What is Cloud Computing?

The Growth of Cloud Computing

What is Cloud Computing? It is a revolution that will change your business for the better, letting you work faster, cheaper and better…. and from anywhere, just about.

Cloud Computing is one term for Internet-based software and hardware platforms – basically, instead of installing programs on your own computer, you access them over the Internet – Gmail is cloud computing, in fact most of what Google offers is cloud computing – you access it via a web interface. Are you familiar with Hootsuite, the social networking client? That’s Cloud Computing – also known as a Web Application (Web App). Many of you probably already use Freshbooks (get it free from this link) – one of my favourite apps, that lets you track time and estimate & invoice easily.

It’s cool because it allows for a number of wonderful things – you can access your business information and applications from any internet connected device, so you’re no longer tied to one computer at your desk – PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad etc… You’ve got real-time business information always at your fingertips – which allows you to make decisions based on up-to-date, accurate company data.

Because it’s not tied to one computer, you’re in no danger of losing everything if that computer breaks – your data is stored securely in data centres with backup systems. Plus, you’ve always got your documents to hand, as long as there’s a device with an internet connection nearby.

Because you’re accessing the app over the web, the company that writes the app can quickly correct bugs and introduce new features – so you never have to buy new versions like you do with traditional software. New features to let you do things faster and better are added all the time. Web Apps companies are also very good at supporting their users, in my experience.

Web apps companies also tend to be much friendlier to each other than traditional software companies, even building their systems so your applications can talk to each other, your contact lists are linked to your customer management system, which links to your project system, which also links to your invoicing system which is linked to your accounting system – so you can automate many of your time-consuming tasks, and get a lot more done.

If you have a company, perhaps staff are located in several different locations. Web Apps are great for teams like this, because they easily allow you to collaborate with team members and share documents – you can even work on them in real-time together, despite being miles apart. You can set up and work on projects together, see what’s in the sales funnel, track customer interactions, arrange conferences, training, customer presentations, seminars… in fact any sort of meeting, online. Cloud computing is letting people work together better, faster, cheaper and more profitably.

My company, Ex Ignibus, specialises in web apps (cloud computing) for small businesses – we install Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) as the interface, linked with applications for accounting, invoicing, email marketing, customer relationship management, project management, word processing, spreadsheets – and lots more – for single person businesses up to large, geographically-separate, teams. Web Apps are inexpensive, and can be afforded by any business – it currently costs around $50 per user per year to buy GAPE, and many of the additional Web Apps offered are free as long as they’re integrated with the GAPE solution. Others cost between $10-$25 per month, usually increasing as your requirements increase – so you, as a small business owner, can get a pretty awesome business system for less than $50 per user per month – in comparison to regularly spending hundreds of pounds or dollars buying new software licenses for installable computer-based software. Many Web Apps are also free for micro-businesses (single employee or small team).

So, as you can see, cloud computing offers a new way of working which breaks free of traditional single-computer information and restrictive private networks, offering a secure, simple way for small businesses and teams to enjoy the kind of software that only large corporations could afford previously. The only software tied to my computer these days is Expression Web, Visual Basic and Photoshop – development tools I build sites with that demand higher processing power than most business apps and usually involve large filesizes. To try Web Apps out requires little or no investment, and could have massive positive effects on your business, so why don’t you give ‘em  a try? If you need a bit of help, drop me a line via the contact form at Ex Ignibus.

Take care and have fun out there,

Rob Bell

Like most of you, no doubt, I used to take little or no real interest in Politics – even though, everyday, politicians make decisions that affect my life, that of my family and friends – and that of everyone else in our country. As I got into my 30s and experienced much greater adversity than at any point previously, I started to take an interest.

Historically, I had one major political event that’s stuck in my memory from childhood. My Dad was a coalman – he had the biggest round in Wakefield. I used to work with him when I was younger, during the holidays – especially the Winter.  During 1984, Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives took on Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers – causing the Miner’s Strike , that ran from 1984-85, and had a pretty devastating affect on Wakefield, where I live still to this day, destroying all the mining communities around – in fact, a big chunk of the country, particularly in the North of England – many places have never fully recovered, I believe the Wakefield area to be one of them.

The miner’s strike was devastating to my father and our family, as it was to so many in the Coal Industry. It seemed like the supply of coal dried up overnight – rationing started, Dad couldn’t get hold of much coal – and any stock he got was as likely to be stolen from his yard as it was to get to the few remaining customers who were able to get a coal ration slip. Dad’s business collapsed, we lost our home, all our savings went into propping things up until they ran out… and Dad nearly died when his heart failed as a result.

Since then, I’ve never felt that politics really represents the real people of Britain. A lot of the politicians we see are career politicians, born into privilege, and somewhat removed from the realities of life in the UK. The corruption within is disgusting – wealthy donors control and shape policy with their wallets, and the recent expenses scandal proved a lot of politicians to be self-serving, prepared to take liberties with money that we, their employers, certainly never intended to be spent expensively renovating up their multiple homes.

For my entire life, either the Conservatives or Labour have been in power – making the same mistakes over and over. Most people I know don’t feel that the Goverments, past and present, really represent them, or look after their interests. They seem to encourage profit at any social cost and looking after the wealthy and influential, while ignoring the needs of the average man or woman on the street. They spend vast amounts of the money we provide them with, in the form of taxes, on propping up banks – who nearly brought our economy to ruin with their maverick attitudes, speculative risks and pursuit of profit at any cost. What have the Labour Government done about it? Well, the banks are still handing out massive bonuses to staff, sticking 2 fingers up at us after we so kindly bailed them out of trouble. The Conservatives wouldn’t be any better – they want to slash Public Spending, causing further unemployment, and potentially causing the end of businesses who provide services to the public sector in the midst of our worst recession in decades. They will make the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. You only have to look at the recent furor over the party funding (millions) contributed by Lord Ashcroft – himself a tax exile from the UK, so where do his loyalties lay? Not to the people of Britain, I’ll wager.

I, personally, have had enough – and I’m not on my own. Some people vote for extremist parties in protest, as they target the common man’s fears – the recent rise of the BNP shows this. I deplore such extremism – I just want to live in a country where people get along and have a Government that looks after their interests rather than the interests of the money men. I feel about it so strongly that I am even standing for council election next month. Who for? The only party I feel represents a real opportunity to make positive changes, and to take 21st Century Great Britain forward – the Liberal Democrats.

A lot of people I talk to say they won’t vote Lib Dem, because they’ll never get into power – so they’re going to vote Conservative or Labour – one in protest at the existing Government and hoping for change, or the other because “It’s better the Devil you know…”.  To you all – the Labservatives – I say “Balderdash! (Actually, my real choice of word was  ‘Bollocks’, but balderdash is so much politer!) You’re perpetuating an ongoing 2-party nightmare that’s held its’ suffocating grip over Britain for 65 years. I want off this sickening ride, I want positive change, and I hope you do to. Things won’t change unless you vote for change. When enough people want change, change happens.

With that in mind, I’m going to sign off this post with an email I got today from Nick Clegg, leader of the Lib Dems.

Stayed tuned – an all new RobBellBlog.com is imminent – with regular posts, news and tips for small business owners and freelancers, Better Living and Better Business Through the Internet, iPhone & iPad, Cloud Computing and Web Applications articles and discussion,  Tech & Gadget news and reviews, and guest bloggers. I’m currently developing the new format, and will keep you abreast of all the improvements.

Rob Bell
- not usually so political, but it’s important!

Here’s the email from Nick:

Dear friend,

Last week, we launched a spoof campaign for the ‘Labservative’ party. You can find the details at www.labservative.com. It’s a funny campaign, but it has a serious point, a point only Liberal Democrats are making in this election.

For 65 years the government of our country has been handed from Labour to the Conservatives and back again like a game of pass the parcel. Red-blue, blue-red politics – and look what it has got us: corrupt politics, recession, inequality, time and again. They just take turns at making the same mistakes. It has to end.

The old politics is not good enough any more. It is time for something different. Our strategy in this election is to make it clear that if you want real change, you have to vote for a party that is different. All you will get from the old parties is more of the same. Just think how much they agree on.
On the economy: the Labservatives have been in thrall to the City of London for decades, neglecting the rest of Britain and letting the banks get away with doing whatever they want. And now the Labservatives are both refusing to come clean about the tough decisions needed to sort out the public finances – it’s a conspiracy of silence.

It’s the same story wherever you look: together David Cameron and Gordon Brown have blocked political reform, including our plan to allow people to sack corrupt MPs. The Labservatives compete to sound tough on crime instead of doing what works to actually catch criminals and stop them committing more crimes. And the Labservatives have made UK foreign policy subservient to the interests of the United States, from the illegal invasion of Iraq to the decision to waste £100bn on replacing, like for like, the Cold War era Trident nuclear submarines.

Labservatism is alive and well in Britain today, and only the Liberal Democrats can change that. A vote for Cameron or Brown is a vote for the corrupt, failed status quo. Only Liberal Democrats offer real change.
So wherever you are out campaigning, from Scotland to Cornwall, from Ceredigion to Norfolk, from inner London to rural Cumbria, remember this:

We are not campaigning against two parties: we are campaigning against one. We are campaigning against the old, failed way of doing things. We are campaigning for real, permanent change to build a fairer Britain. It’s a simple choice between old and new.

So get out campaigning, and take on Labservatism in your area. Say No to more of the same and Yes to real change.

Thank you for all of your hard work,

Nick Clegg

Marketing is not Promotion People – Get that in Your Heads.

Promotion and Advertising are tools used within a Marketing programme when a product or service is ready to be launched. There’s lots of marketing needs to be done before that stage  though.

There are so many people around claiming to be marketing experts because they’ve undertaken promotional actions to some degree of success – that doesn’t make you a marketing guru that makes you a promotions guru.

Marketing is much more than just promoting products – it’s researching markets, identifying opportunities and problems, developing services and products to solve those problems in a manner a customer would like  setting up and testing Marketing campaigns, using above the line-, below the line- and digital- methods to formulate, execute and analyse the success of each actitivy, something that is particularly easy online given the availability of data, constantly testing and refining promotions as needed. And eventually, the product is ready to go, hopefuly with a well-armed knowledge of the new market that will allow him or her to dominate.

Market Research

A true Marketer knows that any product needs research prior to committing, here are just 15:

1. What’s the size of the market?
2. Who are the major players?
3. How competitive is it?
4. Have you done any Keyword Research?
5. What’s the customer profile?
6. What are people in the market desperate for?
7. Are there any problems there you can solve through your product or service?
8. Are you asking people in the market if they see a place for your product?
9. Would they buy it or try it out and give it a mark out of 100 for you??
10. Are you doing usability studies?
11. What’s the best way to reach your target consumers? It’s not always going to be online, many niches can found away from the computer.
12. What are the best factors to identify in order to do competitive analysis? Price, Features, Quality, Exclusivity – they’ll be different  for each market
13. Does your product represent what you want to sell to them, or what they want to buy from you?
14. How could you change the former into the latter?
15. Where can your potential customers be found?

Next time, I’ll look at competitive positioning and discuss how understanding a fairly simple topic to grasp can help you know more about your market than most others

I’m not quite sure what it is… it’s not time, it’s not lack of ideas, it’s not lack of content… but something makes this blog harder to keep updating than any of the rest of my web estate! Those of you who follow me on social networks know that I’m online plenty, always researching new and quality information and applications, engaging with and sharing with people. I have almost 2,300 Twitter posts to my name at the time of writing this, so why oh why oh why do I find it such a chore to look after my blog? It’s been 6 weeks since my last update here – shame on me!

Does anyone else share this malady, and find their blog to be the hardest part of their web presence to maintain?

Of course, I have a bagful of excuses – too much client work, medical appointments, other jobs to do, things to learn, too busy talking to people – but at the end of the day, they are just excuses. I can make time for this blog, I’ve just failed to do so, and I aim to rectify this starting today. I made an agreement with my mentor to finalise the core of each of my sites – I’m going to include this site too, so a redesign to fit in with the others is imminent!

I always put pressure on myself to make my blog posts fit certain criteria – they have to be a certain minimum length, be original content that isn’t lifted from somewhere else, pass my rigorous quality standard… and I set the bar too high for myself, it’s so high I can’t realistically hope to fulfil all the requirements every single time – I have been paralysed by my own perfection-demanding nature. I read Seth Godin’s blog posts each day via RSS and they’re not often very long at all – why do I crave lengthiness in my own??!?

So today I’m giving myself a slap and reminding myself of the saying “You don’t have to be great to get going, but you do have to get going to be great”

What are you going to get going today to get great?

Rob Bell

p.s. I stayed up until ridiculous o’clock to ensure I got my vanity link on Facebook, so I’m going to use it lots – friend me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/robbell

p.p.s. And as if you didn’t already know, on Twitter I’m @robbell

The rise of web apps over the past year or two has been fast and extensive – I, for example, now run almost all my business processes through web apps – that talk to each other, passing data around to where it’s needed at that time. This helps me get things done faster, and to have far better contact with my clients throughout any business project. I also have applications that take away a lot of manual time-hogging processe, or give me greater coverage without extra work. I love it for a lot of reasons, of which 2 are listed here  – 1. because all my data is protected on servers in data centres, so a local hard drive crash won’t affect my business, and 2. because I can access the information and services I need from my business from anywhere there’s Internet connectivity – which includes on my Blackberry. I’ll have even greater integration next month when I get an IPhone because many of my application providers already have IPhone Apps, just waiting for me to integrate them into Robnet!

I keep an eye out for new web apps all the time, and look into any app that could offer me any of the following benefits:

1. It saves me money by reducing the cost of a business process
2. It saves me time by automating a process I previously did manually
3. It generates more income for me
4. It allows me to do something I couldn’t prior to using it
5. It allows for greater efficiency
6. It integrates with my existing application infrastructure
7. It improves my visitors’ experiences

Now the one I’ve discovered today is an absolute blinder – it has the most feature-rich interface I’ve ever seen, and eliminates the need to own Powerpoint or similar – it’s an online presentation application called 280 Slides, and here’s what I did on it in less than an hour – it’s a short intro to my new company Ex Ignibus. It was remarkably easy to do, and although not as heavily featured as Powerpoint, I can still access my presentations from anywhere with a Net link, and it has enough features to enable me to put together comprehensive presentations, on the fly. I recommend you check it for yourself – it’s free to use:

New February 28th – You can now download my Ultimate Guide to Twitter as an Ebook

1.0 February 2009

Please don’t be confused – this is definitely not a guide to making bird noises, in fact it’s not anything bird-related at all.

Twitter is the web’s fastest growing, hottest social media property right now, and you need to know about it because it has the potential to be as big as/bigger than Facebook and MySpace and even takes on Yahoo and Google for news.

You probably have friends who are tweeting right now, in the comfort of their homes or out and about in the big wide world, and you don’t even know it.

Chances are, you’ve already heard of Twitter but you may not be completely sure about what it is… Twitter seems to be everywhere at the moment – most of the Internet Marketers suggest you use it, Barack Obama famously used it to great effect, and luminaries and celebrities like Stephen Fry, Bill Gates, Shaquille O’Neal, Britney Spears, Chris Moyles and many more can be found ‘tweeting’ away to their enormous bands of followers. News stories often break, and unfold, via Tweets, and Twitter is even considered to be faster than Yahoo or Google for breaking news, as it can come from journalists and independent Twitterers at the scene.

Are you using it yet?

You can Join Twitter and follow me at http://www.Twitter.com/robbell

What is Twitter?

In layman’s terms, Twitter can be thought of as being very much like text messaging, but over the Internet – you compose messages of 140 characters or less as updates. The biggest difference is that Twitter lets you text everyone on Twitter, all at once, rather than texting to an individual!

The official description of Twitter is as follows:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.  People write short updates, often called “tweets”  of 140 characters or fewer.  These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.

Although you can only post text on Twitter, services are available to let you tweet links to other content – photos, music, video etc…

Twitter and sites like it are known as ‘micro-blogs’ – similar to blogs, except your character limit is rather limited, hence the micro- prefix. Micro-blogs tend to have character limits of around 140, although this differs between different services. This article provides a little help to maximise your use of the 140 characters.

By default, Twitter shows you the updates for your friends only, but you can view all tweets via the public timeline. Twitter is not the place to be sharing secrets, as everyone can see everything you tweet, unless you send a direct message. Everyone can see your @replies – don’t make the mistake of thinking these are private too!

Twitter does not cost any money to use.

Some analysts find Twitter’s apparent lack of a revenue-model difficult to understand, but others do not see this as a problem. Last Friday, Feb 13th, investors showed Twitter some early Valentine’s Day Love by investing a further $35m of venture capital (plus another undisclosed sum from existing investors) in the service. Lots of people have ideas how Twitter can start to make money, but I doubt anyone can tell you for sure how they are going to when they do.

How can I access Twitter?

1. Over the Internet at http://www.Twitter.com
2. Via your mobile phone – you can text in updates, or access the mobile website at m.twitter.com
3. Via a Third-Party Client – Many applications have been developed that integrate with Twitter – I use Twhirl to access Twitter, but I’ll talk more about clients and applications later in this guide.

How Do I Get Started on Twitter?

1. Create an Account
2. Go to the Settings, write a short bio, and upload a picture – people don’t like to follow people who don’t have one
3. Go to ‘Find People’ and find friends who are already on Twitter via one of the provided tools:
   Invite friends who aren’t already on – automatically using the email tool if you have Yahoo, GMail, Hotmail, AOL or MSN
4. Follow the users you’re interested in on the ‘Suggested Users’ tab
5. Write and post your first Tweet

That’s it – you’re now a Twitterer, welcome to the Twitterverse! It’s sometimes peculiar, oft more exciting than you’d expect, and always interesting – you’ll like it here!

How Do I Get Followers on Twitter?

There are schools of thought that say the more followers you have, the more popular that makes you and the greater coverage you have – so get as many as you can as quick as you can. I’m not going to cover that strategy in any details, because I don’t believe that to be the best long-term approach to life in the Twitterverse. You could use the recently controversial Twittergetter from Gary McCaffrey or Tim Linden’s Twitter Me Fun (excellent targeted source of Traffic Exchange users on Twitter) to get your Follower list started.

My belief is that people will follow you on Twitter if you are interesting and offer worthwhile tweets.Many people will follow you back when you follow them (especially if they use an auto-follower!) If you contribute to the community rather than taking from it, you’ll build followers who like and trust your posts, and see you as a great source of information.

Be creative, be unique, be an expert on your chosen topic, just don’t be a spammer – nobody likes a spammer.

Mr Tweet may help you find relevant users and followers

The Language of Twitter – Tweet me This!

Twitter has given rise to a number of terms previously unknown. You’ll come across these when you enter the Twitterverse! Here’s an explanation of a few of them you may need for the rest of this guide! It should be noted that Twitter users like to ‘twitterise’ real words to make them into ‘twitterisms’ e.g. twitterrific, tweekend, politweets (political tweets). This appears to be done, for the most part, by substituting ‘tw’ for the initial letters of the word…

This makes Twitter a little bit like Yorkshire people – we use t’ instead of ‘the’ e.g. t’weekend, t’internet t’weather etc… Twittering in Yorkshire could be confusing!

Frequently Used Twitterisms

The Twitterverse, or the Twitosphere - the community of Twitter users

Tweeter, or Twitterer - a Twitter user

Tweeple - Twitter Users

Tweet - a post on Twitter. Tweets - the updates you, and everyone else, post

Followers - people who have chosen to receive updates for a particular Twitterer

Twitterati - the members of the Twitter A-list that everyone wants to follow.

Twitterstream – the public, or friend, timeline – the posts on Twitter are chronologically listed

Mistweet - an accidentally posted tweet – may have errors or be incomplete  ie a mistake

Retweet - the action of reposting another user’s post, crediting them for it

Retweeter, or Retweetist - someone who retweets

Twisticuffs - the posts when 2 or more twitterers have a disagreement

Twetiquette ( or Twitetiquette) – the right way to behave on Twitter

You can find more comprehensive lists of definitions at Twictionary, Twittonary, and Twitter Fan Wiki

Twitter Shorthand

Because each post can only contain 140 characters, shorthand is used lots when tweeting:

RT = Retweet, followed by @ then the person you’re retweeting’s username e.g. RT@robbell  indicates you are retweeting one of my posts

OH – Overheard

DM – Direct Message

@ – Send/Reply to e.g. @robbell – sends a message to me on the public timeline

BTW – By The Way

JV – Joint Venture

IRL – In Real Life

LOL – Laugh out Loud, or Lots of Laughter depending on who you ask!

FTF – Face to Face

IMHO – In My Honest Opinion

b/c – because

abt – about

Find more Twitter shorthand (Tworthand?!?) here

TheNextWeb produce a tool, called Twitterkeys, that allows you to insert graphics like ♥ and ✈ into your tweets easily, so you can be a ★ and use them instead of words or phrases that use more characters.

ReTweeting

ReTweeting is the act of posting another person’s tweet, but still giving the original poster credit. This is popular because twitterers don’t all have the same followers so, by retweeting a post, your followers can see a tweet they otherwise might not have.

Retweets may include useful links, notable information, or things you think are funny e.g. pure_ROKER RT @guykawasaki: @robbell There’s only one problem. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is Robert Kiyosaki. I’m Guy Kawasaki. (LMAO) – I have a feeling it may be some days before I live that little error down – sometimes you just want a Retweet to lay down and die!

Read a Beginner’s Guide to Retweeting at Retweetist

The Top 10 Twitterers by Number of Followers

For the majority of people, 100 might be a lot of followers, but to others 100,000 is a milestone they’ve already long passed.

Top 10, according to stats at Twitterholic on Feb 16th 2009

1. Barack Obama – 278,444 followers
2. CNN Breaking News – 195, 320 followers
3. Stephen Fry – 193,117 followers
4. Twitter - 139,466 followers
5. Kevin Rose (founder of Digg)- 134,382 followers
6. Britney Spears – 118,368 followers
7. The New York Times – 113, 658 followers
8. Lance Armstrong – 105,274 followers
9. Evan Williams (founder of Twitter, invented ‘Blogger’)- 104,810 followers
10. Al Gore – 101,641 followers

See the rest of the top 1000 Twitter Users at Twitterholic

BEWARE – there are lots of fake profiles set up by people pretending to be a celebrity or person. I suppose the name for it is probably Twijacking! AFP famously announced the arrival of the Dalai Lama on Twitter, only to retract it later when the fake was exposed.

What is Twitter Used For?

There are a myriad of people using Twitter for any number of reasons. Here are just 25:

1. Sharing links to sites of interest to your followers
2. Fun – to stay in touch with friends and make new ones
3. Group communications – the public nature of updates means you can update whole groups with one message
   
4. Networking to get new contacts
5. Communicating with your network
6. Promoting your products/services/content
7. Crowdsourcing – getting answers to your questions, about anything
8. Influencing your network
9. Customer Service – communicating with customers and sending service updates e.g. we have x back in stock, your vehicle is ready for collection.
10. Sending updates from your websites/blogs/social networks
11. Newsgathering and reporting – the BBC came under criticism recently for using unverified Tweets as sources for reports during the Mumbai terrorist attacks in India. News often breaks on Twitter due to its’ real-time nature. Twitterers and Journalists on the scene often provide near real-time news.
12. Redistributing existing content
13. Project collaboration
14. Try out new ideas, and get near-instant feedback
15. Live updates from events and conferences
    
16. Seeking new staff – Businesses may tweet their latest vacancies
17. Looking for a job – jobs are often advertised by companies and recruiters
18. Political Dissent – the US Army recently identified Twitter as a potential terrorist tool
19. Replacement for Facebook status updates
20. Flight information and updates e.g. for delays
21. Complaining – people like to complain, and Twitter gives them a platform for this (aka Twhiners!)
22. Discussing (Arguing about) Sports
23. Charm (or repel!) people with your online personality
24. Distribute a book, 140 characters at a time
25. Learn another language – by following foreign language speakers, or via a language micro-provider

This page features a list of the ten most creative uses for Twitter – ‘to water the plants’ is number one!!!

Use Twitter creatively – enhance your communications, broaden your interests and join discussions. Add value to your existing activities and bring  joy to people.

Are there any Limits on my Twittering?

Twitter do impose some basic limits, and say they may introduce others in time. Here’s their official statement on limits:

Twitter currently applies limits to any person who reaches:

• 1,000 total updates per day, on any and all devices (web, mobile web, phone, API, etc. )
  
• 1,000 total direct messages per day, on any and all devices
  
• 100 API requests per hour
  

We’ve also placed limits on the number of people you can follow. The number is different for everyone, and is based on a ratio that changes as the account changes. If you hit a follow limit, you must balance your follower/following ratio in order to follow more people- basically, you can’t follow 50,000 people if only 23 people follow you. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable.

Fairly self-explanatory I think.

What the Devil is a Hashtag?!?!?

Hashtags, where a ‘#‘ precedes a keyword or phrase, e.g. #valentines-day, #JV, #marketing, help to organise content on Twitter into groups that share the same tag.

Services like hashtags can bring together all the posts with the same tag allowing you to read tweets related to the keyword that share the same hashtag.

Find out more about Hashtags here

Twitter Applications and Resources

The Twitter community has taken advantage of Twitter’s open API to come up with an ever-increasing selection of tools, clients and sites that use Twitter data to do something interesting, useful, ground-breaking, or just plain odd! None of the applications below actually belong to Twitter – they’re all developed by third parties.

My Favourite 5 Twitter Apps
(as at today Feb 17 – I reserve the right to change my mind at any point in the near future!)

1. Twhirl – the client I mostly access Twitter through. It makes Twitter more like an IM client, and changed my use of the service completely – I feel much more a part of the Twitterverse because of it.

2.Twitterhawk -monitors the Twitterverse for terms you provide then can add people who use them and/or  send them a message from a selection of 5 you pre-write. The business possibilities for this application are immense – it’s highly targeted messaging. I use it to follow people who talk about certain terms.

3. Is.gd – URL shortening service. Pronounced “eees gooood”, like Manuel from Fawlty Towers! Reduces urls to a reasonable number of characters.

4. Twitter Grader – grades your twitter account giving you a % score. More usefully, suggests good follows for you and lets you find the ‘Twitter Elite’ in your area (I’m in the top 3 for West Yorkshire, exciting…)

5. Twitscoop – find out what’s hot on Twitter right now, track conversations, topics or conferences using the search function.

Special Award for being Mightily Useful, but potentially dangerous

Tweetlater provides a number of tools – track keywords, schedule tweets, automatically follow people who follow you and send them an automated  thank you note, even publish your own personal ‘tweetstream’.

Unfortunately some people’s thank you notes can be a bit spammy – which never goes down well, and can even lose you followers. Some also think it’s good to publish a list of their latest followers via an automated message, I find this particularly impersonal – I’m an individual to communicate with, not just part of a list!

Use this application with care, and it will enhance your Twitter experience. Misuse it at your own peril.

Twitter Clients

Clients provide you with an interface through which to use Twitter – the basic Twitter web page feels somewhat limited, mainly because it doesn’t refresh automatically – you have to do it manually to refresh your timelines and get the latest tweets.

According to Twitstat (via Mashable), after Twitter’s built-in web posting tool, the five most popular Twitter clients are:

1. Tweetdeck
2. Twitterfeed
3. Twhirl
4. Twitterrific
5. Tweetie

Updates from text messages are the next most popular way to send tweets.

I use Twhirl, mainly because I like the way it displays tweets in an opaque sidebar – it’s relatively unobtrusive, and means I don’t need a separate browser tab always open for Twitter, that I have to manually refresh to see the latest Tweets. It also has built-in url shorteners, and notifies me with a sound on arrival of DMs and @s. I don’t have an opinion on the other clients because I haven’t tried any of them for very long. Mashable has a great article on Twhirl vs Tweetdeck you may like to read.

I also have TwitterBerry installed on my Blackberry, but I am rarely mobile for long in the cold months, so haven’t used it much.

Short URL Services

The 140 character limit makes urls that link to pages other than a site’s homepage undesirable because they can easily eat up a quarter or more of your character limit. Short url services allow you to use a far shorter url to save you precious characters.

e.g. the very character-rich link http://www.robbellblog.com/personal/theres-snow-way-of-stopping-a-committed-entrepreneur-even-an-idiot-like-rob-bell shortens to the much-briefer http://is.gd/jLA3 allowing me to include the link in a relevant tweet without wasting all my characters.

Is.gd

TinyURL

Bit.ly

Snurl /Sn.im

Twurl/Tweetburner

Search Apps

These applications wade through Twitter data to find you information on the people, topics, discussions and subjects you want to know about. There are those that state that Twitter has the edge over Google when it comes to real-time searching, and the real value of Twitter might even lie in its’ search results. Twitter themselves acquired Summize, a Twitter search engine, last year. You can use their search engine here

Twellow – Twellow analyses all posts on the public timeline to categorise Twitter users into a number of categories. This makes it easier for you to find people talking about the subjects that interest you.

TwitterSearch – simple interface for searching keywords in Tweets

TwitStat – real-time Twitter analytics

TwitterTroll – real time search, shows most popular search terms

Measure Your Influence on Twitter

There are a number of apps that analyse Twitter data, your tweets, and your followers and followees, to provide you with information about your coverage, influence and performance on Twitter.

Twitter Grader – Provides you with a % grade of your reach and authority (my grade)

Twinfluence – Measure your influence on Twitter (my influence)

Mr Tweet – follow Mr Tweet and he’ll suggest relevant people and provide several usage stats via DM when he updates your data

Tweet Stats – Graphs and Charts from your Twitter usage stats (my graphs and charts)

Great Twitter Resources

I couldn’t hope to provide a comprehensive list of all the Twitter resources and applications available – the number of apps grows at a fair pace, and others have the ability to devote more time and resources to tracking new Twitter apps – they are listed below, along with some other notable applications.

I’ve started bookmarking all the Twitter apps I come across, and like, here (this site is still in private beta, so a bit of a secret, except to you – it’s my favourite social bookmarking site by far!)

Magpie – ‘convert your Tweets to bling-bling’ – Magpie is an advertising provider offering to pay you to allow promotional tweets on occasion with your other tweets. If you visit their site, they provide you with an estimated monthly income to give you an indication of what you might earn from the service. The feature that convinced me to use this was the one that lets you select how often Magpie Tweets are sent e.g. once every 5,10 or 20 tweets. You control the frequency – nice option.

The official Twitter applications page

Mashable has to be my favourite spot for all things Twitter

Twittervision – shows Tweets on a world map, indicating a specified location or where their Twitterer is located

Twitter Applications Database (Twitdom) is an ever-growing list of Twitapps (is that a new tword?!?)

Twitter Apps

Twitter Fan Wiki – Extensive list of apps for Windows, Mac, Linux and Multi-platforms

31 Power Tools for Twitter Lovers – from SmashingApps

140+ More Twitter Tools – more from Mashable

101 Twitter Resources – Traffikd.com

60+ Useful Twitter Resources – Webgeek

Twitter Resources – Wiredpen

Tools, Apps and Bots to Improve your Twitter Experience – MakeUseOf.com

About this Guide

This is v1.0 of my Ultimate Guide to Twitter, which will doubtlessly grow and grow and grow some more over the coming weeks and months. Suggestions, criticisms, contributions and comments are always welcomed. If you’ve enjoyed the guide and found it useful, please leave me a comment and share it on your favourite bookmarking sites using one of the tools below.

All images are either my own, or believed to be in the public domain as they were sourced there. Please contact me in the unlikely event you find an image of yours which is not meant to be in the public domain.

You can subscribe to my ‘ Top 40 Applications to Build Your List Online Faster than Ever’ at Rob-Bell.com

Your friend,

Rob

Rob Bell, Marketing Boffin

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p.s. if you’ve enjoyed this guide, please bookmark it at your favourite sites using the icons below(Digg, Mixx, Del.icio.us, Reddit etc) and tweet this message (select the message, copy it, then paste it into Twitter and submit – you have 55 chars left in the message for your own comments):

I just read @robbell’s Ultimate Guide to Twitter at http://bit.ly/12JLvD – brilliant!

Cheers, Rob

Another day of snow in Blighty – I woke up (hideously early at 8am!) to go to my first course today – and it was snowing away merrily outside the windows. Shivering, and seriously tempted to get back under the nice warm duvet, I forced myself to adapt to this time I’ve normally seen when going to bed lately, rather than getting up, and make my way into a rather chilly kitchen to put the kettle on.

20 minutes later I’m braving the snow covered roads to travel the couple of miles to the location of my first course today – Book Keeping and Accounts – a Business Link course I’m taking because I haven’t really used the accountancy skills I learned at university since university! I had an awful feeling that the course would either have been cancelled or no one had turned up due to the weather – but to my surprise there were 10 of us there, and the course ran as normal. I wasn’t that big a fan of accountancy in my younger days – at 16 I spent a summer on work experience in a friend of the family’s accountancy firm. This was where I discovered that, although I find working with numbers relatively straightforward, I don’t have any desire to fill my days with number-related work. After 6 weeks I knew I would never be an Accountant!

19 years later, I find myself needing to be more involved in numbers – fortunately technology has come on a long way in 20 years, and I can run all my accounting functions through some nifty software – currently I’m using Freshbooks and TAS, but I’m looking towards some accounting software that integrates more thoroughly with Freshbooks because I am quite literally in love with Freshbooks as my invoicing, time tracking, estimating and customer support tool! Unfortunately, most of the stuff I’ve come across so far is set up for US tax, and I need a UK version!

After the course I made my way over to Hospital for an appointment with my specialist, who has very nicely put me on a course of different painkillers as my current ones weren’t being as effective as they used to… Only time will tell if the new ones are any good – I hope so, I’m sick of cold-weather pain at the moment, and it reduces my ability to get around! I am 37 going on 107 some days!

Then at 6pm I went to my second course of the day – Business Planning. When I’d got home from the hospital I’d got quite comfy so going out again wasn’t the easiest job in the world… However, when you really decide to take control of your life the sofa isn’t the quicksand it once was and escape wasn’t that hard. Now don’t laugh…

I got to the venue and parked up and hobbled up to the door, buzzed and waited for a response. Nothing.
Buzzed again…. and again nothing. So I ambled round the front to the main doors – which had security gates pulled shut and the lights were all off… ‘Strange’ I thought, so I took out my booking form and rang the number. Unfortunately it was after 6 so there was only out of hours cover, but she said someone would call me straight back… 3 hours later I’m still waiting, so I’m glad I decided to drive home rather than wait there for the call!

After making a cuppa, I sat down with my diary and looked at the details again… right time – yes, right place – yes. Hmmmm, so I looked at the booking confirmation email – right time, yes – right places – yes, right month – NOOO!!! Yes, Mr Thicky here turned up a whole 28 days too early for the course, which rather explains the closed building I guess – Oops a daisy Rob! So here I sit feeling somewhat lacking in intelligence for my calendar-ical error. Stupid Stupid Rob! Gotta laugh though, eh?!?!

I’ve been out once this week already with my camera photographing wintry scenes at a Lake nearby, and think I’m going out again tomorrow. After discovering HDR imagery recently, I find myself motivated to go out in the cold to get some rather nice pics, if I do say so myself. Here’s one from Newmillerdam lake, a few miles from here. I’ve applied some HDR effects to create the effect.

Newmillerdam in the Winter

As I was snapping, I was lucky to catch this moment of madness too – I laughed for about 10 mins after it happened, and I’m so chuffed I managed to snap it – do not feed the birds, people! It nearly smacked the guy straight in the face – missed him by millimetres!

Killer Gulls Spotted in Local Beauty Spot!

Rob

Since November last year, my natural sleep pattern – always a source of great annoyance, because I don’t appear to have one – has gone downhill again. The current time zone I’m living in has the following characteristics:

Wake up mid afternoon, and go back to sleep until dark. Wake at 6pm noticed it’s dark and 6 so it must be morning time – too early to get up…. then spot the 24 hour clock and realise you’ve actually slept all the way through daylight, except for that bit you saw streaming through your window just before you went to bed.

Swear lots because that’s another day you’ve missed and most things that involve people have to be done between 9am & 5.30pm – the traditional time for work, yet not the one used by this dojo!

After an evening meal as breakfast, sit at the computer and start the day’s business… continue until 2.30am then contemplate going to bed to start getting bodyclock back to normal times. Then sit back down at PC, end up really getting into something that could wait until morning, and end up staying up until 9-10am (it was 9.23 this morning!) before going to bed and struggling to sleep before mask is applied that keeps light from your eyes. Sleep very heavily, with phone unable to wake me up – doorbell has a better chance, but it’s still not guaranteed!

Wake up at 3, but feel it’s cold so sleep again until 6 – go through exactly the same as yesterday!

That routine is fine when you don’t need to be to do anything, but this week I’m attending 5 lectures and an employment discussion – all starting at 9.30 in the morning – which has been my bedtime for some weeks… It’s really snowy so that could be a great excuse if I miss it, but it’s only 1/2 mile on foot, which may take some time and be a little painful thanks to my cripple’s hip, but at least I’d be there…

If I get off the computer now and go to bed I could get 7 and be up at 8…. although lets face it I have only been up for 5-7 hours today so I’m not exactly tired. Solution – popped a sleeping tablet, and will be sleeping after all!

So I have to attend lots of daytime events this week for which I must become a daywalker once again! This means I won’t be around as late on the US conferences and seminars I tend to follow – most don’t even start until 1 or 2 am here.

Working online can be great fun, but once you adjust to the later nights (due to our being 5 hours ahead of
Easstern Time) it’s hard to get back without pulling at least one all-nighter-and-next-day-too, where you stay up until 10 pm then go catch up on 2 days of sleep. Unfortunately, that night’s sleep oftens lasts 14-16 hours so you lose the next day and are still on nightwalker duty!!!

Last week was increasingly frantic as we finished all the server moves to their new all-singing, all dancing and full-featured new home at RobBellHosting

Just a few problems with transferring the .co.uk domains away fron Lycos and onto 123-reg – Lycos have promised me twice to update the data that’s stopping the transfer, and they STILL haven’t done it having had over a month and 9 letters requesting they get a move on. Lycos have ruined their relationship with me over this – they were always a good company, with an, albeit limited, grip on customer service. Now I won’t use any of their products henceforth – the profitable ones they haven’t closed down, that is.

At least the data’s all moved though – and everyone’s running off the new ips. Yay, glad that’s over – too many all-nighters pulled in 1 week, IMO!

Can’t believe the snow outside – good few inches on the ground everywhere, it looks great – might take my camera out in it if I get the chance tomorrow… between the 2 courses I’m taking. I’ll show you some of the sights in Wintery Wakefield, many of which are truly beautiful – the city always looks lots better with snow covering it!!!

I’ve been using a lot of Traffic Exchanges this week to build subscribers up for my mailing list – go to Rob-Bell.com’s About Rob page to subscribe if you’d like to get my fifty favourite free sites and tools for making money online too. I don’t generally finding TE work to be the most exciting, but it’s fine if there’s something on TV – yes I do both at once! Seen considerable increase to the subscriber numbers – it’s doubled, then that doubled, now we have a nice number!

My first Traffic Exchange recommendations are:
Traffic Splash
Royal Surf
Dragon Surf
I Love Hits
Start XChange and
Advertising KnowHow

I use all these regular and see great results. They’re all free to join, but you can upgrade to increase the rate you generate credits and the number of sites you advertise. I’m going to write more on Traffic Exchanges in the near future, but those 6 are great to get you started. 5 of them offer what is called “SuperSurfing” – if you surf all 5 exchanges at once (using a tabbed internet browser) you get extra credits for each site you view.

I an upgraded member in all of the above exchanges – over a year 1/2 in some of them.

Traffic Exchanges are a very cheap(free) alternative to expensive advertising yet the targeted users on there make them perfect when your product needs the Internet Marketer marketplace. Find out the things they need, and offer them – use sales to pay for exchange monthly upgrades so you get more credits to spend getting your site seen.

Eeek it’s 2.15 am, I haven’t actually had an early night after all – bugger!

To Your Success,

Rob Bell

Tomorrow I’ll be telling you all about the 2 Business Link courses I’m going on – exciting stuff eh?!?!

It’s taken Five Cold Weeks, Four Engineers, three French Hens, two Totalled Hubs and a Partridge in a Pear Tree but I finally have a stable Internet connection once again – although it’s not quite 8Mb anymore which is strange considering I live less than half a mile from the nearest exchange. Still, considering it got as bad as 8Kb while I’ve been having trouble I’m not going to complain too loudly about having 7.9Mb! Turned out to be a problem with my phone line rather than just the Internet, but how it came about is still a mystery!

One of my hard drives decided to corrupt the day I got my connection back ironically, so that’s taken 3 days to recover all the data on and will take several more to get everything back into the right directories. No indication what caused that, so that’s another mystery.

So I’m now in the World of catch-up, working feverishly to get back up-to-date with projects. A few good solid days at the keyboard have helped, although it was difficult to get back into the swing after a few weeks of very little work or effort. I fell back into my historical role as a PC gamer and part-time couch potato rather too easily. For some reason it’s not as easy to fall back out of that state!

Unfortunately the lack of Internet put my book plans on the backburner until after Christmas when it will once again become my main project. It also wrecked my participation in the £100m Challenge, although I’m still intent on watching all the training once I’m caught up.

Anyway, back to work now – normal service will be resumed shortly!

Rob

Hi readers,

You’ve perhaps noticed a lack of posting over the lasty couple of weeks, wondered if I had some blog malaise keeping me from writing. Nothing like that I’m happy to report, but I currently have real problems with my phone and internet connection at home – and I knew I used it a lot but for 2 weeks, I’ve felt like I’ve been missing a limb. They’re hoping to fix it finally on Monday, so fingers crossed….

I’ve been unable to access any of my sites, networks, applications. My router keeps dropping at random interval – it cant hold the connection. The speed varies between the 8mb/s I’m supposed to get and the ridiculously slow 542b/s – aaagh!!! And it has been a really tough 2 weeks! The worst part about the whole experience has been dealing with my service provider’s call centre. After over an hour on the phone today, to get nothing at all sorted, I’m afraid to say I lost my cool, called the guy an idiot and insisted to be put through to a senior manager. 5 minutes later, I’ve got an engineer booked for Monday – yay mean Rob!!!

I’ve managed by immersing myself completely in X3 Terran Conflict, but sometimes I wish it was multiplayer, cos Space is a lonely place!

I’m also  running some Internet courses as a bit of volunteer work very soon, I took the disaster that was losing my internet, and decided to work some more on offline stuff – nice to deal with people rather than letters and numbers once in a while!

Hoping to be back really soon,

Rob, on his mates PC