Welcome one and all to the twitter how to blog.

Can you remember your first tweet? I sure can, it went some thing like this ‘learning how to twitter’

Since then I have become well and truely addicted to twitter and continually see simular tweets asking for help on many twitter how to subjects like ‘how to get started on twitter’, ‘how to get follwers on twitter’, how to search twitter’ or ‘how to use twitter for business’.

I have spent so many hours trying to fit suitable solutions into 140 characters, some times successfully other times not so.

But not so long ago I realised I could help these tweeps with a great twitter how to resource I had kept secret, so I started giving the link to this secret store of twitter how to answers and solutions.

You see as I tried different things on twitter like building relationships, increasing follwers, twitter apps and twitter clients, I kept a basic record of what I had used and how well it had worked for future reference using a locked and private Wordpress blog. (quite sad I know but I told you I am totally addicted!)

Now the only problem was as this blog was never meant to be seen by anyone other than me it was just not very useable or friendly.

This got me looking for some where I could direct my twitter followers and any other tweeps interested in learning more about twitter to find their answers. I did find a few places of interest (and I will be sure to point them out in the near future) but I started to believe that with the help of my fellow twitter addicts we could not only put together a useable twitter resource and review site, but start the snowball rolling on the most complete, fun and informative twitter how to community!

So here we are, the begining of the twitter how to journey. As I (@twittergator) write up the many twitter how to guides, reviews and twitter apps for the free use of the whole twitter world, it is YOU that can not only find your own twitter answers and learn how to get the most from twitter but also become part of the community that has at least one interest in common with all twitter users….. TWITTER

Make your feelings and views known, comment on any post that helps you or gets you thinking or maybe even makes your blood boil, just make sure you share all.

Form time to time I will start polls and put up questions or theories for you to have your say and see what other tweeps are thinking about a twitter discussion, or how you are using a twitter client different to the masses.

I am so excited about all the amazing features to be put into action on twitter-howto.com and those that get in early and regular will not only benefit the quickest but will see their own influence have the most impact on the site.

Help spread the word about twitter-howto.com using you guessed it twitter.

When your followers want to learn more twitter know how and find the answer to a twitter how to question you know where to send them. When we uncover a cool new twitter app here, don’t keep it to your self share it with your followers. After all that is what friends (and twitter) is all about.

To keep in touch follow @twtr_gator, subscribe to the rss and check in regularly.

Most important of all lets have some fun helping each other.

Technorati Tags: twitter how to

First, you can “Create a Group” of people that you want to follow on Twitter by putting them all together in one place.  Whatever the reason is you want a group together, they are family, friends or coworkers, you can create the group yourself.  I’m sure you are thinking of how to use Twitter lists to further your business right now.

Next, you can recommend the “tweeps” that you think that other people should be following.  This can be a great networking tool for you and other business owners because you can create your own network of blog owners around a topic.

Finally, when figuring out how to use Twitter lists you must know that this allows you to follow people you aren’t really following.  Instead of these people’s tweets showing up every time on your main page you can go to another page to view your lists and see the people you are following, but not really following.

How are you using Twitter lists? Let us know in the comments below and if you have any lists you would like to suggest to us share them with us in the comments to.

Technorati Tags: how to use twitter, how to use twitter lists, twitter lists

1.    If you have different writers assigned to your blog to write for you they must have a “publish post” permission setup in your blog to use the Twitter Wordpress Plugin.  You can also post to Twitter using the Twitter Wordpress Plugin.

2.    When using the above feature with the Twitter Wordpress Plugin you can have one post to the other and vice versa without doubling your tweets or posts.  This way you don’t overdo your posting or tweeting priviliges.

3.    When your new posts get “tweeted” don’t have the “new blog post” prefix removed as this will cause havoc with your Twitter page.

To get your plugin head to http://twitter.com/goodies/widget_profile

There you will be able to customize many features including the widgets appearance.

The Twitter Wordpress Plugin can be a great asset to you to help you grow your blog in popularity and performance.  Use the Twitter Wordpress Plugin right and you will grow your site quickly and solidly.

In future posts I’ll be showing you alternatives for connecting Twitter with your Wordpress blog, until then if you have any questions or suggestions please add them to the comments below.

Technorati Tags: Twitter Wordpress, twitter wordpress plugin

As some of you will have noticed I normally have one single promotion running in the side bar of the blog. Usually this is an affiliate link or sponsored link to a Twitter product, application or resource that I recommend ( I never promote spammy systems that I wouldn’t dream of using myself ).

The reason for this is (a) provide you with a direct link to something you are interested in or that I genuinely believe is relevant and helpful to you, (b) keep the Twitter How To blog financially self-supporting as our great community continues to grow.

Well, recently the blog turned a profit for the very first time!

But this was completely un-intentional (although most flattering!). So from now on I will be putting this small income to good use by helping others with the vision to improve their own lives.

Introducing the Twitter How To KIVA Team.

For those not familiar with KIVA yet I encourage you to watch the presentation below.

FrontLineWorld meets Kiva Entrepreneurs.

So how can you get involved?

Firstly, from now on any income from affiliate and sponsored links will be divided in half. 50% will go to the up keep and running of the blog, whilst the other 50% will be added to the KIVA team social loan fund.

Next, my intention is to convince the owners of paid Twitter services to contribute goodies and their services to a Twitter auction, with all funds generated going towards helping the KIVA team fund.

After the Twitter auction all members of the Twitter How To KIVA team will be able to vote on the entrepreneur to receive our first ever loan!

A huge thanks to all contributors in advance, and stay tuned for more info to coming soon…

Tweeps lets make a difference together !!!

Technorati Tags: KIVA, twitter blog, twitter how to

In todays post we will take a look at how to get a custom Twitter background so you have no excuses for that boring blue background any longer!

Showcase your Twitter friends

Twilk.com offers completely free custom Twitter backgrounds made up of thumbnail images of your Twitter friends. So simple to use, yet totaly cool!

OK, not so great for business branding but a Twilk background will help your personal Twitter profile stand out from the crowd and the images are are actually an interesting insight into you and your Twitter friends.

The free service offered by Twilk will include a “background powered by Twilk.com” tile, you can get the Twilk branding removed for the small sum of $5.

D.I.Y

Up untill I recently discovered FreeTwitterDesigner.com I would have advised staying away from creating your own Twitter background unless you are a skilled designer. But, FreeTwitterDesigner changes everything!

To keep things as simple as possible log in securely with Twitter OAuth. Next you choose a theme or run with a blank canvas. On the next screen you get to be creative with a real easy to use image editer for dummies (hey, even I can use it!).

Add images, text (various cool fonts available) and shapes. The editer includes filter and resolution options to play with, and even allows you to set up the colours of your Twitter text, borders, sidebar and links to compliment the rest of your custom design.

Then size and position till you get a custom background to be proud of.

Let a pro do all the work.

If your wanting to get a pro on the job then I have another option up my sleeve for you.

Head over to Twitter-Designs.com for a great offer from @brendanwenzel to make up your custom Twitter background to your specification.

The process is simple:

1. Send your ideas, information and pictures
2. Your first draft is created and you can see what it will look like
3. Then Twitter-Designs will work with you and tweak your new Twitter design until you are 100% without a doubt satisfied with the design
4. You get the design, put it on your profile and show off your personality and brand through your Twitter page

Simples!

If you know of any other custom Twitter background options let us all know in the comments below and check back soon for a couple of awesome ideas for Twitter backgrounds.

Technorati Tags: custom twitter backgrounds, custom twitter page, twitter how to

Allow me to show you just a few of the cool and useful search functions of TweepSearch.

So your looking to find tweeps in a certain location?

Just enter the desired location into TweepSearch it will return to you any indexed, tweeps with the matching  location set in their Twitter bio. For instance, by typing “Northampton, UK” (my home town) into TweepSearch brings up 283 tweeps that have declared (admitted?) being located in rainy old Northampton in the UK.

Now you can drill down into these results further.

Maybe whilst your over from California visiting a good friend in rainy Northampton you need somebody to walk your dog left back home, in the sunny CA. Simply enter the term “California”+”dog walker”

Another handy use of TweepSearch is finding tweeps related to a particular website or online group.

I love the crowd sourced tee-shirt design site Threadless.com and want to find Threadless street team members on Twitter.

I type in the term URL:threadless.com

This search brings back results of everybody mentioning “threadless.com” in their bio.

This awesome Twitter search is great for finding new or helpful tweeps as well as “real world” local friends. As somebody who uses Twitter business as well as for fun, I am also excited about the possible advantages businesses on Twitter could gain from this powerful bio search but more on that another day.

Who have you found on TweepSearch?

Any helpful search suggestions, or funny search results to share?

Let us all know in the comments below.

Have a play around and check out the Tweepsearch Help page for even more search options.

Technorati Tags: how to find local twitter users, how to use twitter, tweepsearch, twitter how to, twitter search

Following on from How To ‘on page’ SEO your Twitter Profile, in part two we will take a look into some simple techniques for ‘off page’ optimization.

Right now ‘off page’ SEO is how Google is finding and then deciding on the value of Twitter pages.

The basic principle is to create links back to your Twitter profile page and your individual tweets. These links should be coming from sites relavent to your tweets, the linking sites should have a good page rank and the higher up in Google search these sites appear for a search query related to your tweets, the better.

Make use of forums.

Whilst spamming forums with links is a big no-no, adding your Twitter profile link to your forum signature is often perfectly acceptable. Just make sure you are being helpful and interacting as any other forum user would, then each time you post a comment your signature will link back to your Twitter profile.

REMEMBER; Always read and stick to the rules of any forum you post on!

Blog comments.

While it is not always appropriate to include a link back to your Twitter profile in a comment. Many blogs and comment systems do allow you to add a link to your commentor profile. Make use of this or even better, look out for blogs that have an extra comment field specifically for your Twitter ID. (Coming real soon here on this blog)

Twitter Directories.

I would suggest Twitter directories are becoming more influential and for that reason alone you should be in as many as possible. Ensure you are catorgarizing yourself accuratly, and let the directories do the rest. Here are a few suggestions to get you started; Twitter Directories

Social Bookmarks.

Whilst bookmarking your Twitter profile and individual tweets with a number of social bookmarking sites takes a great amount of time, with the help of the marvellous and free tool SocialMarker you can easily add your bookmarks to over a hundred sites very quickly.

To learn how to make the most of SocialMarker take a look at this quick tutorial.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, when link building and bookmarking always have in mind real users as well as search engines. Do this and your efforts will be returned double. Always add value where ever you are linking from and as well as improving the visibility of your tweetin’ activities for SEO purposes, you will also find you are getting traffic and new Twitter followers clicking through from these links and bookmarks.

Let us know how you get on with the suggested how to SEO your Twitter profile, and tell us about any useful tips or resources you know of in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: get more twitter followers, twitter how to, twitter SEO

In tutorial six tweeps will take a look at the options for a Twitter client that I feel are most productive.

We will be comparing features and user opinions to give a great insight into the options available to new tweeps.

Right now the options and Twitter clients to be included are;

• Desktop Twitter Clients, Tweetdeck and Twhirl
• Browser / web Twitter Clients, Hootsuite and PeopleBrowser
• and not forgeting the Twitter Home Page

Which Twitter client would you recommend? Let us know in the comments below and have your say in teaching new tweeps how to use Twitter.

Technorati Tags: back to basics, day6, how to tweet, how to use twitter, twitter client, twitter how to

Before I dive into the practical how to of Twitter SEO, I would like to draw your attention to an article by Patrick Altoft entitled If Google did Twitter search. I found this article by way of @gyutae, it describes how Twitter could improve its search algorithm and mimic factors used by Google to determine the relevancy and the authority of a page.

Now, the aim of this post is to describe how you can get a jump start on Google and possibly Twitter in the near future, whilst ongoing SEO changes take place on Twitter.

As Twitter starts to work with Google, as oppose to against, Twitter search results, Twitter profile pages and individual tweets are starting to rank on the first page of Google.

Examples of this have been pointed out and discussed on various blogs including my A.K.A.Twittergator blog. I am far from an SEO expert and would love to get your thoughts on this, but I do have enough knowledge to make a fast start to getting my tweets found by the big G’. Split into a two part ‘Twitter How To’ Guide, we will look into the changes I have implemented to improve the search rankings of my tweetin’.

How To Optimize Twitter ‘On Page’.

Whilst it would appear that as far as making ‘on page’ tweaks for the benefit of Google is currently limited to your username and full name (both are now included in the title tags of your profile), I have already started implementing the SEO stratergy below.

• Username. If possible include the main keyword you hope to rank for.
• Full name. Again, if at all suitable try to include your main keyword(s).
• Twitter Bio. Whilst you want to communicate a decent snap-shot of who you are and what you tweet about, including a few keywords here should be quite natural.
• Tweets. Ensure that some of your tweets are not only on subject and relavent, but also include keyword phrases. The use of hashtags are great for this. Remember,Twitter search results return hashtags and are all ready ranking with Google. (You should already be doing this to help other tweeps with simular interests find you.)
• Favorites. Favorite some tweets that include your keywords and/or relevant links. This is not just for SEO purposes but also a great way to build a bigger Twitter bio.

Twitter SEO Evidence.

Although when it comes to ‘on page’ SEO there is currently only evidence to support tweaks to your full name and username are helping Twitter pages rank on Google, I highly recommend to anybody on Twitter for brand building, marketing and promotion to be optimizing your Tweetin’ for future changes as Twitter continues to increase it’s relationship with Google.

Tomorrow’s Twitter How To will suggest ideas that I have implemented for ‘off page’ optimization. Right now this is how Google is finding Twitter pages and deciding on their value, so check back tomorrow or even better subscribe to the RSS feed to avoid missing any further posts on How To Optimize Twitter SEO.

If you have a knowledge of search engine optimization, or just have a thought about how to improve your Tweetin’ for the search engines, please do join in below in the comments.

Technorati Tags: get more twitter followers, twitter how to, twitter SEO

Twitter has started rolling out the Discovery Search Engine, a small test group of accounts now have Twitter search fully integrated to the home page.

As one of the accounts to already have this feature, I wanted to show you what the fuss is all about.

The first difference I noticed was the position of the search box which has moved from the top of the page, to a more natural position in the side bar.

The real improvement is the way your search results are returned. No longer are you taken to a new page. Instead, when you do a search, the relevant tweets instantly show up right where they should be, on your home page.

I think this change really improves both the functionality and feel of using Twitter search to find any tweets that contain the word or phrase you’re interested.

Another feature added is the ability to save a search for a term or interest that you want to follow . Saved search terms are placed permanently in your sidebar for easy access. So if you want to know what people are saying about the weeks football games, a product you sell, or just about anything else, it becomes a link on your home page.

And there’s more…

Also now appearing in the home page sidebar are Twitter trends. The top ten words and phrases being mentioned on Twitter make up the currently trending Twitter topics. This is a great place to start if you are looking forinfomation or a discussion on a current event or topic. Clicking on a trend will bring up the latest tweets that include the trending term.

Introducing the improved search features will surely encourage new tweeps to remain inside Twitter as oppose to using third party search app’s. However, I do not see a huge number of tweeps that make use of desktop and browser Twitter clients with built in search switching over. This said, I do think Twitter has got the search integration spot on.

Well done Twitter!

Technorati Tags: twitter, twitter blog, twitter client, twitter search