7 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Connections

There has been a wrong idea circulating among people that "Twitter is not for Everyone" which is completely irrelevant to how Twitter is designed to work. I would say that Twitter is an amazing medium of cut short messages, instant news platform and if used properly, it could become a very well platform for marketing/ advertising your product or a brand per se. 

 Do you think that way too ? If yes, read through the below 7 points to see how you can leverage your twitter account to make good connections and advertising your brand.

Start Following Back :- 

Now who wouldn't like a million followers to their account . Wouldn't you ? This has to be the first and foremost work that needs to be set right to get your twitter account and your connections upto the mark, unless you are already a brand that has established its worth on twitter.

If someone's following you, that clearly means that they are showing their interest to see what you have in store and eventually expecting you to follow back too. Now you may tweet all the things that you are doing good and a lot of other things, but they'd like you to follow back as well. If you're not doing that, its most likely you will end up loosing that one follower from your account which is the same with all the followers over the course.

There are users who tend to "DM- Direct Message" you to follow them back and its normal and there are users who would expect you to do the favour of following them back without asking for it. It is for you to decide whether the follower you just gained is worth following back or not. There's another post that talks about interacting with your peer users on Twitter efficiently.

ShoutOut and Engage in Conversations :-

I think this is powerful if you'd want to stay on course with your followers to actually make them feel that you're worth having a conversation. #SO is one of the many twitter tags that users find commonly being used to make a shoutout to your peer follower/following users.

Use the hashtags wisely. Now you don't want to spam your follower with too many hashtags that makes the conversation irrelevant in most of the cases.

 Call out names and start engaging in conversations that will make them feel special and next time they will look forward to your tweets. Now this may not seem like a wise idea if you already have a million of followers to your account but still could be considered doing this once in a while to keep up the interaction factor going forward.

 Its time for you to decide what you should be doing now to make your twitter connections awesome and interactive.

Usage of GIFs :-

Let me tell you this, gif images works all the time. It's attractive and catches the eye on spot and people would want to retweet, start a conversation over your tweet.

 Just a random search for "gif" on twitter gives the below link where you can see for yourself the number of retweets and favorites and replies to the tweets with gif images. That proves it now, doesn't it ?

  https://twitter.com/search?q=gif&src=typd

Ask for Opinions :-

Asking doesn't make you any less than the other person who doesn't, the fact that it only makes you a better person and makes you approachable. Ask for Opinions in the form of tweets. Fellow Twitter users would be happy to reply back to your tweets if that interests them.

Convey a message, or a help if needed, all you have to do is ask and that your twitter herd listens and you might not know, you will have your solution one tweet away.

 Coming to the point, asking for opinions, thoughts, helps improve your connection on twitter.

Use Polling Feature :- 

Polling Feature on Twitter is one of the ways to improve your twitter connections. There are a lot of scenarios where you wanted to choose an option from a group of options and you can actually ask it out on Twitter suggesting your connections to choose one for you.

 This will actually improve your perspective on seeing things in a different way and you can even start tweeting back to your twitter users with the feedback that will create a whole new conversation altogether.

Tweet Back :-

As far as Twitter connections is considered, its not one way. Meaning, you have to often tweet back to your other fellow followers, followings tweet and start engaging yourself in a conversation.

This will give you an option to be seen over a wide list of people, your followers/followings followers and improve your connections along the way.

Share Quotes :-

I have found this as one effective way to improve connections, infact it works all the time. Sharing Quotes as a tweet get more considered than a normal tweet like "What a crazy day! ".

The Retweets that you get and the views on your quotes will automatically improve your connections with quality followers overtime.

 Now that I've shared all the 7 ways that I myself use frequently, we have come to the end of this post.

 Let me know if I've missed out any of your favorite ways and also how is it working out for you in the comments.

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How To Get Verified On Twitter Through Application Process

Yay.,! Have you heard the news ? Now you can get verified on Twitter by applying manually telling them you're the one. Yes., I was wandering for news on Twitter and found this which I thought I should write about it on this blog. 

I've been writing about Twitter tips and stuffs related to Twitter for sometime as of now and like everyone else who's using it frequently not just to share their blog links but to read news as well, I've the fantasy of getting verified on Twitter someday too.

Getting a verified profile on Twitter is special for the ones who know its value., Okie., now let me share you how I've applied for the twitter verification process.

As I was browsing through Twitter I found this link in their blog - How to Get verified on twitter through Application Process which I was thrilled to see.

As you know being a twitter user., getting a verified profile is not a small thing to have in your profile. And the process that was happening before sounds very much manual to us where the twitter guys would selectively pick the profiles from millions of users and grant them the loyalty. I've wrote about it some years back How to get a verified Twitter Account when I was kind of a noob and was still trying to understand how twitter works.,

Now that I've seen the Application Process Verification, I started the process not even thinking about anything else.

Before applying to get verified, you should look into their tips page where they tell you what you should keep in mind before applying and what's needed. Find the link below.

Request to Verify an Account

After you finish reading it, you can follow the link - Verification Request to finally start applying for the verification.

If you don't get it the first time, you can still apply for the same account after 30 Days following the same verification link.

P.S : I've applied for the verification process as well. Feeling excited. I'll write a blog post with the update once I get a mail back from them either positive or negative.

Photo Credit : Flickr- Mambembe Arts & Crafts

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5 Things to Know About Twitter Analytics

Are you running a business offline or online? It doesn't matter where you do and what you do, but it sure matters that you use any medium of influencing people to come to you, use your service in anyway possible. I've been writing my way through twitter ever since I've found its usability as a media to publicize yourself as a brand no matter what you do and where you're located in any part of the world.

Using twitter has made me realize there are people who take the slightest care of what you do and those are the like minded people that you'd want to follow and want to be followed back. Setting up a twitter account is not a heavy task and the part of being online (by online I mean the way you stay up tweeting frequently without giving up) is a hell of a job if you're running up a business motive on twitter. Unless you've a twitter account that tweets random thoughts that comes to your mind, tweets with media that you see day to day, you wouldn't be running out of tweets.

To use Twitter Analytics efficiently, you should know the least about it at some point of time.

Twitter has given us the option to check who actually are interacting with you and how are you doing last month compared to this month and how exactly are you growing on your followers rate/ following rate and everything that get accounted which is the Twitter Analytics Platform.

In this post, we're gonna list down the 5 thing that you should know about Twitter Analytics before you start using it.

Monthly Tweet Analysis : 

Tweet Analysis is what we're going to talk about. Brands or Businesses that are tweeting every now and then from their official account should be using this analytics to collect the data of how far their tweets have reached the world, how good is the engagement of tweets with the fellow twitterers.

Normally, you can see any particular tweet activity just by clicking on the "View Tweet Activity" in your tweet section. That will give you a clear analytics of how did that tweet go with the twitterverse.

You can now view weekly activity of your tweets on the right side of your twitter dashboard as well. But when you want to collect the data monthly so that you can account yourself with the growth that you've reached this month and can easily compare yourself to the previous month and do what you should do to be better next month.

That's a good one and they show you your top tweet for the month, top follower for the month, top mentions, top media tweet, top card tweet etc., all for the particular month that you prefer. Scroll down to your twitter analytics dashboard to see older months analytics data.

You're a social media marketer, that's great., you're just steps away to collect those data and make your excel sheet for the month.

Know Your Influencers : 

Twitter is letting you know who was engaging with you the last month most of the times and is showing you the details on what tweet the whole engagement was happening.

Get the data on what was your top tweet on twitter last month, who was your top mention, who was your top follower, what was your top media tweet, what was your top card tweet, all in one single page of Twitter Analytics.

Top Card Tweet for the Month

Top Follower for the Month

Top Mention for the Month

Top Tweet for the Month

You get to know who's your most interesting influencer on twitter in short, you get to know a like minded personality to your business.

Now that's a lot of valuable data for you and your company that runs its promotion on twitter.

Export the Twitter Data : 

The twitter analytics data that you see for a month or any relevant period of time can be exported to your local system in csv format.

You can select any particular number of days, years range which lies next to the export button on top of your tweet activity. Now that should be considered as a lot of data related to your twitter market.

Flavour of Audience:

Knowing your audience is the key to promote your business to the fastest level. Twitter Analytics provides you with the data of what audience base that you're followers are and where exactly you can improve to make sure a lot of people read your tweets and engage with it.

Audience Analytics will help you to improve the understanding of your followers base and tweet accordingly. The list shows the people who have engaged with the tweets that you've been tweeting since the given time period.

Conversion Tracking : 

Twitter provides you the conversion tracking facility just like Google Analytics where you're (the developer) supposed to put the code to your website and the tracking starts immediately once your code is verified.

The Conversion Tracking works in such a way based on the code that you're implementing to your website. You can track any particular page conversion event based on the conditions option when you're setting up the conversion tracking event.

You can add even multiple accounts to the same analytics dashboard. Click on the username on top right, and select the account that you want to use with the analytics dashboard.

Conclusion : 

The data that you get from twitter analytics can be a good option to analyze the growth of your business and make any changes needed to promote your brand on twitter.

Now, that's an important piece of data to your brand.

What features do you like about the Twitter Analytics Platform ?  What do you think it is less of ? Do Share in the comments.

Image Credit : Flickr

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How To Find The Number Of Verified Followers On Twitter

Having a verified profile on Twitter is not a small achievement to have on your portfolio unless you're a famous celebrity in your line of work. Getting verified on Twitter is as much as not in our hands until Twitter decides to contact out for Verification.

If you've come to read about how to get verified on Twitter, I'd suggest you to read the linked blog post below.

Read this : How To Get Verified On Twitter

Let that be aside. You have a number of followers that you could even possibly count each and every one of them in hands. Have you ever wondered how many of the verified profiles that follows you ?

Have you ever asked yourself to check that once after you lost count of your followers which I'd say when you reach 100 followers you'd loose the name count of the people who followed you.

When I started using Twitter, I used to follow people and let them follow me back and we exchange tweets, retweets, and favorite each others tweets which are the most used functionalities on Twitter

I happen to count all the followers that followed me and welcome them with a Shout Out (SO) either automated or manually (Atleast when I started out).

While I use Twitter I happen to be followed by some of the verified profiles on Twitter which is pretty awesome actually and you'll feel good about it for no reason. I lost count of the number of verified profiles that follow me on my account later on which led me to find some pretty cool tools that I'm going to share in this blog post.

That was the reason I had to research on any tools that will help you to find the number of verified followers on your Twitter. And I found one.

Social Rank : 

Social Rank is a platform where you can organize, sort out your twitter followers in case you have way too many to do it manually on twitter.

You can even sort the followers and create a curated list of followers and use it for any purposes that you are planning to may be promotional tweeting, call it your choice.

Once you're logged in to social rank, you'll see the list of followers that follow you on twitter. You'll see a select option where you can select "Verified Followers" and there you go, it'll show you the list of verified profiles that follows you on twitter.

Here's a screen shot of my list of verified list of followers on twitter from Social Rank. 

Me on twitter- @vickythegme

Feel free to mention any other tools that helps you find the list of verified profiles that follow you on twitter. And don't forget to let me know how many verified profiles are following you on twitter in the comments.

Photo Credit : Flickr

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LongerTwits - A Simple Web App To Tweet More Than 140 Characters

Checkout my app at http://longertwits.vickythegme.com

Yay!!
I released my first app online which is currently serving as a sub domain on my personal blog vickythegme. I happen to read about twitter api past these days and got pretty much interested to it that I wanted to build an app on my own.

The first idea that I got is to bring up an app that would let users follow and unfollow (a simple twitter management tool similar to JustUnfollow, Unfollowers.me etc.,).

 By the time I got into it and been working on the app, I got another idea why not create a simple app and releasing it and wait for the user response so that I could carry the workings for the unfollow app behind the hood. (I still have the idea of developing an unfollow app as well.)

So, the simple app that I am talking about is none other than Longertwits – http://longertwits.vickythegme.com which is most inspired by Amit Agarwal’s talltweets.

I used to use talltweets back then to tweet if I need to send more than 140 characters and some day decided why not write a similar app on my own.

Once I started, I felt pretty good that I made an app (with some errors though ;) ), I started to work on the reducing the errors that could possibly happen and let the users use it as well.

So, here I’m sharing my first twitter app. – Longertwits.

So the thing that is different about the other apps is that I happen to manage 3 types of tweeting options like Tweet as Text, Tweet as Link, Tweet as Image

I could see so many apps that use these features and not one of them having all the three.!


With respect to that, I added these 3 options to tweet  to your twitter account.

Tweet as Text :

This option lets you tweet your message in the form of text. If an user types a tweet message that is more than 140 characters, the app splits the first 140 characters and sends it first and then sends the next 140 characters and so on.

Tweet as Link :

Tweet as Link option lets you tweet a text message which is more than 140 characters as link. This means that the tweet is sent with a link such that it shows some first 40-60 characters and add a link to the tweet that is saved in our db.

This option could be very useful if someone wants to mock up an essay of something or an announcement or anything that will relate to the limit.

Tweet as Image : 

Tweet as Image is one option that is mostly inspired with the idea of talltweets which I wanted to make it available to longertwits app as well.

This option lets you to send the tweet text in the form of an image.

The Images above are the old design with bootstrap 2 and I will be changing the app with the new bootstrap 3 design real soon.

Conclusion : 

I could not say anything more than just ask you to try out this simple app Longertwits  and do let me know your feedback below in here as comments or you can ping me up on twitter -@vickythegme or anywhere you feel convenient.

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How To Register A Twitter Application

Twitter Applications are nowadays getting created like hundreds and thousands a day.

According to this post -> One Million Registered Twitter Apps at their twitter blog back then at 2011, a new app is registered every 1.5 seconds. It is needless to say the amount of apps that would be registered by the end of this year and only you can imagine the limit. And the amount of twitter app developers are increasing day by day.

I've been running a nono-coding blog (mostly twitter related tips) and I don't wanna get into any details to coding with this blog, as I've my personal blog where I share some coding experiences.

This post will guide you to create (register) a Twitter App in just minutes.

The first thing you should do is to go to Twitter Dev - http://dev.twitter.com

If you have a twitter account (I'm sure you do), just sign in with it to twitter developers site.

Viola., You've created your developer account.

Now GoTo -> My Applications at the right corner of your account

In My Applications, obviously, you'll find nothing if you've not created any applications. ;)

So, create one by clicking on the "Create New App" button.

Follow the Instructions and enter the fields that are neccesary.

If you don't have a website, you can just add your localhost as your Website Address. But make sure you type

http://127.0.0.1/website 

Similarly when adding the callback url, make sure you add the localhost ip address, because it returns error if http://localhost/website/callback.php is entered.

Callback URL : http://127.0.0.1/website/callback.php

only if you don't have a server to host the application.

Once you click on the "Create Application" , twitter will generate some keys that you'll be needing when it comes to coding part.

The 4 needed part of the api applications are

Consumer Key 

Consumer Secret

Access Token

 Access Secret

You should be using them in integrating the app that you've created with your code to make it up and running with twitter.

An important thing to note down is that you can change your access level to the following.

Read - Can only read tweets, view user profile and login options

Read, Write - Can  both read and write (which means pretty much you can tweet , retweet, favorite tweets) etc.,

Read, Write and Direct Messages - Can read, write both statuses, direct messages.

To  know more about the Application Permission Model,->  https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model 


And you can get user details, tweet status, retweet, favorite, do nifty things (not literally) with twitter api.

Now you can test your oauth connection with the test Oauth option at the top right side of your app.

To know more about the coding parts for the twitter integration with the app that you created just now., checkout my personal blog - vickythegme for the code pieces.

Let Us know your difficulties with creating a sample twitter app by following above.

Photo Credit : Flickr

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Search List of Twitter Apps with Twi5

Usage of Twitter has been increasingly growing its rate these years with the Bloggers and Social Media Strategists understanding the value of it.

You might not have seen much impact of twitter on bloggers and other internet promoters earlier and it is may be because of the power of social media in the field of SEO and Marketing.

Search Engines (clearly I want to refer to Google) have made it possible for the marketers to know the value of twitter and other social medias.

If you're a serious internet user or to be specific, a serious twitter freak, you must know the relatives of twitter (not really), but related to it and making it use better.

How cool it would be if you can find the information about all the twitter tools in just one place.?

You may have found this information on Wikipedia- List of Twitter Services and Applications, but still I have a better place in my mind to search for.

Here's a little description of one place where you'll find most of the interesting third party twitter applications.

You may know about it earlier and if not let me tell you, it is Twi5

Twi5 

Twi5 Logo - http://www.twi5.com/twitlogo-create-twitter-like-logo-for-free/5145/

Twi5.com, page by Nischal Shetty- Founder of JustUnfollow, is one place to search for most of the twitter tools online. Twi5 has a big list of vast range of tools to help you with twitter easy access and management. You could find most of the applications that are quite familiar with you and some you might not heard about it too.

And trust me, I haven't heard of most of the twitter resources until I looked into it.

To get your twitter app profiled in the site, you have to Submit your App and follow the details shown in the page.

There are so many apps that are related to some of the biggest social media names that you use already (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Orkut ) and it has the list of mobile apps related to those social medias.

You'll find it interesting to know about these apps and may be try out some.

Now let me know something that you find interesting about it at the comments.

Image Credit : Flickr

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4 Tools to Tweet Longer Than 140 Characters

Twitter Users are increasing more and more day to day. When you start using twitter frequently you may want to use something that ll make it easy for you to tweet at times when you can't be online all the time.

 There comes the usage of twitter management tools which will help you manage your twitter accounts (even multiple accounts too with some cents spent). But then you want something that will let you tweet more than the tweet characters limit which is obviously 140 as you know it.

Basically, twitter is designed as a Short Messaging Service (SMS) and you can't blame for what it is. There are many third party tools, that make use of the twitter's API facility and are created to fullfil your reason to tweet longer tweets more than 140 characters.

 With that in mind, I am going to share some of the 4 tools that will let you tweet more than 140 characters.

Talltweets :

This is the one that comes to my mind when I first think about tweeting longer sentences more than the character limit. You may know it obviously, the make of this application., Yes, you guessed it., Amit Agarwal, a professional blogger from India. This tool is a simple one with you can tweet more than 140 characters in two forms.

1. Tweet as text which will split the full lengthy tweet into chunks of tweets that apply the tweet character limit.
2. Or tweet as an image which will create an image of the tweet message and send it to twitter as one media tweet which looks good by the way.

Twitlonger :

Twitlonger is one tweeting tool which attaches a link to your tweet and let the users view your tweet on twitlonger site.

Also you can reply to the tweet that you sent or any tweet that is sent from the site.

Twishort :

Twishort is another one tweeting tool where you can tweet longer than 140 characters with a link attached to your tweet. The users can view the full lengthy tweet when they click the link which will take you to view the lengthy tweet in your account at twishort.

One different feature other than the above tools is that it has also a facility to reply to any specifc tweet. All you have to do it to copy and paste the twitter url link for the tweet that  you wanna reply to.

You may also would like to use their twiage - an app to calculate the your twitter age. :)

JumboTweet : 

Jumbotweets is another platform to tweet longer than 140 characters to your twitter account.

This works the similar way as the other tools,. tweets the lengthy messages with a link attached to it at the end of each tweet.

It is used as a microblogging platform service where you tweet with a link and the users can view the full tweet in its website.

P.S : A new service from us LongerTwits has come out to tweet longer than 140 characters and more.

Currently we've Tweet as Text facility where your tweets are split into chunks of 120 characters each and sent to twitter.

Tweet as Image facility will let you tweet your lengthy messages in an image format. (Inspired by TallTweets).

Tweet as Link will let you tweet your messages by attaching a link at the end of your tweet which links to your complete text in our site.

Soon, we'll provide the option to save and collect your tweets (last 3200 tweets).

Stay Tuned with our posts and let us know your feedback in the comments.

Photo Credit : Creative Tools - Flickr

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How To Use Twitter Advanced Search

Use Twitter more for business purposes? New on Twitter? I've been there before what I call as a couple of years back.

Twitter Users are increasing day by day and by the time that you're reading this, hundreds of new users might have joined twitter with the intention of developing their business.

Later these days, twitter users are increasing more and more mainly because of the reason that it is a major social media to promote your business.

We've been writing tips to use twitter for quite a period now (you might wanna look into our posts on twitter tips) and realized the missing of twitter's advanced search.

 And not to mention, this post will let you know how to use twitter's advanced search feature and make it more useful for tweet searchers.

Use of Advanced Search :

As you know twitter's advanced search has more features added to it.

Advanced search has many options to search people or tweets on twitter like, search by Words, People, Places, Dates, and Other vibes.

You can search for tweet by date, people tweeted, place etc.,

Even typing nothing in the text boxes will result you with some search results that you might feel interesting to know. :)

You can also search tweets based on language too.

Advanced search in Twitter works when you search for anything on the search link https://twitter.com/search-advanced and you will get directed to the search results that usually comes when you search using the simple search bar at the top of your stream.

You may see the search query with some keywords in your simple search bar at the top which you've used in the advanced search option.

That means the search queries will work fine if you search them directly in the search bar that you always use to search.

Here are some of the tips that you can use the simple search bar as an advanced search option using operators.

All you need to do is to search using the operators column in the above image.

 Use the above technique to make your simple tweets search on twitter as an advanced one.

Conclusion:

Now try those similar search operators in your search bar and make use of the advanced search right where you tweet and let us know too.. :)

Photo Credit: Flickr- Rosaura Ochoa

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How To Use Twitter Analytics Efficiently

If you're running a business or a weblog, you sure must've tried twitter, atleast would've created an account and tweeted some tweets that are related to your business promotion. If you have noted something on Twitter later days, more people on the web are making use of a business profile. It is comparatively growing as equal to Facebook these days where people starting to use Facebook for their personal preferences. People become more conservative on Facebook that they want to keep things to themselves.

This post will help you to use twitter analytics as if you've used it before.

As you know Facebook has already its graph analytics based on the posts like, share and number of clicks, Twitter has released its analytics functionality which is not much reached to all the people over the world, but still people are making use of it. You might see the Analytics at the Settings drop down at the top of the navigation bar. Sometimes you might see Ad Analytics at the place where you want to see the analytics.

You should be aware that you can only use twitter analytics if you're a publisher or developer or advertiser.

To be a publisher, you can easily create twitter cards which is explained down below.

To be an advertiser, you've to apply for the ads which is possibly a paid one.

To be a developer, all you've to do is to have an account at twitter developers site and should have atleast one app created with it. 

 Anyway it shows the number of retweets, favorites, as wel as number of clicks any url can get when shared.

Using Twitter Analytics:

Twitter Analytics can be used to its best for your business. And this post will help you know the needed. We use url shorteners that provide click analytics to know how many times the url is being clicked in a tweet.

But on Facebook, there is no need to shorten the url because there's no limitation in number of characters to be used. And this is what it makes special about Twitter.

 With the twitter analytics, you can see how many times the url is being clicked in a tweet for both shortened urls as well as the original ones. The below image shows the number of clicks and retweets, favorites for a set of tweets that are shortened.

Here is another image below that shows the number of clicks, retweets, favorites for a set of tweets that are not shortened which is that I always shorten the url so that I could save some space for the retweeters to mention people or add words to the tweet. Twitter analytics also provides you the overall analytic graph of your tweets per month and its most retweeted, favorited tweets etc., It will help you know what kind of words that work more on twitter and can optimize your tweets to reach more people.

Using Ad Analytics:

Ads Analytics are not applicable unless you pay for it to get your tweets promoted to more number of people. Still if you have ads enabled to your profile, then you'll see the number of clickbacks the url gets per day or week or month.

Follower Analytics: 

Twitter also lets you get the whole analytics of your followers lists as well as your followings.

You can view the best of your followers analytics here at twitter analytics itself. Twitter shows a graph analytic of your followers per month which is useful to analyze the growth of your business profile.

There are also other applications such as Topsy,  Hootsuite etc., that provide you twitter analytics based on your data once you sign in with your twitter account.

Card Analytics:

You can also get the analytics of your twitter cards here.

For the card analytics to work, you've to create one for your website. Inside the twitter card analytics, you'll find the URL clicks, Install Attempts and number of Retweets your tweet with the card gets.

Get your twitter card in just some clicks selecting which type of card suits your business.

 And add the code to your blog for it to work when you share a tweet with your followers.

Validate your card, make sure the card are enabled in your domain. Check for validation at twitter itself or else you can make use of the twitter card validator.

Remember you can access to your twitter analytics only if you're a publisher or advertiser or developer.

That means you can access the data if you've any twitter card enabled to your website as well.

Export Your Data:

The Export Your Data facility allows you download the analytics data and let you view the data offline.

The data will let you calculate your growth on that particular month of the year.

The export facility is only for twitter card data.

Conclusion:

Twitter analytics are useful and it is recommended one for the users who are using third party applications as well, because there might be some limitations with the twitter api that other applications can't happen to provide you with which twitter can provide you with all your data completely.

Try out the latest twitter analytics and let me know your thoughts about it..!!

Photo Credit: Flickr

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5 Tips to Send URL via DM - Twitter

You may all probably wondering why people send URL links via DM right after you follow them. Is it a spam link or is it their real blog or website's address? You just don't know how to find it and then you end up unfollowing them or just letting it go and never reply or talk to them about it.

This post will provide you some tips to send urls in a DM on Twitter.

 Now lets see about the two things that can happen when sending a url with a DM message from the tweeters.

Traffic?

Is that the reason you're sending DM to the people who follow you and only want to get to know you? Or do you think it is the way of telling the people that you're onto something ?

Anyway, it can be either directly or indirectly, still the best thing is you're doing it for the growth of your business. How are you going to increase your traffic just by sending your url link with the DM?

 When you send out a DM to an unknown person who just followed you will likely to click on the url if send any which is a good gesture provided you don't spam them.

 The urls are sent only to let people know you more and your interests, profession. Let me guess, when I send an url to you , what would you do?

 Will you click it? Obviously not., only if you want to know about me and find something interesting and informative on my url with some trust that I don't spam you. It has become a common practice to use url shortners while sending links in tweets, DMs just to make use of those 140 characters somewhere else. This is an advantage to the spammer bots, or spammer profiles which send spam urls shortened by most used url shortners like bit.ly, goo.gl etc., You might have noticed that the DM urls lesser these days as twitter is cleaning out the process of sending unknown urls.

Spam?

Do you think all the DM messages are spam? Fine. I agree with you that there are spams spreading through DM more than never before, but still there are other small scale marketers, bloggers, artists etc., who would try to power up their business through twitter taking advantage of the DM. There are hundreds of thousands of profiles on twitter that are spambots, still finding out a follower sending a url link via DM spam or not is something that we need to work on. Of course, you would assume an unknown url as a spam and it is been common these days. I always use to click on the urls that I feel as legit. You can sense the url even if it is shortened with any url shortners. Down here are some tips that would help you to send URLs via Direct Messages without being misidentified as spams.

Twitter Blocks URL :

Twitter has blocked sending of urls in DM messages keeping in mind to avoid spams flowing all over. You can't just send any url in a DM now and most importantly it doesn't allow URL Shortners. If you really want to send URLs in DM messages here are some tips.

Never Use URL Shortners:

As it is been said above, there are many url shortners that would let you shorten your url so that you can make use of the characters on Twitter. This makes your url invisible to others which is a problem to your followers because they might take it a spam sometimes unless you're some kind of a big deal in your industry. So, while sending any url link to your followers, make sure you add your full url to let them visit and know you. Even though it works earlier, now you can't send any shortened url. This actually goes opposite when sending tweets because you should allow your the tweeters to RT or add some characters with your tweet.

Add the url at your profile:

You have to let people know that the url that you're sending is not a spam link. For this to happen, you should add your website or blog url at your profile. When a user sees a DM from you, they ll first see your profile to make sure you're not a bot or any spammer personality. And when they see the same url that you have sent them through DM, there's a chance of people knowing it is a legit link.

DM the tweet link :

You can send a DM with the link of a tweet that has your blog or website url so that people will understand and might throw a visit to your blog. Some people might think it as just another link and it goes both ways.

Send as a plain text :

Twitter doesn't block all the urls that are being sent via DM. You can still send links to your social networking profiles in a DM. But there are other links that it can't recognize as spam or not, will not be sent. But you can still send the message as a plain text such that

You can visit my blog at techlanes .com

just adding a space or something that seperates the com or org or net from your domain name. But still there are chances that you can be neglected by some twitter users who feel lazy to copy and paste your link to their browser. :D

You know what is right!!

Yeah. Just think yourself as a user and you're getting a DM with a url. Most of the times your guess is right. You can differentiate the spam urls and other urls. Likewise, you know how you should send a DM without making an impression that it is a spam. Yes. 

Using url shortners will give you the analytics, number of clicks on that particular url. You can add a tweet with the shortened url and then send the tweet link to your followers to read and know about it.

Conclusion:

Sending URLs privately via DM can go both ways. You may get traffic , you may also get blocked and unfollowed. You can't expect everyone to think your link as a legit one. Still, you can make a try to let them click on it with your potential customers(readers). 

 I use automated tools to send out DMs and I only send DM messages to follow or add me friend to my social media profiles since those DMs wouldn't be blocked for sure. You can just test out if that url is sent via DM with some other profile to make sure you can use it automated bacause if that specific url is not sent, it will also block your whole DM message.

Photo Credit: Paul Downey -Flickr

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Reasons For Your Twitter Account Spamming

Twitter Users are getting spammed so easily these days. Twitter is still a secure network where marketing of products and brands are still going on the other hand. What made you feel that twitter is insecure for you to run your social profile?

I am a regular user of twitter and I tweet 4-5 tweets daily even when I am not online just with the help of the auto tweeting tools which are scheduled to tweet at times. Its not a sin to use auto tweeting tools or in other words, twitter management tools. Twitter only considers those profiles that tweets spam urls or that tweets twice or three times continously.

If to be said, I am used to asked to rest my twitter password once in two weeks these days saying my twitter is compromised. I realized that its because I have been authorizing new and unknown applications that might have spammed my twitter.

Twitter guys are working on this condition since the increase in usage of twitter by marketers and brands and medias. They always send you an instant mail to change or reset password once they find anything spammy going on with your profile.

Now lets see why your account is getting spammed easily.

Spamming DM's:

It is an obvious one. And you know it. I am going to tell you why that is happening with your profile. Direct Messages are sent only to those people who follow you and you follow them. Anyone can send you a DM if there's a mutual following. Its not an etiquette to send someon url links privately via DMs and nobody's gonna click on that.

 You'll never click on someone's link at least not before you know them. And such, you should never expect them to click on the url link in their DM anyway.

Of course I agree you are doing it to promote your business. If you are doing it, then do it right.

Make your url visible at your profile page. Send the business blog or website link that is shown in your profile just to let them know you own it. Don't send direct messages with shortened urls which is nowadays a common spamming method spreading on twitter.

Unknown URL Clicks:

Clicking on the url happens all the time. It does happen even more with tweets. You can differentiate the spammy urls and other urls which you want to click. Mostly we click at the unknown links that tempt us. It is not a bad thing that we only click at those urls. But there are some third party unknown applications that will make the users to tweet automatically with their links many times making it a spammy url.

Most likely you'll click 1 link among 100 many unknown links you see everyday and that's all it takes for the spammers to run your profile .

Following Spam Profiles:

Following spam profiles happens to everyone who follow for a follow(#f4f). It is common that you don't see it coming.

This occurs mostly when you follow everyone who follow you and you become the victim of someone who's doing it for years. I am not asking you to stop following people who follow you. What I want you to do is to have a code while following back the profiles that follow you. You can find easily whether a profile is a spam or fake just by spending a minute watching its profile and reading its tweets.

Tweeting Spams:

Ofcourse you won't tweet spams with your knowledge. Tweeting spams happens when somebody takes over access to your profile. This not only means that you've been compromised but also your priority to suspension. Sometimes when you use any third party tools that will gain you followers, they have the control over your tweets and they can read and write messages which is an easy gateway for spammers to tweet any sort of spams on your profile.

This doesn't stop there. They tweet spams from your profile and you don't even know it. You'll know when you get blocked and suspended by somebody or twitter itself because of spamming. There are still people who take things seriously and block you for spamming activities. This has more influence on the list to get suspended on twitter.

I have experienced such incidents with my twitter twice when some users replied to a DM which is a spam message sent from my profile. I came to know when some nice people in my followers list informed me about this activity and the best part is I couldn't see the spam message myself.

These are just some of the ways which your account is spammed and there are many other ways which I haven't seen with my account but it happens.

Conclusion:

The worst thing that could happen about spamming is that you'll get tired of using it as I have seen many users stop using it. But once you start liking to use it, you'll get the best out of twitter to run your business online.

Seems like I have written what I wanted to tell and would really appreciate what you think by comments.

Happy Tweeting!!!

Photo Credit: Flickr

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4 Rules To Tweet For Better Marketing

I have been using Twitter for a long time now. Its been 2 years since I created my second twitter account which I am currently active at. After continously getting suspended from twitter at the start, I got some interest in using it to make work for me in a better way now.  I am active with some of real nice followers  which I wish you'd want to follow as well.

And I believe after experimenting tweets all over with my only account, it is time to write this post about tweeting better to reach more readers. Before coming to the point, I just want to give some insights about tweeting.

Actually you'll experience the power of tweeting only when you are active with some decent amount of  followers. Even without the  followers, you can reach out to more people with #hashtags.  Everyone knows that twitter only allows you to express yourself in 140 characters. Its yours to make it work within those 140 characters in an efficient way.

Well, Let's go to the rules that I follow to tweet mostly for better marketing.

Is Timing Important?

  If you ask me, I'd probably say its important as much as who you're following and who you're targeting at. People will see your tweet anytime they visit your profile. But that's not the way it should work is it? People should see your tweets on their stream when they are logged in. Obviously, you can't determine when your followers should log in to see your tweets. Studies show that tweeting between 3-9 pm gets more responses and retweets. You'd possibly use twitter at times whenever you're free. And that includes the times between 1-2 pm (Lunch), 4-5 pm (somewhere near a coffee break), and after 9 pm which is possibly you lay down on your bed tweaking your stream.

I saw an awesome post by Belle Beth Cooper at Buffer which I thought I should share with you guys. You'd probably never wanna miss out your followers engagement with tweets at times. So my point is timing is important factor which you shouldn't miss out if you want  to get more engagement with your targeted followers (retweets, favorites, replies).

Use #hashtags:

  Using hashtags in your tweets has more influence with more than your tweeters. Since the search results of twitter are improved with not only the hashtags, its even possible to use keywords in your tweets as it comes in the search results too. For example, You use the word like #smm (Social Media Marketing) in your related tweet, it gets more exposure and responses and reach people other than your followers too.

If you tweet with a hashtag, anyone who searches for the keyword will have a chance to look at your tweet and who knows might get it clicked.

Use hashtags not more than once in your tweet. It has been considered a spam as per this blog post if you tweet has more than 2 hashtags. There are always people who search on twitter with hashtags and you might get listed in their search results too.

Make use of them in your tweets as it powerful enough for marketing your blog or business and chances are pretty increase in your followers as well.

Frequent Tweeting:

 Frequent Tweeting makes you get used to it. And eventually it'll become a part of you sharing your blog posts or any thoughts that come on the road. Your tweets get more engaged when you tweet frequently. 

Here are some tips for frequent tweeting. 

• Tweet a minimum of 4-5 tweets for starters and if you feel you're upto it, then use any automated tools to manage your tweets. 
• Make sure you decide when to tweet and when's not for all the applications won't always tweet as per your request (which might be a spam).

           There are hundreds of thousands of applications that bake spams with your profile. Stay out of them for the sake of your profile.

• Tweet your common thoughts once in a while and make sure they don't hurt anyone, if it does, you might get blocked on twitter.
• Tweet 2-3 quotes a day to make your profile look lively and to gain more followers too.

Use Action Keywords:

Its a good one for better tweeting and better engagement. Call for Action has more influence with the tweets especially they tend people to read and share (retweet) your tweets. All you have to do is to put some words of action like RT, Fav, #FF, #fb ETC.,

Whenever you tweet something may be your blog posts or any quotes, its okay to ask people to retweet them or favorite them. Ask for what you want and if its good, you'll get it. An Infographic based on a  recent analysis by SocialBakers has pointed out that tweets with call of action, have got more clicks, retweets, and favorites than the ones without it. 

Conclusion:

  Timing is more important which you can't keep up always with your followers and that's where the tools come in to fill your needs. With the right timing and the easy to follow tweets gets more engagement .

Now tell me how do you tweet often for better marketing.

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Image Credit: Flickr

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4 Simple Tips To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Twitter allows you to follow people and let others follow you too. Twitter is one of the top social networking website for promoting business. One cannot simple get followers as soon as he signs up for it. There are thousands of third party applications that will let you get more followers automatically. But the actual scenario changes once you get spammed using these applications.

In this post, I am going to tell you how to get more followers without using any third party applications but with your total effort in less hours per day.

I am gonna make you stop wonder about what I'm going to say with some minute details in twitter following strategy.

Read down continously to know more details about the secret to make more followers on your twitter profile.

Lets assume you just created your twitter profile now and wanting to get more followers.

All you know about twitter is that you tweet and nobody cares what you tweet exactly. That's not just true completely. You don't have to listen completely to what people talk about in twitter unless you're interested.

Okay..!! Its time I stop going further AWOL from the topic and start telling you the steps that you should follow to get more followers.

Now lets make a list of interests in things in real life that you'd wanna tweet. And then start tweeting some then and there. That doesn't costs you more than 20 minutes a day.

Tweeting Rules:

I am gonna keep it short and simple for you.

1. Tweet 5-10 tweets a day to show you're around.
2. Tweet General quotes as you like.
3. Tweet your topics that interests you.
4. Tweet not more that 2-3 links a day from your own blog. If you just started using twitter, you might not want to create a look of spammy profile with a lot of links. 
5. Tweet anything that you'd want to tweet that make your profile seem lively on the road.

That's it. You're done with the tweeting rules. Now let me tell you the main part of gathering like minded crowd.

Follow Like Minded Ones:

Just to match with the heading of the step, I have to tell you follow to get more followers.

You don't have to worry about the followers if you're some kind of celebrity in your niche.  If you're not, then you'd have to work on it manually.

You can find the follow suggestions at the left side of your twitter. Follow people who are interested in following back. That would open your connections widely. You may notice the followers of your followers will start following you.. Follow the ones that you'd wanna make a connection with.

The next thing you see is people following you everyday. Follow 50-100 people a day for a steady process in your follower's growth.

That's been said, would take not more than 30 minutes to follow and follow back tweepies. Never stop following people because they're the ones you're gonna share your posts and tweets with.

Never Opt for Third Party Apps:

Yes. Never go for third party apps. When I say third party apps, I clearly wanted to mean the apps that say will get you more followers. If you're concentrating mostly to run your profile as business, then you should know that you've to build your followers that interests you and your tweets. I have personally used such third party apps at the start and spammed myself. Make sure you follow people on your own to avoid getting suspended.

There are differences that when you use a tool to manage your tweets and a tool that says will increase your followers list. Managing your twitter account would also need your nerdy work inside to set the things such as auto-follow etc., that would be a time slayer. But when you follow regardlessly with any tool will only get you followers that may lead to your suspension or spamming inside your twitter.

Use Inbuilt Twitter Functionalities:

I am talking about the "Who To Follow Suggestions" at the left side of your twitter. It is an effective one for you to raise your followers list. When you follow people on your niche, twitter tailors the follow suggestions based on your latest following's bio as such if you follow more writers profiles recently, the suggestion will show people who are writers. 

You can also use the search at the top to search for your niche tweeters. Searching for keywords like #bloggers will show you people who have tweeted with #bloggers recently and you can decide to follow (whether to make a connection with them or not).

By selecting the "People" at the left side of the search will give you suggestions  based on your keyword.

You can make use of these functionalities to follow and get followed. I am sure this will not take more than an hour to follow 50 people a day. 

Getting mentioned from your followers with hashtags like #FF, #TGIF, etc., once in a while will also help you gain some followers. 

Conclusion: 

All those above are some simple and small things that you should make use to increase your followers list. What makes more interesting and fun is that how you connect with them once in a while to maintain the relation. Tweet them every once and make your followers hear what you say (tweet).

Now that you've finished reading , share the love with your friends.

Image Credit: Flickr- Shawn Campbell

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