Opening your account:

• Visit: http://www.twitter.com

• Create your account. You’ll need to create a unique username (see next bullet) and password, and have to enter your email address. These can all be changed.

• Unless you’re a major corporation, if this account will be used to promote your business I highly recommend using some form of your name since the Twittersphere is social media – an online conversation amongst people.

• Create your fill-in-the-blanks Bio. Give this some thought, especially if you’re using this account for business.

• You can upload your picture, or a picture/image, which I highly recommend.  Note, the file can’t be larger than 700k and since the default window is square, a square image works best, at least in my opinion.

• There is a Default background, or you can create your own. There are several free templates online. (Short commercial: Contact me at shartkopf@aligned-marketing.com if you want my design team to develop a custom page for you or your business.)

Twitter terms you should know:

• Tweep or Twit is someone who uses Twitter.

• Tweet is a message. Messages must be shorter than 140 characters, which is why many refer to twitter as a micro-blogging tool.

• Follower is a person (tweep) who has chosen to track (follow) your tweets.

• Short URL refers to one of the many tools you can use to shorten long urls and, thereby, tweet them without exceeding the 140-character limit. I use the “TinyURL Generator” Add-on for Firefox.

• Re-Tweet or RT means resending another twit’s tweet. As you can imagine, this is huge in the Twittersphere because it is a form of viral marketing.

• DM is short for direct message. A DM is a private tweet to a specific twit. (Okay, even I have to admit, that sounded weird.)

• If you want to send a tweep to a specific person simply insert “@” before that person’s Twitter name and it will be sent directly to them. Note, it will be visible to all so, as with anything in the ether, be careful what you say.

How to be a good Twitizen:

• Be friendly and open to others.

• Don’t be put off by all the spam, let it roll off your back.

• Similarly, don’t spam or sell constantly, it’s a form of harassment.

• Limit your tweets (I tweet 5-10 a day) and pause between tweets.

• Be funny but understand one person’s joke can be another’s insult.

• Mix your business/cause tweets with pleasant, fun or interesting tweets.

• ReTweet often but only if you genuinely think the tweets merits recycling.

On Wednesday’s post we’ll teach you:

• How you can find people to Follow.

• How to find people to Follow you.

• How to locate tweet topics and items to retweet.

Remember, this is the only Monday you’ll get this week so enjoy it and do something remarkable!

Steve

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To help solve the problem, Twitter recently launched Lists, which is a tool that allows you to group the people you follow into categories,. The benefit is you can reduce the number of people you truly want follow and avoid the noise created by those that, for whatever reason, are included in you officially Follow. You can now drill down into the conversations/news that matters to you. Here’s a summary of the benefits I see with Lists:

1. Saves You Time.
Someone else has already discovered the best people to Follow for your keyword. As you scan the lists you’ll notice that many of them include the same people. That’s ok,. That means the crowd has spoken and a consensus was reached.

2. Keep Control Over Your Followers.
You don’t have to actually Follow all the people on a list.  You can just follow a list and dive in occasionally to see what people on your list are tweeting about and then go back to your main feed to see what everyone you are Following are tweeting about. In the end, you actually gain more control. That’s huge, I Follow over 1,000 people and have over 1,000 Following me, there’s no way I can keep up all the Tweets.

3. Keep Your Lists Public or Private
You can create your own lists and set them up as either public or private. There will be times and topics where you want to create your own list. For example, I’m going to create a list of tweople in the Lake Wylie, (SC) area.

4. New Application is Awesome – Listorious
There’s a complimentary service that just came out called Listorious. Listorious aggregates the best lists from everyone who has created a list and, then, lets you use them as a resource. It’s very cool! It was created by Sawhorse Media in New York City and has over 6.5 million lists already. You simply type in a word such as “news,” for example, and the tool delivers you the best lists.

5. What else? Increase Followers
I use Listorious and Lists to search for people I want to Follow and, as you would expect, once I started Following all these great people they started Following me. In addition, a bunch of other people, some good and some not-so-good, started Following me back. Here's the data: In three days I went from about 875 Followers to 1,167 and the quality of those new Followers is much better than is typically found with other Twitter tools.

Some of my favorites Lists are:
Linkers: http://listorious.com/palafo/linkers
Thought Leaders: http://listorious.com/kitson/thought-leaders
New Media: http://listorious.com/palafo/newmedia
Great Content: http://listorious.com/Jason_Pollock/great-content
Blogging: http://listorious.com/bloggersblog/blogging
Marketing: http://listorious.com/dannysullivan/marketing

Steve

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A number of people I've talked to recently don't understand all the fuss around social media. What is it? Why is it growing so fast? Do I/we need to be engaged?

Briefly, here's my take:

People use social media for three primary reasons:

1. To acquire knowledge, which is why content is so critical and key to both your personal and your professional brand. This is also the driver behind the proliferation of blogs.
2. To see what other people are doing and buying, which is the basis of sites such as Digg, which is really a recommendation service.
3. To connect with other people, which is a basic human need and the foundation of Facebook’s (and other's) success.

The proliferation and success of social media is driven by three factors:

1. Trust: Many surveys have documented that people trust “someone like me” more than any other source. Moms trust Moms and car nuts trust car nuts, it's how we humans are wired. For the first time our peer’s opinions are more accessible to us than the wisdom of experts and propaganda of sellers.
2. Online access: No matter how unusual or obscure the topic, we know we can find a lot of information - details, perspectives, and context - online. At any given time, there are probably thousands of people online discussing the merits of various screw drivers, for example.
3. Confidence: It’s all about how we enter the decision-making process. We are less willing to make decisions without a great deal of information. Since the information and recommendations are relatively free, it would be nonsensical for us to do otherwise.

1. We all know the power of the network, of networking. It is the best way to gain employment and, as mentioned, the primary way we now learn about products, services and what other people, people just like us, are doing. Social media allows you and your company to expand your network exponentially for little cost.
2. Your customers, peers, neighbors, superiors, and relatives (etc.) are already part of social networks so it's a good idea for you to join the conversation, express yourself and, frankly, monitor what's being said about you, your company, your products and services, as well as those of your competition. Why would you not want to listen to the most important people in your life, which on a personal level is family and on a professional level is your customers.
3. If growing your business, circle of friends and contacts, and expanding your influence are important to you then you need to be part of the social media revolution, because it's where all the people are.

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