ and ‘please’ (similarly to the filter) to help people whom you are not following yet to build relationship.
• Search for ‘RT @’ to find interesting links that are retweeted (RTed links are usually useful ones).
• You can also search for trending topics about what’s going on. For example, you can search for ‘swine flu’ or ‘H1N1’ to keep up with the news on the H1N1 pandemic.

4. If tweetdeck is too slow, or too wide…
Well, if your computer is slow or you just don’t like the look of Tweetdeck, I’d recommend Twhirl, another twitter client. Though, it doesn’t have most of Tweetdeck’s features.

Install Tweetdeck!
Install Twhirl!

4. More tippy tips

1. Do not spam
Spamming means sending a lot of tweets (containing a link) merely to promote a product.

Those tweets annoy your followers and they might even unfollow you. In fact, if you use twitter the right way, you will benefit more from twitter.

2. Do not set up auto-DM’s
An auto DM is an automated direct message that is sent to you when you follow someone who has auto DMs enabled. It is simply impersonal.

According to a poll I saw, most people will feel annoyed when they receive an auto-DM. Some even unfollow the people who send auto-DM’s.

As I said, auto-DM’s are impersonal. Setting up an auto-DM is like setting up a robot of yours to chat with people.

3. Do not ‘try’ to get the most out of it
What I meant here is: Do not spend every hour tweeting the day off or read every tweet. As Leo Babauta said,

“Twitter is like a river … you can step into it at any point and feel the water, bathe in it, frolic if you like … and then get out. And go back in at any time, at any point. But, you don’t have to try to consume the entire river — it’s impossible and frankly a waste of time in my eyes.”

4. #Hashtags
In case you are wondering what the words with a # sign in tweets are, they are hashtags, a way for keeping track of a group of tweets (Usually an event).

Some people use it to mark their tweets so that other people with similar interests can find the tweets.

If you go to http://search.twitter.com, you should see some hot trending #hashtags on the sidebar at the right.

5. #FollowFriday
In case you are wondering, #FollowFriday is a hashtag that appears in tweets that contains some @usernames. It happens on Friday and that is when people recommend their favorite people that are worthy to be followed.

But now, #FollowFriday has lost its meaning and people are spamming #FollowFriday recommendations in our twitter timeline.

In order to save #FollowFriday, if you really want to recommend someone for #FollowFriday, tweet a recommendation like this:

“#FollowFriday @favtwitterer Because he is very interactive, and likes to share irresistible links!”

But not like this:

“#FollowFriday @twitteruser1 @twitteruser2 @twitteruser3 @twitteruser4 @twitteruser5 @twitteruser6 @twitteruser7”

6. Tweet about what you are doing…occasionally.
Although your followers wouldn’t like it if all you tweet about is what you are doing, you should tweet about what you are doing occasionally, because your followers would also like to have a personal view into you, and make you seem less like a robot.

7. Write ‘professionally’
Ur tweets R 1 of the criteria ppl use wen they want 2 follow U. So, dont write a tweet with poor Grammar or poor punctuation! U also shouldnt write wit shortened words like dis and dat, unless if u hav 2, bcoz it’s sumhow annoying. see?

8. Read TwiTip
TwiTip is a blog on twitter tips founded by Darren Rowse. Read it and subscribe to it for more deeper twitter tips. You’ll surely learn a lot from it!

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Those are the twitter tips that beginners should know (Please add more tips in the comments if you think I missed out some!).

As you go on, you’ll learn more and more about twitter. You’ll also find more twitter tools and applications that make twitter easier. Remember: Twitter is about helping and connecting with people.

I hope that you will enjoy twitter and get the most out of it!

Oh, and I almost forgot! To get started with twitter, click here!

Enjoy twitter!

Photos by Trois Têtes and Kaushal Karkhanis.

P.S. If you want to know more about twitter stuff and tools (and a little more tips), go here.

If you liked this post, please share it on twitter! I’ll appreciate it very much

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