Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

Here are some basic tips for those who are new with Twitter, or may use Twitter, but have a few questions. Remember that Twitter does have a Help section that is filled with resources that extend further than this blog article.

1. Fill out your profile, including your profile picture. A lot of people connect more if they see a picture of a person, but as long as you have a picture, your chances of being followed back are greater than that of a person with the default Twitter picture.

2. Automatic Direct Message, or Auto- DM: Despite the fact that they seem really nifty to use, do not if you are a business. For one, it is a sure chance you may be unfollowed quickly if your Auto-DM right off the back tells people to visit your business first, rather than connect with you and develop a bit of a friendly relationship.

3. Do not continuously plug the same thing in your stream every 2 to 5 tweets. It is annoying and most people who are active on Twitter will notice. That is called spam.

4. If you re-tweet (RT) or re-post another’s tweet on your stream, make sure to give credit to them. It makes you a courteous tweeter, and you might make a new follower.

5. Giving out some Follow Friday love (where you plug people you recommend others to follow on Friday. Hashtags #followfriday and #ff) is great, but excessive tweeting can be seen as annoying and spam-like. Spread your follow friday love out throughout the time you are online.

6. Do not expect people to follow you back just because your followed them. You need to have a conversation first before they may follow you back. A lot of people who have a lot of followed automatically follow back.

7. If you are getting messages in your streams that you can gain over 16,000 followers in 30 or 60, or even 90 days, do not even think about joining. They do not work or they involve a lot of shady follow and unfollow techniques.

8. If you DM (Direct Message) someone, follow them. It solves that problem with one-sided conversations. If you do not, there is no way that they can reply to you via the DM method.

9. Despite your opinion, if you run into a problem where you are in an argument with other tweeps (Twitter people), remember this: It is better to agree to disagree, no matter the issue. It looks bad if you try to enforce your opinion and people will see you as a megalomaniac.

10. If a person says they are an expert, do a little research before you take their advice or employ their services. A lot of people like to give more credit to themselves than there should. This is not to discredit those who may be able to ‘walk the walk’, but to prevent you from having a bad experience with those who can only ‘talk the talk.’

These are just the ten tips that come from the top of my mind that I have been tweeting off and on since December 2008. Do you have any?

I am finding that some people on Twitter have more than one blog, but are signing up for different accounts – one for each website. You do not have to always do this. You can use the same Twitter account and every time you blog, that will appear using Twitter Tools by Alex King.

However, it might look strange if you twitter stream had “New Post”, so here is a way to help you distinguish which blog post goes with what site.

1. You have to have Twitter Tools and your own Twitter account.

2. Install the plugin manually or you can install it automatically in WordPress 2.7 and above.

3. Go to your Plugin Editor and to the Twitter Tools Plugin. Look for the following chunk of code.


class twitter_tools {
function twitter_tools() {
$this->options = array(
'twitter_username'
, 'twitter_password'
, 'create_blog_posts'
, 'create_digest'
, 'create_digest_weekly'
, 'digest_daily_time'
, 'digest_weekly_time'
, 'digest_weekly_day'
, 'digest_title'
, 'digest_title_weekly'
, 'blog_post_author'
, 'blog_post_category'
, 'blog_post_tags'
, 'notify_twitter'
, 'sidebar_tweet_count'
, 'tweet_from_sidebar'
, 'give_tt_credit'
, 'exclude_reply_tweets'
, 'last_tweet_download'
, 'doing_tweet_download'
, 'doing_digest_post'
, 'install_date'
, 'js_lib'
, 'digest_tweet_order'
, 'notify_twitter_default'
);
$this->twitter_username = '';
$this->twitter_password = '';
$this->create_blog_posts = '0';
$this->create_digest = '0';
$this->create_digest_weekly = '0';
$this->digest_daily_time = null;
$this->digest_weekly_time = null;
$this->digest_weekly_day = null;
$this->digest_title = __("Twitter Updates for %s", 'twitter-tools');
$this->digest_title_weekly = __("Twitter Weekly Updates for %s", 'twitter-tools');
$this->blog_post_author = '1';
$this->blog_post_category = '1';
$this->blog_post_tags = '';
$this->notify_twitter = '0';
$this->notify_twitter_default = '0';
$this->sidebar_tweet_count = '3';
$this->tweet_from_sidebar = '1';
$this->give_tt_credit = '1';
$this->exclude_reply_tweets = '0';
$this->install_date = '';
$this->js_lib = 'jquery';
$this->digest_tweet_order = 'ASC';
// not included in options
$this->update_hash = '';
$this->tweet_prefix = 'New blog post';
$this->tweet_format = $this->tweet_prefix.': %s %s';
$this->last_digest_post = '';
$this->last_tweet_download = '';
$this->doing_tweet_download = '0';
$this->doing_digest_post = '0';
$this->version = '1.6';
}


4. Within the line


$this->tweet_prefix = 'New blog post';


simply change it to something else like your domain name. In my case, I have put


$this->tweet_prefix = 'Blondish.net - New blog post';


This is not much, but for those who keep asking how I did it, this is it. Simple, right? If you have more than one blog, you can just alter your tweet prefix to coordinate with what you want your tweet to say in case you do not want it to use the default ‘New blog post.’

Right now it has not been easy to find something good as a job in my area. Most of the things available are factory work. That does not do anything for me as my career has always been along the lines of web and graphic design. It is actually what I am studying for. I am seriously considering to look for New York jobs as there are a lot of opportunities in my field, especially in the New York City area.

Of course, I like the freelancing, but I am not as known as others and even though I do have some demand on my services, it is not like having a regular job to go to. As a freelancer, I have to pay for my own healthcare and even continuously strive to put myself above others when bidding for a job. I am almost at the point in my life that I may need to move to somewhere like New York to finally get somewhere with my career.

I found out that Blondish.net had been nominated at the Blogger’s Choice Awards in several categories:

- Best Geek Blog
- Best Blog About Stuff
- Best Blog Design
- Best Blog of All Time

I saw that my friend Lydia nominated my site. Thank you, Lydia! I believe in order to vote, you have to sign up.

I appreciate if you might be able to vote for me there. I actually have not done any blog award sites or any web competitions in some time, so I would really appreciate it. If you comment here and say you did vote there, I will make you a special graphic gift showing my appreciation that you can snag and take back to your own site.

After the recent “fix” by Twitter to make things go more smoothly, Twitter changed some of their stuff back. They wanted to change it to allow members to only see the replies from followers, but not from the regular. At first I thought this meant that twitter would eliminate the general site timeline. It was not.

As MG Siegler of TechCrunch describes it

“So basically, you can see when someone is replying to someone else but only when they’re not really replying to them.”

Of course, as I mentioned already, Twitter took a bit of time again this week to change some of the settings back, so it is not so bad. I am sure Twitter is trying to do things in the best interest, but I have to say that if the focus of this simple one function site gets any more difficult, it may not be very appealing anymore. Already I have noticed glitches (via my “suspension” which was deemed a cache problem when I refreshed my computer over and over) and that the site seems a little more loaded with the features added. Of course, with any script, the more tables and code you add to make more functions, the more the load.

My hope is that Twitter tries to not do too much more. The site is blossoming ‘as is’ already and if they wanted to put some text ads, I am sure no one would complain as long as they were on the sidebar of the page.

I should not complain, but I actually enjoy meeting the new people that are on my stream. Sometimes through my followerers, I find others who I can connect with too.

What do you think about this?

Well, only a few hours ago, I was able to get on Twitter. After the original report on Sunday evening had been resolved in favor of suspending me, and then replying to that, it came to be that I basically was experiencing some Twitter glitch. Kind of scary, especially when knowing I did not violate their policies.

I was told that it was my cache and that I had possibly been looking at someone else’s profile. The problem was is that it was my profile as I have actually never ventured upon someone’s account that had been suspended. Anyway, I am back on as my Twitter addictive self.

In the meantime, I believe I am going to whip up a tutorial on how to make my transparent vector bottle like the one I showcase in the main image of the layout here at Blondish.net. I really do need to get cracking on those tutorials. Also, I had quite a few reviews to post that I originally tackled over at Rev.iew.me. I am currently open for website reviews so if you have a website and want to be reviewed, feel free to apply anytime.

After I got back from watching the movies with my boyfriend, late Saturday evening, I was going to twitter and talk about the movies. Lo and behold, a blaring, account suspension was posted. I was shocked and confused why this was up. I do not use Twitter any differently than I did months ago when I was very active.

The reasons they list for people they flag and suspend are those that spam, impersonate others, mass creating user accounts, and more. However, as I recall, I have done nothing new in the past couple days since being able to finally access my computer from home. I use to post almost all day and evening. I am myself, so it is not an impersonation, and I re-tweet informative links, giving credit to the original person who posted the information.

I am quite confused. Has anyone had any issues like this with Twitter. It kind of sucks since I have been an avid promoter of Twitter and have written many encouraging blog posts about the site.

I have completed the website review of Velociteen. The site has a great focus, but the design really needs some work.

If you have a website that you want reviewed, you can request to have your site reviewed by me.