Social Networking

How to Write a Good Twitter Bio

March 26, 2010 By Aaron 2 Comments

So far I have written on how to choose a good Twitter username and how to choose a Twitter profile picture. Today, in this post we will look at how to write up a great Twitter bio. Writing a Twitter bio is hard because you only have 160 characters at your disposal. The challenge is to get your message to your customers in 160 characters or less. While a great profile picture will make a good first impression, a well written bio can allow potential clients to make a connection with your business.

When writing up your bio you need to address the following:

1. Who you are & What you do

In this section you would describe your job title or area of expertise. For example, Software Developer, Life Coach, Internet Marketer etc. If you own a business you can describe your business. For example, “Principle Designer at NY based design boutique Graphic Design Co”.

2. How can you help

In this section you need to tell people how they can benefit from your products and services. For example, “I help businesses to create exceptional brand identities at affordable rates”.

3. Words describing your personal attributes

It is not all about your business. People like to know your personality as well. Since point 1 and point 2 would have taken most of the text in your bio, you can use keywords to describe your personal attributes. For example, Papa Bear, Hockey Fan, Avid Photographer, World Traveller etc.

The following is the profile description of Christine Gallagher who is a social media coach. This profile has almost all of the attributes that I have mentioned above.

Teaching small biz owners how to use relationship marketing & social media to attract more biz. Adores animals. Jersey Girl Entrepreneur. Info Junkie. Heck Yeah

Things to Avoid

It is important that you avoid the following when creating your Twitter bio.

Do not use the bio text to link to any other websites you own.
Avoid any sales pitch. The bio is there to help people get to know you better. No one will buy your products until they get to know you.
Avoid slang including SMS language.

What is your Twitter bio? Share it in the comments so that you can get feedback from me and other readers.

Filed Under: Misc Tagged With: Profile Picture, Social Networking, Twitter, Twitter Bio, Twitter Username

No Social Media Saturdays

March 2, 2010 By Aaron 4 Comments

The following is a guest post by Zack Shapiro.

Zack Shapiro is an entrepreneur, tech blogger, journalist and world traveler. You can find him on Twitter @ZackShapiro and on his blog at ZackShapiro.com.

Over to you Zack:

Humankind has never been more linked together than we are today. And tomorrow, we’ll be even more connected.

With the increasing levels of connectivity, we became slaves to our means of digital outreach. Facebook, blogging, Twitter, email, Skype and the list goes on and on.

Chances are you suffer from being incredibly over-connected to at least one of the tools listed above.

It’s time to begin to break away. If it sounds scary, don’t worry. We’ll take baby steps.

As with any change in habits small steps are important towards reaching your goal of being digitally free. Jumping into things cold turkey often leads to a relapse because we can’t mentally commit.

My foray into digital relaxation began with No Email Saturdays, where, as the name suggests, I take a break from email for one-seventh of the week.

At first it was harder than I imagined it would be. I had no problem leaving Mail alone on my laptop but I forgot to turn off the email on my iPhone. That meant I was constantly checking my phone not to see what the email was but to see if I had gotten anymore. As the day went on and the number of unread emails climbed higher I was no better off than digging into the actual emails themselves.

There was still digital weight on my mind. This you do not want.

If you’re apprehensive about cutting the cord remember this: unless you work for an organization that requires you to be connected all the time, you don’t need to be.

Sure an email on Wednesday morning about Friday’s meeting may be an important one but ask yourself this, “What could I possibly get on Saturday that can’t be taken care of on Sunday?

Leave the Mail our Outlook icon alone, don’t go to your webmail and turn all email on your phone off. Every phone has a way to switch it off without deleting precious accounts or stored email. Leave it all alone.

If you find yourself itching to see what’s waiting in your inbox remember this: You have to physically allow yourself to check your email. Be strong. I believe in you.

It has been a little over a month now with No Email Saturdays and I love the concept. It frees my mind from whatever’s coming up and I trust that whatever I get on Saturday can be dealt with later. It’s unrealistic to expect yourself to be connected at all times.

Now I’m ready to take the next step: No SocMed (Social Media) Saturdays.

You may not be able to get to me by email on Saturdays but you can still get my attention through my blog, an @reply on my Twitter account, a comment on Flickr, etc. So I’m still connected; I’m still checking.

Next Saturday I plan to cut out the blogging. The following week, Twitter. Those are my big two. Identify yours and make a plan. Set goals based on your level of comfort after realizing what the extra free time means.

Go outside. Spend time with friends. Watch TV without your computer around. Read a book. Go for a run. Have some fun.

Filed Under: Misc Tagged With: FaceBook, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter

13 web-based Twitter Tools that you cannot overlook

January 29, 2009 By Aaron 1 Comment

The Twitter universe is flooded with zillions of tools and applications. In this post I give you 13 tools that you can use to manage your Twitter followings and followers. All of the tools in the list below are web based tools. This means you do not have to install any software. Please note that I have taken some information straight from the tool website. I did this on purpose to accurately describe the functionality of that tool.

1. Friend Or Follow

Friend Or Follow can be used to answer 2 simple questions.

(1)Who are you following that’s not following you back?

(2)Who’s following you that you’re not following back?

2.Twitter Karma

Twitter Karma displays a full list of your followings and followers and indicates whether the person is a following, follower or both. Using Twitter Karma you can bulk follow, bulk unfollow and bulk block.

3. Un Tweeps

Un Tweeps is a nifty tool to unfollow people who have not posted in a while. If a person is not active in Twitter any more, it is better to unfollow the person to maintain a healthy following:follower ratio. Un Tweeps allows you to do bulk unfollow as well.

4.Tweet Later

Tweet Later allows you to send scheduled Twitter messages. It also includes the ability to auto follow people (i.e you automatically follow everyone who follows you).

5. Mr. Tweet

Mr. Tweet helps you easily build meaningful relationships by looking through your network and tweets. It provides you the following information:

1. Suggest good people and followers you are missing out on

2. Recommend you to enthusiastic users relevant to you

3. Regularly update useful stats of your Twitter usage

All you have to do is to follow Mr Tweet on Twitter!

6. Does Follow

A simple tool to find out whether person A is following Person B.

7. Twitoria

Twitoria finds your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot!

8. Qwitter

Qwitter e-mails you when someone stops following you on Twitter. Do not worry when a few people leave you. Do not take this personally. But if a large percentage of followers suddenly leave you, then you might want to check your recent tweets. Did you offend anyone?

9. Twalala

Get ready to take control of your Twitter stream. Twalala is a client for Twitter that allows you to control what you see, and more importantly, what you don’t see in your Twitter stream.

10. My Cleenr

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

11. Twitter Less

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

12. Just Tweet It

Just Tweet It. is a directory where you can add your Twitter profile under a specific topic or category (example DIY/Home Improvement). You can use this directory to find Twitter users with similar interests.

13. Less Friends

Another service (like FriendOrFollow) to find whether your followers are following you back.

Do you know any other web based Twitter Tools to manage your followings and followers? Please share them in the comments section. If you found this article useful, please Re-Tweet it using the link below.

Thank you.

Photo Credit: Holland Fabric House’s photostream

Filed Under: Misc Tagged With: Social Networking, Twitter

10 Tips to build a loyal group of Twitter followers.

January 11, 2009 By Aaron 1 Comment

Twitter has become a very popular social networking tool. The use of Twitter is catching up like a wild fire. There are countless number of third party add-ons and applications for Twitter. It is widely expected that Twitter will continue to grow at an astonishing rate in 2009. People who dismissed Twitter in its early days are now scrambling to make their mark on Twitter. To put it simply, professional blogger Darren Rowse has created a blog purely dedicated for sharing Twitter tips. I have not seen Darren creating a new blog for any other web tool that he uses. So the message is "you can not afford to ignore Twitter any longer!".

There are many uses of Twitter. One use of it is to promote your website or blog. To do this you have to build a loyal group of Twitter followers who are genuinely interested in what you have to say (i.e you’re Niche Topic). Here are some of my tips for building a group of loyal Twitter followers:

1. Brand your Twitter home page

It is important to customize your Twitter profile page to differentiate your profile with the millions of other Twitter profile pages. For example, you may want to add a custom logo and add a side panel that contains details of your website or blog. Look at the profile page of one of my followers Mr Gadaget. This is an excellent example of how to customize a Twitter profile page. If you are like me and do not have time to spend on doing all the fancy graphics consider using MyTweetsSpace. It’s a free tool that allows you to create your own Twitter background in a few mouse clicks.

2. Use a consistent avatar image

It is a good practice to use a consistent avatar Image (the icon shown to your followers) on your blog, Twitter profile and any other social networking services that you use. This will enable others to easily recognize and remember you.

3. Promote your Twitter profile page

Now that you have created a cool looking Twitter profile page, promote it actively. For example, you can add your Twitter profile page URL on forum and email signatures. You can also use your Twitter profile URL when commenting on other blogs. Think of your Twitter profile page as a gateway to your website.

4. Send a welcome note to new followers

Send a welcome note to new followers thanking them for following you. If you have decided to follow your follower as well, please indicate it in your message. In this note you may also add a short description about your blog or website. For example, you can encourage your new follower to sign up for your blog’s RSS feed. Make the welcome message personal and you will have better success in retaining that follower.

5. Create interesting and genuine conversations

Your main goal of using Twitter might be promoting your website or blog. But that does not mean that you only talk about your website or blog 24×7. You have to engage in interesting conversation on other topics. Additionally, should have an attitude to help others as well.

6. Don’t be too noisy

Don’t be too noisy on Twitter. If you sneeze 3 times in the last five minutes, don’t Tweet the fact that you sneezed, in 3 different Tweets! Tweeting extensively on totally meaningless matters can turn off your followers. Find the right balance in being conversational without getting too noisy.

7. Send valuable links

People follow you because they are interested in knowing about you and the topics that both of you are interested. So it is often a good idea to Tweet links to interesting articles or resources that your followers might be interested in.

8. Think before you Tweet

What ever you say in Twitter is going to be on the Internet in some form or other for a very long period. So be careful in what you say and post. If you post a link to article without reading it first and if that article contained anything offensive, your followers might leave you and you might get a bad reputation. You do not want to hurt your followers because you are depending on them to build your website or blog.

9. Follow the big shots

Follow the big shots in your niche topic. They are very useful because they provide you with lots of information and ideas. There may be cases when they need some help and if you answer their questions and doubts you will get more exposure (when a big shot replies back to you thanking for your help, your Twitter id is exposed to all of his/her followers!).

10. Let the last message be a positive one

This point just struck me as I was writing this article. If you are done using Twitter for the day and going to bed, leave an interesting Tweet as the last one. The last message is going to stay at the top of your Twitter profile page for a while. If that message is a positive one you have better chances of getting new followers. If the last message is not meaningful to a new followers (example: “@techthinker I agree with you, it SUCKS!”) you might have reduced your chances of getting a new follower. Therefore, leave a meaningful message that new followers can readily understand.

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TechThinker

For further references, I recommend the following articles.