If you’re a regular visitor to the blog, you’ll notice occasional changes – some more obvious than others. Today, the changes are very obvious! I’ve given the site a major overhaul. Britain’s trying to sort out its’ next government – in the strangest election result that’s every happened in my lifetime – and I’ve been up following the news through the night the past few nights. So while I’ve been up, I’ve updated the site theme – to a more modern, almost minimalist theme that’s inspired by the iPhone’s ‘Notes’ app .

You can now enjoy Notes from A Yorkshire Internet Megalomaniac’s closer integration with Facebook and Twitter, clearer access to my social media links, a cutting-edge comment platform, and a few other little tweaks.

Now the blog’s looking nice and fresh, I will once again redouble my efforts to update more often – it’s a constant struggle juggling 3 companies, a social media presence, writing, training, networking, technical work etc… but you probably know that – what’s that you say? Yeah, poor me – I know – grumpy, northern, englishman… it’s due to lack of sleep since Thursday!

Oooh, I almost forgot – I got access to a site that’s not even launched til next week, where I got hold of a copy of Copyblogger‘s as yet unreleased guide to ‘Creating Compelling SEO Content That Ranks Well in Search Engines’. If you want to sneak a copy for yourself before everyone gets hold of it next week, visit this pre-release launch page – you don’t have to leave your email or anything, just download the guide. I’ve printed it out, it’s good stuff.

Take care and have fun doing what you do out there,

Rob

p.s. Let me know what you think of the site updates – leave me a comment below.

Sorry for getting you all excited about my return to writing today (I’m being sarcastic, not conceited!) – my regular readers know of my ongoing health problems, but for those of you who don’t – I broke my back twice falling out of the sky awkwardly in a couple of extreme sports accidents. I’ve damaged vertebrae, discs, nerves, my hip, sacroiliac joint and various other bodyparts, resulting in my walking with a stick these days…

Anyway today is what I have come to call a ‘Pain Day’ – when my back is incredibly painful leaving me almost incapable of achieving much that particular day, and confined to my bed, blitzed my an enormous array of pain killers. I’ve managed to get onto the computer for a little while as pain killers have temporarily improved the situation, but this will have to be a pretty brief post today.

Have you come across a site called Picnik yet? It’s a very useful image editing web application – it’s easy to upload your photos, edit them and add effects then share them among your friends and social networks. It costs nothing to use – although there is a pro option if you want extra filters and the ability to upload infinite pictures. If you don’t have Photoshop, or Gimp, you’ll find this a very useful site when you have photos you want to edit eg to get rid of red-eye, or you just want to make an existing photo more fun with special effects -

Check out vampire Rob…

So get yourselves over to Picnik – you don’t need to have a Photoshop-sized budget to do great work on your photos!

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a far less pain day – I have a meal out in the evening so it better be!

Rob Bell

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

Yes, it’s true – the Internet Police have been round and arrested me for neglecting my blog once again. They said I had been blogging with undue care and attention, leaving my blog unattended for many days, even weeks at a time.

Oh blog, what can I say? I neglect you so, yet you sit there showing the world my words 24/7/365 unaffected by my ignoring you. They say I haven’t been feeding you properly, or dressing you appropriately. It’s not that I’ve lost interest, I still care for you – but I’m sorry, I’ve been seeing other Web platforms and activities. Yes, I have been spending increasingly more time with my Web Design business, and I’ve been seen a lot around Twitter and Facebook – I have also been spending a lot time with new clients, or on courses, webinars, or my other business, Ex Ignibus.

It’s not that I don’t love you, I’m just not sure that I’m in love with you – you’re not the blog I met almost 4 years ago (actually that’s true, you’re not that blog but you look and sound just like she did). You’ve got kinda bloated with all those plugins and applications I so love to feed you with, and your dress sense is so out of date compared to my other sites, who all got updated a couple of months ago. Your style just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the pack anymore…. but I don’t want to lose you.

There’s so much we should be doing together, and I know we have a bright future together – we just need to work better as a team, show a united front, and do what we do best together – giving useful information to novices and experts alike, on how to market ethically and effectively online, all about the latest trends online, and how best to use networks like Twitter. We need to up our game, dear blog, so here’s what has to happen.

Nothing much is going to happen here over the next week, because I am absolutely busied up with client work – and no matter what you say, you’ll always come second to my beloved clients.

After that, you and me are going to be spending some quiet time together, working on cleaning you up, getting you into optimised shape, thinning down your plugins, and completely redesigning your style and layout to turn you into one cool, sexy, intelligent blog that people are going to want to hang around with once again.

So get ready, because October is going to go down in history as the month you grew up and left your chrysalid to become a beautiful butterfly, rippling waves of positive effect across the blogosphere.

I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you – I’ll do better, I promise.

Your Naughty Owner,

Rob x

p.s. I got away with a caution from the Internet police, but they said they’d be keeping an eye on me in the future – and they’ll be back if I treat you bad ever again!

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

Today is a big day for some, and a day like any other for many. Unless you’re a Social Media nerd, you probably couldn’t care less, but Twitter reached an important milestone today.

Ashton Kutcher went against Larry King and CNN and fought to become the first user to have 1 million people following them.

At 7.15 (ish) GMT this morning, Kutcher won! EA had offered to give all their games for a year to the person who was millionth to follow him, which resulted in so many people trying to follow him at that point many struggled to follow in time, and he shot to 1,000,300 in the time it took me to refresh my screen from the point he was at 999,976.

Kutcher broadcast live via Ustream as the moment approached, and a party began straight after his victory speech, then he was up dancing away with wife Demi Moore to ‘Celebration’ by Kool and the Gang (incidently, I share the same name as the lead singer – Robert ‘Kool’ Bell – different middle names though!!!)

The battle was watched live on CNN and on the web via live-stats analysis provider Chartbeat (see below)

In his victory speech, with fellow twittererati P Diddy on speakerphone, Kutcher talked about how it’s a victory for new media – no longer are we confined to having to rely on tv and newspaper news because the people can now reach each other with no help from the media at all, and one person can reach out to millions easily. He played down his individual victory, declaring it a victory for the new information age against the old school.

Kutcher also passed 1 million followers on his Facebook account yesterday, without actually promoting it.

When I wrote The Ultimate Guide to Twitter, I documented the top 10 Twitterers – Obama was at the top with almost 250,000 followers. Now, just 2 months later he has almost 750,000 – but Kutcher and CNN have both overtaken him to become the two most followed accounts. The growth of the service in those 2 months is phenomenal, and it’s predicted to continue – especially given the fact that Oprah Winfrey is about to become the next celebrity twitterer, with Kutcher helping her send her first tweet live on her TV show later today. We’re expecting a big influx of stay at home Mums turning to Twitter along with Oprah today. I wonder how long it’ll take her to hit 1 million? I daresay it’ll set records…

Kutcher promised to donate $100,000 to help Malaria for his win, and showed the cheque, already printed, live in Ustream

Read more about Ashton Kutcher’s 1 million followers  on Mashable

According to this article in Computerworld Twitter traffic has shot up, not due to the teen age group who grew MySpace but rather older people – 45-54 years olds, followed by my generation – the 25-34 year olds. OK you got me, I’m 37 but that’s only on the outside! A ComScore survey found that 18-24 year olds, the ‘traditional’ social media early adopters, were actually 12% less likely to use Twitter than the average. They also found that older users spend more time on the site each visit.

Now I’m not going to repeat the facts in the article verbatim, you only have to click the link above to read it for yourself, but it did get me thinking about why older users might like Twitter much more than other networks. I struggle to believe that I’m now in the 35-54 age group for many surveys, but believe that my generation may be seriously affecting surveys who class us with those almost 20 years older. We were the first generation to grow up with computers available at home – ok they were 1k ZX80s and 48k ZX Spectrums in the early 80s, but we still had them at home,and I’ve now been a computer user for some 29 years (eek!) and an Internet user since 1991, 18 fun filled years (actually 5-10 fun filled years, the days before broadband were awful, we’d wait all night downloading a rubbish picture of a topless girl – that’s right – a picture, just one cos it took that long… You broadband pervs have no idea how lucky you are!) I think people my age have started to skew the survey results where we’re listed with people 20 years older – but that’s beside the point because the article and report don’t use that age grouping – they do it by 10 year gaps, much more accurate and representative, so let’s just get to the point!

I think this metric could have something to do with the ease of use of Twitter in comparison to the other social networks – somewhere like Facebook/MySpace where you have profiles, upload photos and videos, make use of applications you have to install and so forth can be daunting to older people with less computing/internet experience. Maintaining your profile and keeping it updated can take up lots of time, and it’s all very daunting to lots of people. Twitter on the other hand is a beautiful piece of simplicity for the user, and not at all threatening for the inexperienced computer user. You can be up and running in minutes, and there’s always something to read about. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t picked it up and been able to use it straightaway.

Young people easily understand technology, having grown up with it – it’s hard to think we’ve only had computers in the home for about 30 years because they’re everywhere now. My Dad used to stare at my screen in bemusement when he came round because he didn’t believe the people talking directly to me via the computer screen could possibly be real – how were they getting there, and how was text appearing on my screen when I wasn’t typing?!?! Bless him, he was from a generation that grew up before television – he even used a horse and cart for his coal round in his younger days before vans and lorries became the medium of transport for commerce.

How things have changed in such a relatively short space of time in the greater scheme of things.

I think it’s a great positive that Twitter’s attracting an older generation, and many people in their later years find this massive world of information, entertainment, discussion and communication to be as useful and involving as I do. When I broke my back and had to lay down at home for a long time, I couldn’t have survived without the Net – I’d never have escaped my 4 walled virtual prison without it. I see the Net giving those with less mobility wings through which to set themselves free online. I also see it as giving voice to the voiceless and community to the lonely and isolated (although the isolated may struggle to get decent speed broadband in rural areas so they’ll have to stay away from streaming video!)

As the older generation starts to welcome the tech savvy teens of the 80s like myself into their throng via the ‘excuse’ that “we’re not old, we’re only just heading into middle aged”, I’d like to say to each and every one of you silver surfers, “Welcome, it’s a mad place and you’ll fit right in!”

Rob

p.s. I have no excuse for not posting very often today, beyond ‘Twitter ate my homework’

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