Our little slice of Twitter help…

When joining Twitter, finding a “tweeting”, or messaging, balance will be rocky at first. Don’t worry, that’s expected and we’ve all been through it. Don’t give up. If you’re taking any of the thousands of tips out there and you’re still not seeing good results, try tweaking your Twitter habits with this guide.

But I’m Doing What They Said!

The rules and tips for getting started on Twitter need better clarification. Some of these tips are right, but are being done wrong. Here are three of the most common tips that could use some clarification:

• Follow a lot of people
• Reply back to everyone
• “Tweet” a lot

Clarification On: Follow A Lot Of People

Following a lot of people does help you get more involved with Twitter. That’s the point of Twitter. However, don’t do it all at one time. This is the worst advice to give a new Twitter user without any type of clarification on how to do it.

When you first start Twitter, you should build up your stream first. Send out about 20 messages that actually mean something. Talk about your interest, something cool that you like, or something you found out about today. This way, people can get a better feel for how beneficial you’d be to them if they followed you in return. After about 20+ messages, start following about 10 people. For every 20+ messages, follow 10 more people.

Ease your way into following a lot of people. DON’T follow a lot of people (30+) at one time, with no way for them to connect with you by looking at your stream of Twitter messages, also known as “tweets”.

Clarification On: Reply Back To Everyone

Please don’t reply back to everyone when you first join Twitter. That isn’t how you should begin using Twitter. Would you really want to follow a new Twitter user that’s using Twitter like it’s AIM/MSN/Yahoo Messenger?

If you’re going to reply back to everyone, wait a few minutes before replying, especially for messages that don’t require an immediate response. Streams full of @ replies are a turn off to more established Twitter users that you may be trying to befriend.

Mix up your tweets with replies, general tweets, and throw in some links every now and then.

Clarification On: “Tweet” A Lot

As a new Twitter user, it’s hard to find a balanced way to build up your stream. Unless you have a reason to tweet a lot, don’t! This is the quickest way to be classified as a spammer.

As you’re following/followers builds up, your twittering habits will naturally follow suit. Sending out 10-20 messages a day on Twitter is fine. It’s even perfect for some of your followers. Keep these numbers in mind when you first join Twitter.

Find Your Tweeting Balance (Twalance?)

There are thousands of articles being written to help those that are just hopping on the Twitter bandwagon. Those that are new to Twitter will take them to heart and apply these suggestions as best as they can. Lately, some of them have been following me, but I’m hesitant to follow back. I know I’m not the only one and these users may be wondering why. Now you know, and hopefully these suggestions can help you get better results with getting your followings to follow you back.

Twitter Ad’s – Now live…is your company brave enough?

Short-form social network Twitter has taken a bold new step in exploring its potential business model. The company appears to have begun promoting keywords in its “trending topics” list for sponsors.

When users click on a promoted trending topic, they are brought to a search results page, where the page is topped by a promoted Tweet. They aren’t sent to an ad landing page, but to a live and uncensored conversation. That’s what we’re seeing with the new movie Toy Story 3 today at least. It’s a logical and interesting way for the company to make money. It’s also unlike almost any other advertising in history.

Twitter announced its promoted Tweets search results program this Spring and social network watchers have been waiting to see promoted Tweets appearing in the middle of users’ streams. Tonight’s inclusion of sponsored trending topics may be the closest thing we’ve seen yet. The company hasn’t yet responded to our request for comment on the new program.

Recent research from HP found that the level of Twitter chatter about a movie could do a better job predicting that film’s box office performance than leading industry methods – so perhaps it’s no co-incidence that a film was first to put down money to increase the chatter.

How These Ads Are Radically New

It’s cool that the links aren’t just links to advertisements, but to the real-time conversation (good and bad) that users are having about the topic. Sponsorship is just a way to influence and increase the profile of the conversation about a product, without controlling it. That’s a radical proposition and one that would only work for brave or lovable sponsors.

BP has spent millions of dollars buying Google ads for search terms like “oil spill,” for example, but is very unlikely to spend money promoting the Twitter conversation about its brand or related topics.

So what about your company? Are you brave enough to buy an ad that would propel open-ended public conversation about your company towards the front of mind for tens of millions of people?

Following the 2010 World Cup on Twitter

The 2010 World Cup is going to be a very interesting one as far as social media goes — it’s the first to be played out in the Twitter era and the first to fully embrace the social media universe.

This bodes well for avid soccer fans keen to stay up to date with all the most recent news from their favorite players and teams. The real-time nature of Twitter may well entice these newcomers to hop on the micro-blogging site. To get new users ready for the action, we’ve got a few tips for how to follow the World Cup on Twitter complete with a list of who you should be following to stay informed on the games, news, and goings on in South Africa.

Hashtags and Searches

While Twitter’s hashtag system is a great way of monitoring a certain topic, and for getting real-time updates on what the Twitterverse is saying about a live event, the organic nature of exactly how the tags are decided can cause confusion.

Currently, there seems to be a fair amount of footie-related tags in circulation, although we’d imagine by the first few days of the tournament these will be narrowed down as the most popular ones become trending topics and are adopted by tweeters.

At the moment, #worldcup seems to be the largest tag by volume of tweets, but #wc2010 is also doing the rounds, as is #2010worldcup. Don’t forget, however, that the World Cup is a global event, so different languages also come into play. In Spanish, World Cup is “Copa Mundial,” in French it’s “Coupe du Monde,” and so on.

Other tags have, of course, sprung up around teams. #England is what most people are using to refer to the England team, while mentions of the United States team can be found under the tag #USMNT.

To quickly access a stream of tweets containing a certain hashtag you can save a search on Twitter, so that the results are just a click away from your home page — and the search can be easily removed after it’s no longer relevant.

Lists

The World Cup only lasts for a month, so it’s unlikely you’ll want to permanently follow all the World Cup-related sources you’ll be getting your footie news from over the next four weeks, especially as many sources have been created solely for the event.

Alternatively, if you’re just interested in the big headlines, rather than blow-by-blow coverage, TweetMeme’s World Cup 2010 aggregated feed of popular tweets might be of interest.

It’s more work, but if you’re a little more selective then you can create your own list and simply delete it after the tournament on July 11. To get you started we’ve made some suggestions of World Cup Twitter news resources that can be found below.

Twitter Resources

Whether it’s the official FIFA feed, tabloid newspaper coverage, big broadcaster’s headlines or just the final scores, you’ll find the news you need in this list.

2010 FIFA World Cup – “The Twitter page of the 2010 Organizing Committee.” News and updates.

SA2010 World Cup – “Official 2010 FIFA World Cup South African Government website with all the information you need!” News, personal updates and commentary.

FIFAWorldCupTM – “The FIFA soccer world cup tweets. All the latest FIFA news and information on the 2010 soccer world cup.” Updates, human interest, emphasis on players and coaches.

TheFA.com – “The official website for the England Football Team and The FA Cup.” Updates on England players and live Tweets from England matches.

US Soccer – “U.S. Soccer: the governing body of soccer in all its forms in the United States.” Inside look at the US team, players and matches.

CNN World Cup – “All the latest news on the 2010 World Cup in South Africa from CNN International.” News and match scores culled from CNN reporters.

Telegraph World Cup – “World Cup 2010 news, analysis, pictures and video from Telegraph.co.uk” Links back to stories posted by The Telegraph.

NY Times Goal – “The New York Times Soccer Blog reports on the international game and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.” Live updates and links back to New York Times stories.

AP World Cup – “Join the conversation as @AP covers the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.” News, match scores and brief commentary.

BBC World Cup – “A feed dedicated to World Cup headlines from the BBC website.” Links back to BBC.

Sports Illustrated Soccer – “Soccer, World Cup coverage from Sports Illustrated and SI.com writers and photographers.” Player news and general features.

The Sun World Cup – “Follow all the latest news on the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with The Sun.” Mostly England updates and news, general match coverage.

Four Four Two – “Humorous but wholehearted, polished but readable, substantial but accessible, it’s football’s most insightful brand – with added F.U.N.” Quirky and off-beat updates, general news.

Fox Soccer News – “FOXSoccer.com headlines.” Links back to Fox Soccer.

World Cup Scores – “Live 2010 world cup soccer scores.” Match scores and live updates.