Ways for artists to use Twitter lists

Twitter lists are a useful tool for artists to make the most of Twitter for developing your reputation and fan base. If you are not already using them, or are but are not sure how to make the most of them, there are some suggestions below. But first some key facts about Twitter lists.

Facts about Twitter lists

1. You can have up to 1000 lists
2. You can have up to 5000 users per list (but if you do that you are defeating the objective of the list)
3. They can be public or private
4. If you add someone to a public list they will be notified (this can be used to advantage)
5. If you add someone to a private list they won’t know – you can use private lists for strategic purposes that you don’t want people to know about.
6. You can subscribe to other people’s public lists and they will show in your list of lists
7. Other people can subscribe to your public lists
8. You can use other people’s lists as a source for following people
9. You can have a list as a feed column in an app such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.
10. You don’t have to be following an account to add it to a list
11. Lists are used for reading Tweets only. You cannot send or direct a Tweet to members of a list, for only those list members to see.
12. You can mention a list @[username]/[list-name] (example: @dentonpotter11/mosaic-artists) This doesn’t work.
    
13. List names cannot exceed 25 characters, nor can they begin with a number
14. You can create a new list from the ‘add or remove from lists’ option
15. To see lists that you are on, on your Lists page (desktop version), click on ‘Member of’.
16. You can create a widget for your website or blog for all tweets from members of a twitter list (Settings > widgets > create new. Choose timeline source from user timeline, favourites, list, search, collection. If you have a wordpress.com blog you just need to create the widget and then insert the ID number into the provided Twitter widget – see WordPress.com instructions for more info.)

Alternative way to get to your lists

Lists that I find useful

I am assuming that you have some understanding that building your following on Twitter is a good idea. I think you want to be aiming to have at least 2-3000 as a minimum, but part of using Twitter as a promotional tool should be about steadily growing your following. For some tips how to do this see an earlier post on this blog. Below are some lists that I am using both on my own Twitter account and those that I manage for other people. The point of this activity is getting to know your followers and selectively filtering those who you can actively interact with. Keeping a record of people who really are appreciating your messages, rather than just skimming over them or ignoring them altogether, allows you to target what you are doing towards those key followers.

Favouriters – private. Every time I get a notification that someone has favourited one of my posts I add them to this list. You could make a distinction between favouriting generally or just favouriting posts that have examples of your work. However, be aware that people sometimes use favouriting simply to acknowledge they have seen something. Think of it as these are people who like your stuff so could be turned into buyers of your stuff, at the very least promoters of it. So it is useful to keep a list of them. Personalised messages to people on this list are likely to be retweeted.

Retweeters – private. As with favouriters, if someone retweets one of my messages, I add them to the list. Optionally you can have separate lists for people retweeting things that you have retweeted from other people and retweeting your own work.

Interacters – private. People who have made enquiries or commented on your work by sending @messages – as with favouriters but more so, they are engaged with you and you should nurture this relationship, keeping a list of them is a tool for that nurturing.

Multiple retweets/favs – private. This is a very important list. You could say these are your actual fans and you could turn them into people who interact regularly with you. Perhaps make some distinction between people who are massive habitual retweeters (some bots do this, some people act like bots) and those who seem to be genuinely retweeting because they like your work. If you find you are clicking the list option and they are already on the retweet or favourite list, then this is when you add them to the multiple retweets/favs list. After a while you will recognise your super fans and won’t need to check them.

Real life – private. People you have actually met. To allow you to be more personal and respond to things they tweet. Adding people you know in real life to a list allows you to filter to easily see what they have been posting about.

Buyers/Clients/Collectors – private. People who have bought your art in the past. Worth sending personalised @messages to them when you have new work or exhibitions. How do you know their Twitter handles? Ask them if they are on twitter and what their handle is when they buy from you. Ask them via email if you have that? It may be a small list to start with, but this is about building up a useful marketing tool. Having your buyers on a list allows you to get to know what kind of things they are tweeting about and how to communicate well with them.

Follow followers – private list. Influencers/gurus/people who have a lot of followers who are likely to be also interested in things that you do. You might add other artists to this list who do work similar in style or medium to your own, even if they don’t have a lot of followers, just because their ‘genuine’ followers may also like your stuff. Then when you are having a session of building up your followers you can go to this list and pick a member of it, look at their followers and pick out any to follow yourself with the view that they may follow you back.

How to add people to a list

Here are some other lists that may be useful for you. You can add people to these lists during sessions where you are looking at the followers of other people with the aim of attracting them to be your followers too, or by doing searches on particular topics.

Artists – could sub categorise this into similar type of art to yourself, artist you like or are influenced by.

Galleries – could sub categorise into those that might show your work and those that might have followers who could be interested in being your followers

Art magazines – may promote your work to their followers and may have interesting tweets to retweet to your followers.

Local press – may promote your work and any events/shows/exhibitions/courses you are involved in.

National press – less chance of promoting things but may be a source of retweets.

Influencers or some other title – for accounts that have things to say that you want to follow, but who are unlikely to follow you back (followers hugely exceeds following). Why? Because if you use the technique of following people in order for them to follow you back, eventually you will hit a Twitter limit where you wont be allowed to follow any more until you have got your followers number closer to your following number. So you will need to use a service, such as manageflitter or justunfollow, to unfollow those that are not following you back, and in that process you can easily lose this category of people. By having them in a list, you can chose to re-follow them or you can just watch the list without adding them to your following numbers.

Another way of adding or removing people from a list

General recommendation how to work

I believe that using Twitter on a laptop not on a phone is easier for strategic use of it as a marketing tool. Using on a phone is useful for when on the move, but has restrictions and is cumbersome for large scale tasks.

If someone favourites or retweets your work you should receive a notification. Click on their name or profile image and, if you are not already following them, do so (which will encourage them to move from being a favouriter to a follower). Then click on the cog icon, then choose from the menu ‘add or remove from lists‘ and click the tick box to add them to your favouriters and/or retweeters list. If they are already on those lists then they are a multiple retweeter/favouriter and need adding to that list. After a while if someone is regularly favouriting and retweeting your work then you will start to recognise them and won’t need to check. Then you can engage them more by sending them personalised messages with an image by way of thanks and encouragement. Or even have a conversation with them.

I have written this guidance in a very clipped form. If you have any questions or want any of the points expanded upon, please leave a comment and I will try to help.

Other reading about Twitter Lists

Here are some other posts about using Twitter lists, which I will add to if I find others that are useful. Although, I wrote this post because I couldn’t find anything that really gave tactics specifically for artists using Twitter.

Info on using Twitter lists from Twitter here: https://support.twitter.com/articles/76460-using-twitter-lists#

How to Use Twitter Lists to Follow Thousands (and Appear Superhuman) http://www.postplanner.com/how-to-use-twitter-lists-to-always-be-engaging/

How to add yourself to your own Twitter lists http://askaaronlee.com/how-to-add-yourself-to-your-own-twitter-lists-with-pictures/

Twitter Lists are the New “Follow” http://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-lists-new-follow/

PS Twitter Analytics

Did you know you can see analytics on the performance of your tweets by going to https://analytics.twitter.com and being logged on to your Twitter account?  When you first sign up there will be no data. You will need to return later to see the performance of your tweets. Once you have done this the first time you may get a menu item of Analytics or Twitter Ads showing in your list of options from your profile button on the right of your desktop or you may be pushed down the route of signing up for a Twitter Ads account. Things are changing all the time in this aspect. Don’t sign up for anything that you don’t want to and certainly don’t put in your credit card details unless you are thinking of paying for Twitter advertising. You may find bookmarking https://analytics.twitter.com is a better way to get back to just view your data, rather than having to go into a Twitter Ads account.

PPS Email notifications

If you are doing a lot of activity on Twitter, you may find you receive too many email notifications. You can turn these off in your settings, email notifications (https://twitter.com/settings/notifications). I have them all turned off. But you may want to be selective and still for example have news updates from Twitter.

Hashtag hours on Twitter

Following on from my previous post about Twitter hashtags, this post is specifically about hashtag hours. Hashtag hours are times on Twitter when people use and follow a specific hashtag to make connections with each other and retweet each others posts. It’s a way to expand your network and to be mutually supportive of businesses. They are often local area based or on a specific theme.

Below is a list of these twitter hours that attracted me based on my interests and clients that I work with. All listed UK time. If you’re going to participate in these then check out the rules and aims first, perhaps watch what goes on and then tag away. To get the most out of it I suggest that you see it as an online networking event, setting aside that time slot and focus on retweeting and reacting, as well as promoting your own activies.

#CraftHour @craft_hour Sundays 7-8pm https://www.facebook.com/crafthour

#gigglethings  @GetGiggling Mondays 8-9pm British designed and handmade items http://www.gigglinghedgehogs.co.uk/

#indiehour @TheIndieHour_ (don’t miss the underscore)Tuesdays 7-8pm Independent Businesses  http://theindiehour.com/

#charityhour @charityhouruk Wednesdays 8-9pm for charities and supporters UK wide http://harrisonmann.co.uk/news/harrison-mann-launches-uk-wide-charityhour-twitter/

#BizGrowthHour @bizgrowthhour Mon, Wed, Fri 3pm, 8pm Promote & grow your business (too frequent to keep track of IMO)

#guildfordhour  @guildfordhour Tuesdays 8-9pm http://www.guildfordhour.co.uk/ (Good advice on how to use the hour).

#northantshour @northantshour Thursdays 8-9pm @Northantshouruk http://northantshour.wordpress.com/about/

#lancashirehour @lancashirehour Thursdays 8-9 http://lancashirehour.co.uk/

#northwesthour @northwesthour Mon 3-4pm, Wed 8-9pm & Fri 9-10pm (too frequent to keep track of IMO) http://www.hoodoonetwork.com/

#bizhour @bizhour weekdays 2-3pm UK businesses (too frequent)  http://www.hoodoonetwork.com/

#englandhour @englandhour Sundays 9-10pm http://www.hoodoonetwork.com/

#ManchesterHour  @manchesterhour Wednesdays 2-3pm Fridays 11am to noon

#Londonhour @londonhour Mondays 7.30-8.30pm No other info I could find.

Other hours to look at:

• #LeedsHour
• #HuddersfieldHour
• #WakefieldHour
• #SheffieldHour
• #BradfordHour
• #LiverpoolHour
• #Bridehour

Other hashtags of interest (not time specific)

#twitterartexhibit @twitrartexhibit http://twitterartexhibit.org/ Utilizes social media and public engagement to generate income for charities and nonprofit organizations. Artists donate postcard sized art which are then for sale via the website.

#BigArtBoost @BigArtBoost  @aplace4creation https://www.facebook.com/APlaceForCreation http://www.aplaceforcreation.com/

Hashtag hour leader board(???)

Worth a look http://www.socialsleuth.net/twitterhours-leaderboard

Google Calendar

I’ve embedded a calendar below with some of the hashtag hours I’m interested in. If you have Google Calendar yourself you should be able to save to your own as a reminder (click on an entry then on the ‘copy to my calendar’ link in the bottom of the box that should appear – desktop not mob).

How to go from 0 to 80,000 engaged Twitter followers

I attended a webinar yesterday (3 July). It was free. I was sent notification of it from two different emailing lists that I subscribe to, one from Lilach Bullock, who was one of the two speakers and the other from Hubspot, who were hosting it. Normally I ignore such things, but I’m on a drive to keep my skills fresh and so I thought it was worth a look. Some stuff I knew, some was new, and it got me thinking as well, which is always a good thing.

The are slides and video are here http://offers.hubspot.com/thank-you/webinar-how-to-get-80000-engaged-twitter-followers, if you want to take a look.

Did I learn how to reach 80,000 engaged Twitter followers? Well not really. This is an example of an attention grabbing title that’s not quite accurate. Lilach Bullock has lots of useful tips and does have 82.9k followers, but it has taken a long time and a lot of effort for her and her team to get to that point, and she’s considered to be a social media guru. For small businesses that aren’t in the social media business, the message, I feel, is that 80,000 is an unrealistic target, but what you can learn is how to use Twitter to engage with a number of people that’s appropriate for the scale of your business.

For me the biggest message was early in the presentation:

1. Set realistic expectations; it takes time and effort
2. Vital to have sticky and engaging website – ensure pages have easy one-click sharing buttons
3. Ensure you have tracking and analytics in place

There were some tools that I am going to try out and also as a result of attending the webinar I get $50 of free advertising on Twitter, so I’m thinking about what experiments to do with that. I also learnt from the second speaker, Brian Lavery from Twitter, more about how Twitter advertising works, and the segmentation is particularly interesting for small local businesses.

I picked up some jargon terms that I can figure out, but don’t necessarily use and I thought a social media (marketing) glossary of terms would be good. I found one on Hubspot but it is missing things so I wonder if that is a project for someone? For example they referred to “Twitter handle”. I like that but haven’t heard it before, comes from CB radio talk, I’m guessing. @dentonpotter11 is my Twitter handle, although now I am thinking (as a result of the webinar) whether to set up a new Twitter account with a shorter handle, because then if people retweet messages my handle will take up less of the precious 140 characters.

A/B testing tweets was another thing mentioned. This is also known as split testing. In simple terms try two options of something and see which works best then scale up. Obviously in reality what two things you try and how you scale up is much more complicated. The message for me is that you have to be constantly experimenting, and learning from your experiments. That applies whatever size you are, and if you are experimenting you need to do things properly and have data to be able to measure what the difference was between option A and option B.

A tool I know an use already that was mentioned was Manageflitter. I use the free version frequently to clean up people that I have been following who haven’t been following me back. I haven’t tried the paid option.

A tool I haven’t used before that I am now trying is Commun.it. My verdict so far is interesting and lots of potential, but not sure it will work for me.

If you are feeling disappointed by the title of this post and that I haven’t delivered, perhaps you would be more interested in my very real example of how I grew my twitter following from 300 to 2000 in 6 weeks.

 

How my Twitter following grew from 300 to 2000 in 6 weeks

I’m pretty pleased with myself today as I have exceeded a goal I set myself and early too. Today I hit 2,000 followers on Twitter. Now numbers are not everything, but they are something. I haven’t really bothered using my Twitter account for marketing myself before. I’ve tended to just use it to keep an eye on things and not worry too much about followers, but since I am in the business of advising others on how to raise their profile, I thought I’d better put some of my own advice into practice. So I set myself a goal in the middle of May to increase my Twitter following from around 300, where it had been hovering for a long time, to 1,500 by the end of June.

Why did I do it?

Because I wanted to see if techniques I have read about work, to see if I could, to see how much hard work it is, to give me greater credibility in my business, and to find potential clients for future work.

How did I do it?

My target was to get followers who are artists or writers, not just any old followers. They can be anywhere in the world, which does make it easier than being in a specific location. Preferably they are English speaking. My strategy involved a mix of regular content, following to be followed, and interacting as much as possible. In particular:

1. Posting lots of images that would appeal to artists – my own work and other people’s
2. Posting tips in image form that demonstrated what I am offering as a service
3. Finding artists and writers and following them – finding them by looking at the followers of other artists and writers that I found, and galleries and magazines.
4. Retweeting images from others
5. Thanking people for following, and for retweeting my images
6. Favouriting art that I liked
7. Following back any people who found me without me following them first who are writers or artists (to keep them with me)

When you follow lots of people eventually you hit a limit on Twitter where you aren’t allowed to follow any more (2,000).  At that point I cleared out people who weren’t following me back using www.manageflitter.com sorting the unfollowers into the order of who I had been following the longest.

I haven’t fully analysed my followers yet, and that is one of the reasons for stopping at 2,000 for the time being so I can, but of the most recently recruits 28 are what I consider to be dodgy, nothing to do with who I am trying to target and not even sure what these people are about other than trying to look like porn stars on the pull (fake accounts?). So really I haven’t reached 2,000 useful followers quite yet, but it’s pretty close.

It can be quite mind blowing looking at long lists of followers and scanning to see if they fit your criteria or not and clicking follow. But I feel doing things like this manually rather than having some kind of automation means you do think about what you are looking for and you learn lots of things about how other people present themselves. One thing I discovered too is if you look closely at someone’s list of followers you can tell who has paid for fake ones. After a while you start to get a good sense of what are real people descriptions and what are mass produced manufactured individuals (description sounds like some random phrase or saying, look at their profile and they have hardly any tweets or the tweets they have make little sense, follow lots but very few followers themselves).

There are other things I observed but I will save that for another day.

If you are reading this and are an artist or writer and want tips on how to use social media to effectively promote yourself, then please follow me.

Simple advice for using Twitter to build your reputation and make connections

This is an extended version of a list that first appeared as part of another post about tweeting (Why on earth make your twitter feed private?). I felt it was a bit lost there so deserved its own post.

1. Don’t make your account private.
2. Don’t have an egg as your profile image.
3. Use an appealing clear profile image that is still recognisable when very small, preferably your face.
4. Add an attractive header image, and check it works on desktop and mob versions of Twitter. (See “How to design a header image for Twitter that looks good on all devices” for dimensions. If you are an artist/crafter use a piece of your own work that’s representative of your style)
5. Include your web/blog address in your profile in the space for web address, but also include a link in the description to somewhere for more info about you (eg gravatar or about.me or similar service) as only the description shows when anyone is looking at lists of followers.
6. Put your country in the location field and also in the description field so people who are looking for someone in their country can find you. I also advise that you put your nearest city or region.
7. Put what you do in your profile description – this is a little advertising space of 160 characters, make the most of it.
8. Don’t put stupid “I don’t know what to put here” or “I’m an airhead” or “I’m so mysterious” type comments in your profile.
9. Tweet regularly, at intervals, but don’t spam your every breath.
10. Don’t tweet more than two messages immediately after each other.
11. Don’t tweet about things that there is even one person in the world that you don’t want to know.
12. Don’t be boring.
13. If you are an artist or a maker, tweet images regularly of your own work.
14. Include your website or name on any images that you tweet.
15. Follow, follow, follow – think about people who might like your work. Who might they be following already? (For artists: galleries or artists working in the same medium as you with a similar style or art magazines/websites?) Look at their list of followers and follow people who look likely from their descriptions.
16. Interact with people, don’t  just broadcast – ie respond to things you read: favourite, retweet, reply and occasionally send @messages to people who may have shared interests.
17. Don’t believe you are best mates with people just because you have had a few tweets back and forth.
18. Include links to pages for more information than you can include in 140 characters and to generate traffic to your website/blog.
19. Learn about hashtags and how to use them effectively (See: “10 Hashtag Rules for Self Marketing (Small Businesses, Sole Traders and Bloggers)”).
20. Remember that you don’t actually have to follow people back if you don’t want to and people you follow don’t have to follow you back, so you need to make it that they want to by the content you have on your timeline and the description you have on your profile.
21. Always be generous, courteous and polite.
22. Don’t bother sending direct (private) messages. They are a pointless activity IMO. If you need to enter into private correspondence with someone, find another channel where you can have a proper conversation.
23. Be very cautious of direct messages you receive, particularly those that say things like “hey someone’s talking about you” even if from someone you know well – these are typical hacker messages.
24. Don’t put in your twitter logon details if you have clicked on a link in a direct message or @ message and it says you need to log on to see the thing – these are typical hacker tactics.
25. Find out about scheduling messages to reach people at different times of day using an app. Use it wisely with other methods not on its own.

PS [In answer to a question]

You don’t have to read every tweet that someone you follow sends and equally your followers will only read a small proportion, if anything, of what you send (which is why you need to make it stand out and images are a good way of doing that). Twitter is a stream of information, which as a consumer you dip into when it suits you for the time you have available. The trick is to skim read and learn ways to select what you see, using lists and search terms. If you find you are too swamped and cannot see the wood for the trees, have a look at apps such as tweetdeck or hootsuite, which help to manage the flow of information. I will try to write about that aspect in more detail another time.

 

Sorbet theme for WordPress, a sweet theme with a little stickiness

I am drawn to the uncluttered style (sweetness) of WordPress Sorbet theme, but can see that maybe users will find difficulty in navigating round it (stickiness), since there isn’t an obvious side bar or menu. So I am collecting examples of it in use to see how adaptable it is and how creatively it’s being used. If you find any others, please let me know in the comments. To see the menu items users have to click on the button with the horizontal lines (becoming a familiar icon?), to see any widgets click on the cog (to me that would say settings not widgets and kind of loses the point of widgets as attention grabbing items), for links to other social media places click on the heart (hmm, not sure about this) and for search the magnifying glass (I think most people would figure that out).

Free version examples

http://thedesignbender.com/

http://nowawordortwo.com/

Customised version examples

http://pinwheelsandpompoms.com/

http://notapunkrocker.wordpress.com/

http://ryan.boren.me/

http://jaco.by/

http://macmanx.com/

More information

The information for WordPress.com users is here http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/sorbet/ and WordPress.org here https://wordpress.org/themes/sorbet.

I particularly like how The Design Bender site has overcome the issue of hidden menu by having a static home page and using image links to the menu items.

Why on earth make your Twitter feed private?

Twitter is all about broadcasting things you want the world to know. I want more people to know who I am, read my stuff, and hopefully somewhere down the line someone will pay me enough money to live. If you want to be secret, why go on Twitter? The only thing I can think is if you want to read but not write anything, but that’s still missing the point a bit.

This post is prompted by the fact that recently I have been practising what I preach in relation to increasing followers on Twitter. The tactic I advise to others is to seek out people in your target audience, then follow them with the aim that at the very least a proportion will check out your profile and maybe look at your website to decide whether to follow. And a smaller group will decide to follow back and receive ongoing messages from you. It is OK if that percentage is small as they are self selecting. The people who do follow back have generally made an active decision to do so and they are more likely to be the audience you are seeking if you have made your profile clear and you have followed the right kind of people in the first place.

As I have been working my way through this process, I am very surprised at how many people have their feeds locked I can still see their profile description but in order to follow them they have to approve and to see any messages they put out I need to be a follower. What is the point of that? Particularly if you are trying to build up a fan base (eg artists, writers, musicians, performers).

News flash!

If you don’t want people to know …

• where you are,
• who you are seeing,
• what you are thinking,
• that you are doing something you are embarrassed about,
• that you you are doing something illegal…

… DON’T TWEET IT!

Way back in the relatively early days of Twitter (about 2007), I started a part-time job where I had a secretary. Yes, the place was stuck in a bygone era. No, I had no need for a secretary or any idea what one would do for me. When I asked her what she saw her role as, she said if I needed any photocopying or filing doing (???). She wasn’t just my secretary, I shared her with a couple of other people in my team and a couple of others shared another secretary. Really these two were team administrators and just had the wrong job title. Anyway, I have set the scene, there were two secretaries (administrators) who sat together in a little office. I discovered soon on that mine was into technology and as I too was getting into twitter and blogging, I chatted to her about it and we swapped twitter names and started following each other.

I quickly realised that (a) she spent almost all day tweeting and messing about not doing any work, and (b) most of her tweets documented her minute by minute irritations with her office mate. I had a few days/weeks of agony wondering what to do about this situation. I didn’t line manage her, but I did have a sense that these two activities were wrong. What should I do? Tell someone else and be a snitch? Not my style. In theend I had a chat with her in the guise of “let’s share our experience of Twitter”. I suggested that it should be a place where you only say things that you could say face to face and that wouldn’t hurt the person you were talking about if they were to read it, especially if the person was a work colleague. Also as anyone can see your massages whether they have a twitter account or not, via the profile link, really one should think about what effect that would have if say, your line manager was to see them. Her reaction? Made her Twitter account private. But I was still a follower and could still see those messages…

I learnt from this that I need to be more direct and explicit when I am actually telling people what to do or what not to do. I should have said “Stop spending all day tweeting and do some bloody work and stop slagging off your colleagues online”. If it was today that is what I would do.

In 2010, I split up with someone who I lived with for a long time. We had a shared laptop with separate usernames but knew each other’s passwords. I had Tweetdeck installed to look at my Twitter feeds. He kept the laptop and I changed my Twitter password thinking that was cutting off the stream from the laptop. Some time later it became clear that he was reading my direct messages on Twitter. How? The Tweetdeck API didn’t require the Twitter password to connect once the approval to link had been made. So even though I had changed my password, my account was open to be seen. I didn’t have anything too damaging in my direct messages but it brought home to me that private is very rarely actually private and the easiest way to be safe is the assume everything is public and only send messages that you can live with being public.

Simple rules for if you are using Twitter as a way of building up reputation and making connections

1. Use an appealing clear profile image preferably your face
2. Don’t make your account private
3. Include your web address in your profile
4. Put your country location and if a local business also put your nearest city or regions so people can find you.
5. Put what you do in your profile
6. Don’t put stupid “I don’t know what to put here” “I’m an airhead” type comments in your profile.
7. Tweet regularly but don’t spam your every breath
8. Don’t tweet about things that there is even one person in the world that you don’t want to know.
9. Don’t be boring
10. Follow, follow, follow
11. Interact with people – read and @ message, reply and retweet – not just broadcast
12. Don’t believe you are best mates with people just because you have had a few tweets back and forth
13. Include links to places for more information than you can include in 140 characters
14. Learn about hastags and how to use them effectively
15. Remember that you don’t actually have to follow people back if you don’t want to
16. Be very cautious of direct messages, particularly those that say things like “hey someone’s talking about you” even if from someone you know well – these are typical hacker messages.
17. Don’t put in your twitter details if you have clicked on a link in a direct message and it says you need to log on to see the thing – these are typical hacker tactics.

Please feel free to suggest any others for the list in the comments.

Review of 14-day Blogger 201 Course

I have found the 14-day Blogging 201 course very useful and whilst some of that was the interaction with other people on the course, I think the lessons standalone and work for anyone who wants to take their blogging to a new level. Sometimes it’s a case of finding out something you didn’t even know you needed to know and other times it’s giving yourself time to think about things that you did already know, but as a whole with everything else. So as a resource for myself to look back on and anyone else who may be interested I am listing all of the lesson posts below. Links to all are also available on the dailypost blog with lots of other useful ideas and challenges http://dailypost.wordpress.com/courses/blogging-201-branding-and-growth/

Blogging 201, Day One: Set Three Goals

First things first: let’s set some goals and plan for success.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-branding-one/

Blogging 201, Day Two: Audit Your Brand

To build a strong brand, you have to assess your blog, top to bottom. Today you’ll figure out
what’s inconsistent or unhelpful — and start to fix it.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-branding-two/

Blogging 201, Day Three: You’ve Got the Look

Good design affects your content and credibility, and visuals play a big role in a reader’s
decision to stay…or go. Make sure yours are helping, not hurting.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-get-the-look/

Blogging 201, Day Four: Get Read All Over

Today’s assignment: make sure your site is mobile-friendly, and familiarize yourself with the
features of responsive design.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-read-all-over/

Blogging 201, Day Five: Give ‘Em What They Want

Today, you’ll conduct a short and simple stats analysis that will help you create an
editorial calendar for the next 30 days.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-what-they-want/

Blogging 201, Day Six: Drive Traffic to Your Archives

Published, but not forgotten: today, you’ll integrate features to draw traffic to your older
content, including widgets, related posts, and a “Best of” page.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-archive-traffic/

Blogging 201, Day Seven: Broadcast Your Brand

Today’s Assignment: pick one social network you’ll use to help grow your blog and connect it
to your site in at least one way.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-broadcast-your-brand/

Blogging 201, Day Eight: Create a Social Schedule

Today’s assignment: create a 30-day plan for how you’ll grow your presence (and your blog) on
the social network you selected yesterday.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-using-social-networks/

Blogging 201, Day Nine: Make Your Home a Hub

Today’s assignment: create a page or section on your blog to display links to your online
presence elsewhere — and make sure other sites you use reflect your brand.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-make-a-hub/

Blogging 201, Day Ten: Support Your Community

Today’s assignment: invest in your community by leaving five comments, adding (or updating) a
blogroll, and introducing a comment policy.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-support-your-community/

Blogging 201, Day Eleven: Buddy Up

Ready for a longer-term commitment? Find a blogging buddy and create a partnership for mutual
support and growth.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-buddy-up/

Blogging 201, Day Twelve: Give ‘Em What They Want, Part Two

The best way to learn what readers want is to ask. Create a poll and/or a survey to collect
feedback on your site and its content.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-what-they-want-ii/

Blogging 201, Day Thirteen: Marketing, Advertising, and Monetizing, Oh My!

Today’s assignment: put on your CEO suit and think through whether marketing and monetizing
are right for your blog. If so, take one step.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-advertising-and-monetizing/

Blogging 201, Day Fourteen: Make the Most of Events

Today’s assignment: create a recurring blogging event on your site, and/or make plans to
attend a conference.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-events/

Schedule Photos to Post Automatically with Postbot

Karen:

Note to self… Must give this a try.

Originally posted on WordPress.com News:

We’re big fans of photography here at WordPress.com, and we know that a lot of you are, too. Sometimes we’ll take a bunch of photos and want to post them, one at a time, spread over several days. Doing this manually is time-consuming and, let’s be honest, a little boring.

To help this situation we created Postbot, a photo scheduling app that allows you to quickly upload and schedule multiple photos.

Postbot will create a post for each photo and schedule it to appear at a certain time over a given number of days. This is the ideal way to share a lot of photos without having to manually create and schedule each one.

Postbot is a stand-alone application that works with your WordPress.com blog, and your Jetpack-powered WordPress.org blog. You can use it from your desktop or mobile browser.

How to use Postbot

To use Postbot, go to postbot.co

View original 183 more words

Awards, chain letters and those things that people post in their facebook status saying please do the same

Hey everyone, I got my first blogging award, from alittletypical and it’s sort of a blogging chain letter challenge, but based on the fact that the person awarding it thinks you will be up for it having looked at your blog and that you don’t have lots of followers (I think). The challenge was this:

Use THREE words/ colours/ animals/ songs/Disney characters / Greek mythological figures to describe YOURSELF. It can be in a form of essays, drawings, photographs, collage, video or any other media for expression.

My worst nightmare! I don’t do such participation things, I don’t pass on chain emails, I don’t post statuses supporting things in facebook, I don’t do selfies with no makeup on and give the charity. It’s just not my thing. No offence, it just puts me under too much pressure to conform and I just can’t do it. But not wishing to upset anyone and finding myself trying to make new friends in the blogosphere as part of #blogging201, I thought a lot about it, came up with some old nonsense. But then I had a flash of inspiration and realised what I have to do is the above image. Sums me up in 3 words and has one of my kaleidoscopes in the background.

Where did this Liebster Blog Award originate? I’m not the only one to wonder this. The top answer I found before stopping that line of inquiry was this from Sopphey Says who is clearly a woman of taste as she has a purple background ;-)

From that I realise I can decide to decline this award – I DO – and not pass it on – I WON’T – but instead I will mention some blogs that I think are worth a look:

• I really like the overall look and colour scheme of alittletypical and I am happy to have made that connection
• I made a new connection via twitter this week and that took me to this blog Having Fun With Depression
• And also thanks to #blogger201, I have come across the avant garde art and photography of redstuffdan, which I am enjoying a lot

I’ve learnt lots of new stuff recently, but I think I will save that for another post another day.