12 Ways to Build Strong Twitter Reputation

Repost by duff hornstein

12 Ways To Build Strong Twitter Reputation

Posted on 03 September 2009 by Karan Goel

Whether you are a freelancer, employee, professional, or a business, it is becoming increasingly important to manage your Twitter reputation. In this article, let us see what is meant by reputation in the world of Twitter, and how you can use free Twitter tools manage and enhance your reputation.

What Is Your Twitter Reputation?

Can your reputation be measured? Yes, there are many services that claim to do that using different methods. You can check your reputation on free Twitter tools like Twitterank, Twitterholic, Twinfluence, Twitalyzer, and Klout. There is no single model that defines Twitter reputation, and this guide tries to combine all the different approaches used by such tools and suggested by experts.

Your Twitter reputation is important because:

• It may well be the first impression you make on the social web.
• Everything on Twitter is public (assuming you don’t protect your updates, which is 90% of Twitterers). This means your colleagues, current employer or potential recruiter can always see your Twitter profile and your tweets.
• Reputation will play an increasingly important role in search rankings. Already, third-party Twitter search engines like Topsy and Tweefind incorporate ranking in their search results, and Twitter itself is also on the way to ranking search results.

Convinced? Let’s get started.

1. Your Profile

Use your real name, a (decent) profile picture, a meaningful bio, and a link to your website, blog, or social profile. If you have a custom background on your profile page, people are more likely to follow you back.

2. Follow Authentic People

Don’t engage in any “get hundreds of followers quickly” schemes. Follow people you’re already friends with on other social networks. Then grow your Twitterverse as you get comfortable.

I use the free Twitter tool Topify to get informative emails when someone follows me. It shows useful information like level of engagement, percentage of tweets containing links, and recent tweets to help decide whether to follow back.

3. Manage Your Followers and Friends

The days of “higher the number of followers, higher your reputation” are becoming a thing of the past, thanks to paid services that allow buying followers. Think of your reputation if there were half-naked women showing up as your followers!

Block suspicious accounts, spammers and bots from following you. I have recently started using Tweet Blocker to filter and clean my followers list and it works like a charm. Another service I find indispensable is Twerp Scan, which shows me a list of my contacts along with details of their number of follows, followers, ratio, etc. You can easily sort the list to weed out nasty spammers and indecent folks right within the app.

4. Get ReTweeted

The best way to increase your reach and influence on Twitter is to get retweeted. Statistical studies of retweets have found that links, quotes, trending topics, breaking news, questions, and creative/novel tweets are more likely to get retweeted. Shrink your tweet and reduce its length to around 100-110 characters so that it becomes easier for others to retweet without editing.

5. Mix Your Tweet Types

Do not restrict yourself to tweeting out informative links or indulging in pointless babble. Use a mix of tweets that are status updates, links, retweets, questions, and self-promotions for your blog posts.

6. Spread Your Tweets Over the Day

Services such as Tweet Stats let you see how your tweets are distributed through the day. Don’t send out a large number of tweets in short time spans and then disappear. Distribute your tweeting activity evenly through the day, using planned “Twitter-breaks” from your work. If you are going to be offline for a considerable amount of time, let your followers know.

7. Be Responsive and Engage in Conversation

Tools like Topify and Mr. Tweet now show your level of engagement. This influences whether people using such tools will follow you back.

Reply to others’ tweets using @Replies. Answer all @Replies and Direct Messages sent to you. Let people see that you don’t use Twitter simply to promote your links. Try to answer people’s questions and if you can’t, be a helping hand by retweeting them.

8. Don’t Misuse Hashtags

A UK furniture firm suffered a huge blow to their reputation on Twitter as they sent out marketing messages using #hashtags that were meant for completely unrelated topics. The Twitter community uses #hashtags for tracking specific topics they are interested in, so stick to conventions.

9. Avoid Many Twitter IDs from a Single IP Address

Some experts have proposed that multiple Twitter IDs created from the same IP address should have a lower Twitter rank in searches. This is a counter measure against spammers and bots who abuse Twitter accounts. If for whatever reason, you need to create a large number of legitimate Twitter accounts, don’t do it from the same computer.

10. Use DMs with Discretion

If I get automated DMs after I follow someone, I unfollow them. The same with people who play mafia-style Twitter games and send me invites to play via DMs.

Do not send Direct Messages to people you’ve recently started being friends with on Twitter. Most people consider DMs to be private messages that they share only with good friends. Use @Replies wherever possible, unless you want to discuss a sensitive issue that warrants a DM.

11 Use Recommendations

Recommendations are a great way to discover and be discovered. The most popular method on Twitter is the #FollowFriday hash tag. Like everything else in social media, the more you give, the more you get, so if you like this method, use it to give recommendations to others.

A better recommendation engine is Mr. Tweet, which is getting popular. It gives me decent recommendations since I joined, along with useful statistics.

12. Monitor Your Brand

If you own a brand name, create a search to monitor for all mentions of your brand. Most popular Twitter clients let you create saved searches, some like Seesmic Web even let you sync your saved searches with those on Twitter’s website.

Will these techniques help you enhance your Twitter reputation? Have any other suggestions? Do let us know in the comments!

Popularity: 100% [?]

Facebook Photo Tag Search

Reposted By dave hornstein

• Facebook Photo Tag Search: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

  September 16th, 2009 | by Stan Schroeder16 Comments

  

  …if you enjoy the little things in life, that is. Yesterday we wrote about Facebook prototypes, a new Facebook () feature which lets you try out beta versions of new features. Click on “Applications” at the bottom left of your screen, then “Browse More Applications”, and then on “Prototypes”.

  One of the new features that caught my eye is Facebook Photo Tag Search. It’s a minor feature, but I’ve been waiting for it forever; it can be very fun and useful, especially if you’ve got a lot of Facebook friends.

  It works in the following way; once it’s activated, you can go to the Photos dashboard, located at www.facebook.com/photos, and search photos by people tagged in them. Start typing a name in the search box, and Facebook will give you a list of matching friends.

  The cool thing about the feature is the ability to search for multiple tagged friends at the same time; you can see all the photos with two, three or more particular people in them. There, you have another reason to properly tag all those photos in your collection (and to nudge your friends to do the same).

  

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Tags: facebook, Photo Tag Search

User reviews: Facebook

Our Brilliant El Presidente

This is especially for those not bright enough to recognize the enormous
danger of a biased press.


From: D. Brown

If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a
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own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?


If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take
Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?


If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan's holdings of GM
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If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special
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If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and
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If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing
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If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi
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If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the
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If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with
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If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within
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up with an answer.