1. Stand Out From The Crowd
Your personnel brand is how you can stand out from the crowd and rise above the noise of your competition. Make sure you take the time to create a remarkable personal brand! Remember competition is fierce, you have to make an unforgettable impact.  Define your target audience, give them high quality content jam packed with solutions to their most annoying  problems.

2. Follow People With Similar Interests
Lots of people get hung up on the number of followers they have. BUT this means nothing if the people who follow you are not interested in your business or product. It’s best to build and nurture a following of people who have similar interests because they are more likely to be genuinely interested in your business or product.

3. It’s A Conversation, Not A Continuous Sales Pitch
Twitter is a  Social  Media  site, it’s for conversations. Get involved with others by responding  to other peoples Tweets or start a conversation with others. Mind your manners and resist the urge to jump into twitter and broadcast one continous  sales pitch.

4. Tweet , Tweet, Tweet
Its important to tweet often.  Make sure your tweets are of high quality, interesting, and informative. The idea is to engage other people in conversation not send them to sleep. Mix it up a bit… You can include quotes, links to videos, pictures, jokes , or interesting articles .

5. Dominate Your Niche
It doesn’t matter what your niche is its imperative that you own it .  Position yourself as the expert in your niche by solving problems for others. Comment on blogs within your niche  and  don’t  forget to include your Twitter URL.  This can assist  in connecting you with the kinds of followers you want to attract.

6. Get Retweeted
It’s simple you must be Retweeted to GO VIRAL. But don’t panic!  Getting  Retweeted, is easier than it sounds. Simply add conversational value,  tweet about interesting things, share news or other content that people will want to pass along.  If your stuck for words, we invite you to  check out  one of our previous blog posts ” Twitters Top 9 Most Retweetable Words and Phrases”

7. Ask For A Retweet!
Don’t be shy you’re running a business. Ask for a Retweet, that’s right all you gotta do is ask. Simply add  ”Please Retweet” at the end of your message. Some people prefer to use a shortened version Plz RT since it uses less characters.

We hope you find these rules useful. If you liked this post feel free to share it with your friends or leave a comment.

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Twitter Marketing Exposed is specifically designed for twitter newbies and intermediate twitter users.  It’s pages are jam packed with vital information that you can apply to your twitter account. Stay tuned while we give you a  sneak peak at whats  included;  

• Direct Messages, Retweets, Hastags, Twitter search, URL shorteners explained and more
• Twitter Tips For Beginners
• How To Start tweeting And What To Tweet About
• Most Popular Retweetable Words and Phrases
• Twitter Following and Follower Barriers
• How To Choose Who To Follow
• Gaining Followers
• Reasons Why People Unfollow You
• Twitter Lists
• Advanced Tweeting Tips

BUT WAIT!!! There is more…Twitter Marketing Exposed is FREE!  Interested? You can grab your copy of  “Twitter Marketing Exposed“  by simply clicking here.

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1. Know Your Audience
A lot of people are tempted to complete the Bio without thinking about why they joined twitter in the first place. Before you write your Twitter bio we suggest that you think about the Twitterites you want to connect with. As a guide ask yourself these questions.

Do you want people to find you by your career, company, industry, location?
Why are you using Twitter?
Who are the people you want to connect with?  

2. Include Keywords – Not Junk
We suggest that you don’t simply enter a bunch of keywords. A lot of people do this because they think the more keywords the more ways people have of finding them when using search functions.  This can be a costly mistake… If your bio looks like a jumbled collection of keywords then it will be totally uninteresting to people and they won’t want to follow you. Your bio might look something like this.

I am a keen gardener and hiker who also has a passion for the outdoors, internet marketing and affiliate marketing who loves social media

3.  Smile!  - Upload A Photo
If you want new followers putting a photo of yourself here is really important. People like to see who they are following and they will follow someone with a picture rather than someone who has the default avatar provided by twitter.

4.  So What  DO  you do?
Make sure your bio includes what you do. People use Twitter for lots of different reasons, however the networking and business twitterites  follow people based on what they do and their topics of interest. This aspect of your bio is even more important since the launch of Twitter lists, since most people when building lists use the information in peoples bios to build a specific Twitter List.  

 5. Location, Location, Location…
The location info assists people with searching and finding others in their same area. You can even make a twitter list based upon location. There have been some people who have met on twitter only to find out that they lived just around the corner.  FYI… If you are chasing rankings on Twitter your location is important as users are ranked by their locations.

6. Link Love
Include your website url, blog url or a specific landing site. Some people make the mistake of including a shortened url in this field. You know what we mean, tinyurl, bit.ly, ow.ly, etc. DON’T do this!  Twitter doesn’t shorten the links in this field, so don’t use a shortened URL link. Worst case scenario people will think its spam and no one wants to follow a spammer.

7. Its Not Carved In Stone
Bios were meant to be dynamic , changed  and tweaked as needed. There is no such thing as a perfect bio. So don’t hesitate to tweak it and then tweak it some more if you have to.

Its important to remember that the Twitter bio may be small, but it’s powerful. An awesome bio has the power to attract Twitter followers like a magnet. We hope this post was useful. If you like it please share it with your friends or leave us a comment.

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In today’s modern society if you can’t catch a persons interest instantly with a great witty headline you run the risk of  loosing a sale or not gaining a friend or twitter follower.  Copywriters know how words can impact a message and grab a persons attention. To rise above the noise in this busy world you can’t afford to ignore the importance of using a little copy writing in your headlines. Its true that copy writing is a skill and takes time to learn… BUT that being said here are 3 Irresistable Catchy Headline Tips For Social Media properties.

1) Action, Excitement, Fun
Lights, camera,  action… You have to use active verbs in your headlines. Too many people use passive uninteresting verbs in their post titles and miss out on grabbing anyones attention.  People are attracted to exciting, fun titles. Active headlines inspire peoples emotive responses, while boring, passive ones invite the reader to visit someone else’s feed! Most dull and boring headlines can be transformed easily into action packed riveting headlines just by altering a couple of words. So the next time you are writing a headline make it exciting.

2) Keep It Real
Your headline should be a genuine preview of the actual content in the blog post, twitter post or facebook post. You have got to keep it real. Resist the urge to trick the reader into thinking that the content of the post is something it isn’t by using misleading or false headlines. Write authentic headlines that do relate to your copy. The first paragraph of your content should contain interesting sentances with an edge that compliment your catchy headline.  Remember you want your readers to come back and the best way to guarantee their return is to make their first experience enjoyable.  

3) The Three S’s – Short,  Sharp and Simple
Have you heard the expression less is more? Well when it comes to writing catchy headlines you don’t want to dull or tarnish your action packed interesting headline by using  too many words. Remember the  three  S’s – keep it Short,  Sharp and Simple. Look at your headline, take note of the number of words and evaluate what words if any can be replaced with a new singular word. Always take the time to thoroughly review your headlines.

We hope you have found this post useful. If you liked this post share it with your friends or leave a comment

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 1. Twitter Lists are dynamic and much more than a static listings of users. Twitter Lists are categorized  twitter  streams of the latest tweets from the users on a list.

2. Twitter Lists give you the ability to organize the people you’re following on Twitter, or find new people.

3. Each Twitter list has a list page where you can get a snapshot of the Twitter list users  tweets which are included in a complete tweet stream for everyone on the list.

4.  Make following people easier. For instance when you find a twitterite who has an awesome list  you will  beable to add the whole list.

5. Twitter Lists  give you the opportunity to follow people using  a Twitter list without following them as an individual. So…you can view their tweets without actually following them.  In this way Twitter Lists that you belong to can include people you’re not following.

6. Searching for twitterites with similar interests will be so much easier using the twitter list features. 

Twitter Lists why would you use  them?
Not sure about why you would use a Twitter List? Don’t  worry here are a few ideas to get you started

•  Create a Group 
  Use Twitter Lists to organize your tweeps into groups based on anything you want. For example, podcasting, cats lovers, golfing enthusiasts. When you view a  list, you easily see all of  the tweets of the  list members.
• Recommend Your Favorite Tweeple 
  Twitter Lists were designed to allow people to recommend other users to follow. Simply create a public list of people you think other Twitter users should follow, then anyone else can visit that list and follow the people on it (or follow the list).
• Follow People You Aren’t Following
  By following a Twitter List, you’re actually following the entire list not each user on the list.  So… you can use Twitter  Lists to follow people without really following them. How does this work?  Well say for instance that there  are users whose tweets you’d like to follow, but you don’t want in your main Twitter stream, you can add them to a list and then check their latest tweets when you want to by viewing your list. 

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Lets start by listing a few of the things that twitter lists can’t do.

1. You can only add 20 lists to one Twitter account and a  list can only have 500 members.
2. Your sidebar can only display 20 lists. So if you have more than 20 lists you will be only able to see the last 20 lists.
3. You are not able to  control the order of the lists or really anything about the list.
4. The tab that shows you the lists you follow doesn’t allow you to scroll down. So you will only see the lists that can fit in this space.

While not a comprehensive list it gives you some idea of  what twitter lists can’t do. Like any new beta testing feature you gotta expect some bugs and querks.

Don’t worry we havent forgotten about what twitter lists can do, we will have a look at “What twitter lists can do?” in a future blog post.

Have we missed something?  If you would like to add something to this post leave a comment and stay tuned as we  continue to update you with more information about twitter lists.  

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Twitter has decribed Twitter lists  as “a way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts.”  Select twitter  users have been told that they are part of a small beta-tester group and asked them not to discuss the lists in their updates.

Twitter lists let Twitter users categorize the people they follow, streamlining their feeds. The news release acompanying the announcement of twitter lists included the folowing points

• Setting up a list is simple
• The homepage will have a list banner that will allow you to make a list simply by clicking on “Create a new List” Once created the list name will be converted to a permalink  like twitter.com and the list can be set to public or private viewing
• On the right hand column of your homepage a new “lists” area will be visible under your bio. Click on this and you will see your list overview page. This is where you can manage your lists and the users public lists that you are a part of. 
• Clicking on any of these lists will take you to the twitter stream of the twitterites on  the list. 

So what does this all mean? Well for those who follow hundreds of other users, the list feature will be a great time saver as it allows users to  separate, dog lovers from podcasting experts. Indirectly it will probably create a sort of popularity contest, showing users how many lists others have been added to. 

We hope this overview has been useful if you like this post share it with your friends or leave a comment.

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Social Traffic Espionage has been walking the halls of twitter for the past year  and has put together a list of what we believe are the most retweetable words and phrases. Its amazing what a little espionage can reveal.

The nine most retweetable words and phrases are ;

1. you
2. twitter
3. please
4. retweet
5. post
6. media
7. social
8. free
9. blog

Looking at the list the words and phrases  seem pretty obvious. BUT if you watch the twitterfeed you would be amazed how may times these words and phrases are not used. Instead lots of tweeple seem to prefer to use words like going,  bored, and back.  Not very stimulating are they? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the tweets containing  these words or phrases are unlikely to be retweeted…Which is OK if you don’t want  the information in your post to go viral. However  most people use twitter because of  its viral nature.

For those of you that have taken the time to read this post, here is a bonus twitter tip… To make sure your twitter posts are being seen by the most tweeple possible, the  best time of day to leave a post on twitter is around 4pm EST. If you do this on a Friday you will get maximum exposure.

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1. Spam, Spam And More Spam

Ok so you have a blog and guess what,   you just added a post. Most people appreciate you informing them once, informing them twice is sure to get their attention but telling them more than  5 times  a day is just plain annoying and desperate. Keep an eye on your tweets and develop relationships with people instead of  annoying them.

2. Keep It Clean

Don’t swear… Swearing in tweets will get you unfollowed faster than you can hit the update button.

3 .  Tweet About How Many Followers You Have

It doesn’t matter how may Twitter  followers you have, its tacky to tweet about it. OK  we know its exciting to reach milestones but tweeting this information is  a big mistake. It sounds like you are bragging and indirectly sends out a challenge to people to unfollow you.

4.  Links, Links And Nothing But Links

We love clicking on links in Twitter, you can learn about really cool stuff , but we also like to know the topic of  link. It’s important to put some content with your link. You have got 140 characters, which is enough space to add a phrase or couple of words that indicate what the link is about.    

5.  It’s Called  Microblogging  For A Reason -  people!

Twitter is not an article writing social site.  A post on Twitter is  140 characters. It’s a limit, and should be respected. OK their might be an exceptional circumstance when  you need to send a tweet that is made up of two 140 character tweets, but this is the exception not the rule. Clogging up the Twittersphere with tweets that are 2 – 3 times more than the 140 characters  is self indulgent and will result in people choosing to unfollow you.

6.  Extreme Tweeting – It’s Not  A  Sport

Have you ever checked your twitter stream, only to find that one person has filled up an entire screen? Twitter is not a one person show. It’s about everybody contributing and developing relationships. Stop being a Twitter hog, don’t tweet 50 times a day and spread your tweets throughout the day.

7. Constantly Retweeting

You see an awesome quote and want to spread the word, so you retweet  it to your followers. Nothing wrong with that… Retweeting has it’s  place in the Twittersphere. Retweeting becomes a problem however when it’s the bulk of your tweets. Fellow twitterites don’t want to follow a person who is always regurgitating or  echoing other peoples thoughts and ideas. Make sure you mix in the retweets with you own ideas and thoughts otherwise you will have your followers hitting the unfollow button.

If you enjoyed this post, spread it around amongst your friends. If there is anything you would like to add leave us a comment, we would love to hear from you.

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Have you heard of twitter? No its not a noisy bird. Twitter is a Social Media Platform that is growing so fast that it has growing pains. If you are a newbie then you are going to need to learn the twitter basics. Here are 12 terrific twitter tips that will get you started.

1. A “tweet” is the name given to the 140 character message you create in response to the question twitter asks “What are you doing?”

2 Reply @ Symbol
Twitter has a every unique replying feature. Whenever a person’s name is preceded by a @ symbol, that means that the sentence (tweet) that follows is directed at them. So if you are using Twitter and you want to reply to someone, simply type @ and then their name, then type your message. If you don’t want to type the @ all the time you can simply click on the reply button which is to the right hand side of every tweet.

3. Direct messages – DM
You are sure to see the letters DM mentioned in tweets. This stands for Direct Message. Sending a DM is similar to sending an email to a person. A DM goes to your direct message inbox and only you can see your DMs. This is different to replies and regular tweets, they can be seen by your followers, but DMs are completely private. You use DM’s when you want to write something privately to someone, but more importantly, if you are writing something that your followers will not find interesting. We recommend using DMs if you are replying more than twice to someone.

4. Retweet (RT)
Twitter users retweet when they believe that a tweet that interests them will also interest their followers. The Retweet basically quotes a person’s tweet and gives them the credit for the tweet. Your Retweet should look like this RT @juliegaroni (tweet is here). There is a space betweeen the RT and @ symbol. People can see the Retweet and then choose to follow that person. Its like forwarding an email. By retweeting the tweet you increase that person’s exposure to the twitter community. For instance the person who made the original tweet may have only had 20 followers and therefore only 20 people would have seen the tweet. But if the person that is retweeting has 4000 followers then the original person has just reached 4000 additional people. Importantly retweeting promotes one of the ideals of the Twitter community…share someone else’s ideas, and they will share yours.

5. URL Shorteners
The 140 character limit of twitter can take a while to get used to… but it is the 140 characters that give twitter its potent power. You need to think carefully about what you are going to say and to say it in the shortest number of character’s. The twitter community is dynamic…people like to share articles and posts, and not just hear about your thoughts. Including links to news articles, websites, blogs and other external sources puts pressure on this 140 character limit. How do you include a messsage and a long url in 140 characters? The answer is to use url shorteners. There are endless sites that shorten urls, just do a google search and you will one that caters to your needs. We at Social Traffic Espionage recommend and use TinyURL.com.

6. Tweet Regularly
Make sure you tweet (post) regularly. This shows that you have an active presence, and you want to belong/participate in the twitter community.   People are more likely to connect with you if they believe that you are an active twitter user. 

7. Participate In The Twitter Community and Respond To People
Make sure to respond to people that ‘@’ or direct message you. This is just a matter of showing respect, if people are taking the time to message you, then you should respond.

8. Wefollow
Finding people to follow is easy when you use WeFollow. In our opinion, it is the best and most effective way of finding people to follow. How does it work? Basically Wefollow is a twitter directory that uses the tags people have given themselves. It is organized in a very user-friendly way to enable any twitter user to build a quality twitter network in a very short period of time.

9. Twitpic
A picture is worth a thousand words…everybody loves pictures. Twitpic is a twitter tool that allows you to share pictures with your followers. We recommend that you uncheck the box that tweets the picture automatically,since this can be annoying and you might not want it tweeted automatically. Twitpic is simple to use…upload a picture to Twitpic, copy the URL, write something about the picture in twitter, then paste the URL for your followers to see and hit the update button.

10. Hashtag (#)
Hashtags were designed to enhance the Twitter experience. They enable easy categorization of tweets for effective future searching. For instance if you are tweeting about Oprah, you simply insert a # before the word Oprah. Anyone who then searches hashtags.org or Twitter search, for #Oprah, will be shown your tweet as well as all tweets on the subject. Hashtags actually add a lot of fun to Twitter. One of the most popular hashtags you will come across in twitter is #Followfriday. This is one hashtag that you should use if you want to build strong relationships in the twitterverse. To particiapate in Followfriday you enter #Followfriday and then the @ symbol with the username of the person you want to recommend. So your tweet should look something like this…#Followfriday @juliegaroni @pauldaw.

11.Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is the most popular, and useful 3rd party Twitter application out there. If you can only install one Twitter application, Tweetdeck should be it. Tweetdeck automatically integrates a number of twitter features. Using Tweetdeck you can reply, DM, retweet, shorten a URL, and share a Twitpic without ever leaving Tweetdeck. The newest version also includes a cool feature that when replying to a tweet with a hashtag, the hashtag is automatically generated in your reply.

12. What is twitter search?
twitter search is a twitter tool that lets you see  who is talking about you and what they are saying.  You can only see your replies in twitter if someone starts off a tweet with ‘@(your twitter name)’ but sometimes people use ‘@’ in the middle of their tweet. For instance they might say  “thanks to @juliegaroni” instead of  @juliegaroni thanks”. The great thing about  twitter search, is that when you enter “@(your twitter name)”  into twitter search it helps you find tweets that contain your “@name”  anywhere in a tweet,  just not at the beginning.

We hope these tips have been useful. We encourage you to leave a comment about this post or ask us any twitter questions you might have.

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