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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If you are an Internet marketer you will want to use FREE traffic for your business. This means that you will want to use Social Media. If there is one disadvantage to using Social Media it is that it can take lots and lots of time if you don’t know how to use it properly.

So how do you use Social Media efficiently? The first fact you need to come to grips with is that you can’t market on every Social Media site – there just isn’t enough time or hours in the day. 

If you want to market your product or business  using Social Media you need an efficient  time optimisation strategy.  Therefore it would make a whole lot of sense to include Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn  in your  time optimisation strategy.  Why? Because it’s only logical to make use of the 3 most popular Social Media sites;  Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. 

How much time should you spend using Social Media? The answer to this depends on your circumstances. Generally there is a relationship between how long marketers have been using Social Media and their weekly time commitment. Usually people just beginning with Social Media, spend about an  average of  two hours per week. However, those who have been using Social Media for a number of months spend about an  average  of 10 hours per week or a bit more than 1 hour a day.

What is the reason for the time difference between Social Media newbies and experts? It’s our opinion that the time spent is related to the people’s experiences. Those who are just starting are unsure of this Social Media buzz – does it really work? They are yet to taste success, but once they have made a sale or start to have success they realise the importance of Social Media and spend more time doing it.

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 Ross Sandler of RBC Capital Markets  gives us a reality check of the situation when he says that based  on its current rate of growth Facebook will be larger that Google by 2012.  Seems incredible doesn’t it –  a social networking site larger than Google.  Before you get all excited by this, remember that these projections are based upon Facebook maintaining its current growth rate.

Facebook is a social network of gigantic proportions. Its sheer size and interactive social community has made it an important Google traffic source.  In fact a  whopping 19% of Google’s sessions now originates from Facebook. To give you a  measure of Facebook’s growth,  last year 9% of all Google sessions came from Facebook.  I am sure that  the  business savvy people at Facebook are aware of  potential benefits this type of growth can create   and they  will not miss the opportunity to use these traffic  statistic as leverage to negotiate a deal with Google.

You don’t have to be a techno geek to know that Google and Facebook are two different entities. Clearly  social and search are two  different things.  I admit that at times they might overlap, but essentially they are two  separate things  that complement each other.  For instance you don’t use Google to tell you what your 1000 friends are up to, nor do you expect Facebook to find the exchange rate for converting  Swiss Francs to  US dollars.  

At present Facebooks growth is a positive event for Google. It is actually increasing Google’s search share when compared to  its rivals.  This  staggering  fact alone  should  have an important impact on any  future monetization  negotiations Facebook might have with Google .  But hang on a minute lets not forget that there  are other  interested parties  like  Microsoft, Yahoo that I  reckon  would also like to make  use of  Facebooks massive growth.

It’s interesting  that a social network like Facebook could overtake Google, but does it mean that Google should be afraid?  Imagine a  world where  Facebook becomes every single person’s  start page. Would  that make Google redundant? Would that be the end of Google?  Personally I can’t imagine the internet without Google.  What do you think?

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So what does this mean?  This means you can interact with Facebook using your iPhone and iPod Touch. But is also means that you can now interact with Facebook beyond just the Facebook app.

If  this idea sounds like something you want to know more about;  you can already see it in action with the Flixster app. The Flixster app is a free download from the app store.

So what can you do?  The “My Movies” tab lets you log into Facebook, once you have logged in you can then  check out which movies your friends want to see. Sounds like a great idea, but the really cool part is that not only can you check out the movies your friends want to see  but you can also see  how they rated the movies you want to see.

This mobile connection with Facebook means that if you are a iPhone  or iPod Touch user then the world is your oyster.  There is a whole  new world for opening up for  iPhone  and iPod users; believe me when I say  its not  just  limited to a “My Movies” tab. For instance, check out this cool example, there is a new game called Agency Wars that lets you take on the role of a spy and ambush friends in the real world using the GPS capability of your iPhone. 

One of the worst kept secrets on the internet is that  the mobile web is emerging as the new driving force of the Internet. It is estimated that of the billions of people connecting to the web each and every day, almost one billion will be connecting to social media  networks ( like Facebook) by 2012. 

Mobile devices are the new frontier and it  is the apps that are pushing the boundaries to where no person has gone before. They win hands down when compared to web browsers which are not designed to run applications. Yeah I know,  a lot of  JavaScript and AJAX fans are probably saying to themselves “hang on a minute” but you have to admit that mobile apps easily  interact with the web. Instead of being limited to the browsers functionality, mobile apps like the iPhone, and iPod touch can reach beyond the browsers functionality and make full use of current technology.

If you ask me, mobile apps are only going to become more popular, important  and intertwined with social networks as time goes by.  Facebook Connect  with its mobile apps is an exciting beginning for all iPhone and iPod Touch users.

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