The main reasons you want to use an auto direct message on Twitter is because it’s automatic (you don’t have to do anything other than set it up) and it’s the easiest way to send your first message to your new followers.

An automatic direct message is a great way to say thank you for following and to tell your new follower a few things about yourself.

Or, you can use it to sell whatever you’re offering. But that’s not a good idea, even though it seems that most people on Twitter are using auto direct messages in order to sell.

I’ve written that Twitter direct messages is a waste of time, but I’m not so sure anymore.

I have tried many different direct messages on Twitter, but I’ve found only one that really works.

This one:

Thanks for following! I can help with blogging, social media & more. I will reply! I’m also on http://facebook.com/jens.petter.berget

The reason I know that it works, is because people are contacting me. They’re saying hi, asking me questions, and sending me personal information – not the general stuff.

Let me know what you are doing. Are you using auto direct messages? If you are, what does it say?

I wasn’t expecting this, but I have just received information that TweetAdder 3.0 was released last night.

Read my review of TweetAdder

Version 3.0 of TweetAdder:

- Does not run on Twitter API
- Tweets posted via “Web”, vs posted via “API”
- Run Multiple Profiles at the same time
- Follow, Unfollow, Tweet & Message throughout the day in a natural looking way

Some of the new features are

- Ability to remove profiles with default picture
- Ability to remove profiles with urls in tweets or biography
- Twitter List Search imports another users twitter list
- Huge flexibility with result filters
- Profile search results maintain how you found them with source keywords
- Unique Tweet Generator – creates unique tweets automatically
- RSS Tweets – tweets any RSS feed whether from your blog updates, or any other source
- @Reply Tweets – post a random tweet @someone who posts a tweet directed @you
- Re-Tweets- Automatically retweet another user

Read my review of TweetAdder

I know, I have written about how to get more retweets before, but this is different.

I believe that you need a strategy in order to get other people to tweet your tweets on their accounts.

One of the reasons why this retweet strategy is so interesting, is that you don’t need many followers at all. If just a few of your followers will retweet your blog post, the growth potential can be huge.

I’m not going to tell you the importance of retweets, because you already know this.

The reason I’m writing is that I have discovered seven reasons why my tweets get retweeted.

1. The Best Time To Tweet

You should know when it’s the best time to tweet for maximum twitter traffic and exposure.

For instance, Friday afternoon is one of the busiest times on Twitter. Therefore, you might want to consider tweeting then. However, nine to three is generally the best time to publish your tweets during the weekdays.

Since I’m living in Norway and the busiest time on Twitter is not when I’m ready to publish my tweets, I’m scheduling my tweets using HootSuite.

2. Add Please RT

One of the best methods is to ask your followers to retweet. When I really want a retweet I always write “please rt” at the end of the message. I was surprised how many people who retweeted after I asked them to (it really helps to add please).

3. The KISS Principle

KISS is an acronym for the design principle “Keep it simple, Stupid!”. But it also stands for “keep it short and simple” or “keep it simple and straightforward”.

Always use KISS, because you want to make it really easy for people to retweet your message. And you don’t want your tweets to be longer than 120 characters, because then people can retweet without editing your tweets.

4. Your Followers

You should concentrate on the activity level of your followers, and not how many followers you have. The size means nothing.

I would rather have a list of one hundred very active followers, than one of 13,000 inactive (as I’m writing this, I have 12,570 followers). The more active they are, the better our chances are of getting retweeted.

5. You Need To Retweet

If you’re not active on twitter, and if you’re not retweeting other people’s tweets, they won’t be helping you.

Do to others what you want them to do for you.

6. Links

The most popular tweets contains links. And what you’re really looking for is traffic, therefore you should add links in your tweets.

7. Value

Always think about the quality of your tweets, and make sure that your tweet matters. Think about how much value it adds. Your tweets should be interesting. Valuable information is what matters.

What do you think, do you have any other tips on how to get retweeted?

Image: debh2u

I have been using several Twitter clients for the past two years, none that I really was comfortable with until a few months ago when I discovered what I still believe to be the best Twitter client.

As I’m writing this I’m still using HootSuite, but I’m not sure if I will be using it for much longer.

Why switch?

Last week HootSuite introduced new premium packages, which means that we’ll have to pay for using all the features. On the other hand, they’ll still have a free account (called Freemium).

At the moment it seems that I can still use the free version of HootSuite, and it won’t effect my twitter experience much (since I currently don’t use multiple accounts and I don’t add RSS feeds etc.). The problem with the free account is that I can only use it for 5 social networks, I’ll see advertisements (via the HootSuite community, not sure how this works), and I can’t add any team members (although I don’t see myself adding any members to my one man team anytime soon.

What’s bothering me is that I’m not ready to pay a monthly fee for a Twitter client, at least not yet.

The alternatives to HootSuite

I know a few alternatives to HootSuite. That’s Twitter clients with most (or all) of the features that HootSuite offers. I read a review of Buzzom at ShoutMeLoud, and it seems to be a very interesting alternative (but not free?).

Another alternative might be SocialOomph. I read a review at reconnect with simmons, and it seems to be another interesting Twitter client.

There are at least three other alternatives to HootSuite that I might try, that’s Seesmic, CoTweet, and Brizzly.

What happens now?

I’m very satisfied with HootSuite, and I won’t switch just yet. I’ll test a few alternatives, just in case.

Who knows, I might end up with TweetDeck, the twitter client I was using prior to HootSuite.

Are you still stuck with only a few hundred followers, and are you looking for some creative ways to get people to start reading your tweets? Well, it’s not as hard as you might think.

I remember my first real Twitter experience, that was when I first visited my Twitter profile one year after I last used Twitter. What happened was this; I created an account at Twitter on October 28, 2007. But after playing with it for 5 minutes or so, I stopped, I couldn’t see the point. One year later I visited my profile and discovered that I had more than 1,000 followers.

I didn’t quite believe it. Why did people follow me? I hadn’t used Twitter, I jumped on the bandwagon a little early, that was all.

I discovered early that adding more followers was important when it comes to marketing. The more followers, the more people are reading my tweets, and clicking my links. It’s a lot easier to drive traffic to websites with more followers.

The challenge we’re all facing is how to get more followers. And especially, how do we get more targetted followers, that’s how do we get like-minded people to follow us?

Let me give you 10 ways to get more followers on Twitter.

#1 Follow more people

When you follow people, most of them follow you back. You can follow them one-by-one, or you can use software or scripts to follow a lot of people with a single click.

#2 Be different

If you’re not any different, why should people be following you? Think about it, you can tell the same story or send the same tweets, but do it in a different way.

#3 Participate in Conversations

When you talk to people, ask questions, provide answers, they won’t forget you as easy as if you’re just having a monologue on Twitter. Find conversations by searching Twitter, participate and you’ll get followers.

#4 Drive Traffic To Your Profile

Your Twitter profile is like any website. High quality content and lots of traffic is how you’ll get successful. The more traffic it gets, the more people will follow you. Link to it, send traffic to it, like you do with your website.

#5 You Need A Different Avatar

You can’t use the default avatar, you need a picture of yourself. People follow people. If you’re going to use an avatar of someone or something other than you, make it a really cool one. If people laugh at your avator, they’ll follow you.

#6 Share Share Share

Retweet information that you find valuable, and share information you enjoy. The more you share, the more people will follow you. But only share information you find valuable, don’t share crap. Crap won’t get you anywhere.

#7 Define the Outcome

You need a strategy. How many times a day are you going to tweet, what are you going to tweet about, how many followers are you looking for? If you have defined what your goal with Twitter is, it’s a lot easier to make it. Start your day with four Twitter tasks, add them to your schedule and remove them when they’re done.

#8 Wear Your Twitter Profile

There are many cool Twitter T-shirts. They can be customized, this way you’ll promote your profile just by being yourself. Or, you can add stickers to your car or to your business wall.

#9 Use Direct Messages

I have thought that using direct messages is just a waste of time, but not in all cases. If you’re very personal, or you’re always having one-on-one conversations, you should consider using direct messages more. This way it will be easier for people to follow your timeline and see how much value your sharing.

#10 Ask People To Follow You

The most effective way to get more followers is probably to ask. When you ask, people will retweet, and they’ll follow you. It’s that simple. You can add Twitter banners to your websites, or you can add a link in your blog posts. Please follow me on Twitter.

Do you have any other tips on how to get more followers on Twitter?

Image: Brood Wich

Yesterday was an awesome day. The weather was perfect, and I wrote a blog post about The Best Internet Marketing Newsletters while I was relaxing in the hammock.

The best part of this story is that I didn’t think about it at all, but as soon as I published a tweet about my latest blog post, I started to get more traffic than usual. I started to get more subscribers to my newsletter than usual, and all of them where signing up from that blog post.

A few minutes later I realized what was going on.

Wow, copyblogger tweeted my blog post, and that’s why I received a lot more traffic than usual. And that’s why I received 28 new subscribers to my newsletter, and not the regular 5 or 6.

This happens when people with more than 54,000 followers are publishing something about you and a link to your website.

It doesn’t happen often, but what a great feeling and what a great experience it is when it does happen.

What I did, was not intentionally at all, I didn’t think this would happen. The blog post was about the two best Internet marketing newsletters, and one of the two best Internet marketing newsletters I’m subscribed to is the newsletter from Copyblogger, it’s called Internet Marketing for Smart People.

When you mention people or websites in a blog post or on social media sites, and especially if you link to them, sometimes, not always, it grabs their attention and they read the story. Sometimes they send a comment or a link back as a thank you.

That’s what happened, and I’m very pleased.

Article by Ben Johnson

How is Twitter making money? Well, who cares! Instead of thinking about them, you need to think how you can make money online using Twitter. What can you achieve on Twitter by typing up to 140 characters? What kind of message can you convey to increase sales? How can you engage your market and make them come back frequently? These are just some of the questions that small business owners have and they anxiously look for the answers to make use of this famous platform effectively.

Now, let’s discuss the top 3 ways to engage your visitors and make them visit you frequently on Twitter:

Write Attractive Messages to Enhance Your Communication:

A lot of people type really boring messages. They update people with just about anything they do. When they wake up, they update, “I am awake.” When they are ready to hit the bed, they say, “I am going to sleep now.” Twitter allows you to do much more than that. As a business owner, there is no need to write such boring messages just to tell people that you are a real human being and you are trying to interact with your market.

You need to come up with nice and catchy messages. This is where creativity is required and, probably, some copywriting skills too. If you are good at writing headlines, then you can write good content for Twitter. Yes, it will require some brainstorming. Plus, the time that you will put in will be used to enhance your communication. It won’t be a waste of time. So, don’t write haphazardly. If you have links to good articles, you may share them as well with a nice, short, introduction in your own words.

Start a Competition and Offer Valuable Prizes:

This is an excellent, excellent way of connecting and interacting with people on Twitter. This is how you can engage them and bring them back all the time. You should start a competition, ask questions and give prizes to winners. Some businesses are already doing this and they are really enjoying the benefits of this great activity.

Now, the prizes that you offer don’t necessarily have to be physical products. You can offer services in return too. For example, if you own a writing service, you can offer free content to winners. If you own a logo design company, you can offer a free logo, and so on.

Offer Special Discount to Your Twitter Followers:

People like to tweet about valuable things, especially discount offers. So, when you offer a special discount on Twitter, people will re-tweet to share this valuable news with their friends and contacts. Hence, it will give your business a significant exposure and bring interested people to your website.

So…What Do We Learn From All This? We have got to engage our contacts and we have got to stay in touch with them consistently. With effective communication on Twitter, you will be able to give a powerful push to your business. No question about it!

Ben Johnson is the Alliance Manager at Logoinn, a custom logo design company. He writes about the effect of design on marketing and brand identity and helps small businesses find design solutions for effective marketing.

I’m not sharing a lot of pictures via Twitter, but I have done it, and I do it every now and then. I do it because pictures are awesome when it comes to telling a story.

Some stories are easier to tell using pictures.

It’s important to understand that Twitter is not only 140 characters of text. It’s easy to share audio, video, and there are several really interesting services available for free when it comes to sharing pictures.

I have only been using Twitpic and Ow.ly. That’s because they’re integrated in the Twitter clients I’m currently using. Twitpic is integrated in the one I’m using for my iPhone (Tweetie) and Ow.ly is integrated in the one I’m using on my Mac (Hootsuite).

I’ve been searching and I’ve found many interesting free tools that will help us share pictures via Twitter.

Here are a few:

Ow.ly
Twitpic
Twitgoo
TweetPhoto
pikchur
yfrog
picktor
TweeTube
TweetCube
TwitWall
Twadl
MobyPicture
Twixxer
Twitxr
SnapTweet
BeenUp2
Skitch
Posterous

Let me ask you this.

What’s your favorite way of sharing your pictures via Twitter?

… and, should I add other services to the list?

Thanks for reading.

One of the great things about Twitter is that it’s very easy to share information.

When you’re using a Twitter client, you’ll find it even easier to use Twitter, but the sharing is fairly the same. I’m talking about retweeting.

If you find the information on Twitter, you can share it with just a single click. That’s the power of retweets. But when you find some interesting information on a blog, you’ll have to write your own tweet in order to share the information.

This doesn’t take a lot of time, but it’s usually not a single click.

Make it as easy as possible

When you want people to share information, you’ll need to make it as easy as possible. A single click would be awesome, but if that’s not possible, try to think of a way to make it as easy as possible to share.

If it’s not easy, people won’t share it.

Ask people to share it

If you don’t ask people to share the information, people are not as likely to share it.

I’ve read a lot of awesome and really powerful articles, but as soon as I finish reading I jump to the next article. This happens a lot. I forget to share, even though I really wanted to.

I need a message, something like, “please share this article”. If you add this, I’ll share it if I enjoy it.

The power of retweet buttons

When it comes to sharing on Twitter, one of the most powerful things I’ve experienced is the retweet buttons.

By having a retweet button, you’re really asking the reader to retweet your blog post / article even though you haven’t asked the question.

If I read a blog post, and I see a retweet button, I’ll click. I often click on it just because it’s there, even though I didn’t really think that the blog post was that good. It just feels good clicking and thinking that I shared what I just read with all my friends.

About that.

I’m a little curious about where to add the retweet button. Is it better to have it visible at the top of the blog post, or at the bottom? Should it be fairly big, or the small version?

Here’s a few screen shots of some of my favorite blogs that are using the retweet button.

Seth Godin

Online Marketing Vault

TwiTip

I’m not sure if it matters, but I’m sure that what’s really important is to add the button.

Finally.

Here are some retweet buttons for you:

Easy Retweet Button
Get a ReTweet Button for your blog (TwiTip)
9 Useful Twitter Retweet Button Scripts
Topsy Retweet Button for Websites
Best WordPress plugins for adding Twitter Retweet buttons on your blog

Twitter is awesome, but I need an awesome Twitter client as well. I just don’t use the Twitter website.

I have tried many clients, some of them have been a good experience, some of them quite the opposite.

I don’t need many options. Well, it might seem like a lot. What I need is an overview of my timeline, replies, direct messages, my lists, and my searches. And I want an easy way to communicate using Twitter. And of course, the interface is important.

I’m using Mac, so it’s got to be available for Mac, either as a desktop client or web via Safari or Firefox.

The clients worth mentioning, the good ones, are:

- TweetDeck (Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone)
- Tweetie (Mac)
- Twitterrific (Mac, iPhone)
- Echofon (Firefox, Mac, iPhone)
- twhirl (Windows, Mac)
- Hootsuite (web, iPhone)

Now, when it comes to the client that I’m currently using and the one that has impressed me the most, it’s HootSuite.

HootSuite is free, and it’s the most professional Twitter client I have used. It’s packed with features and the interface is awesome.

A few of the features really got me hooked:

- Use it for Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm as well as Twitter
- Scheduled tweets
- Twitter lists
- Multiple twitter accounts and team workflow
- Track link statistics

I have only used HootSuite for Twitter, but it’s very interesting that I can use it for other social networks. I think I’ll be testing it for Facebook sometime soon.

I schedule tweets almost daily, that’s because I don’t want to send many tweets at the same time. I think that just clutters my timeline.

I have created a few Twitter lists, and I’m following a few as well. It’s important to me that they’re available. I’m currently using only one Twitter account, but in the future, I might add a few more. Or I might add the one(s) we use at work.

I have been using su.pr to track the links I’ve pubished in my tweets, but using HootSuite makes it even more easier to get fairly detailed statistics on the clicks. That’s impressive.

I think I’ll stay with HootSuite for a long time.

Which Twitter client are you currently using?