Wow have I been busy lately. My wife’s company SALUS that we founded is doing great, but I have been looking up and down for jobs using my MBA and PMP with no real results. 

So this morning I wanted to start looking at people who had key words in their profile to help me with my searching and I cam across a post by Irina Shamaeva http://twitter.com/braingain) where she identified over 1,000 people who have the word “recruiter” in their bio on Twitter.

The first thing I thought was that it was a really cool post, and it got me thinking. What other words do people have in their bio.

“Twitter” is 14,300

‘SEO’ is 4,980

‘Beer’ is 20,300

‘Expert’ is 4,060

‘Democrat’ is 311

‘Republican’ is 872

‘Liberal’ is 1,130

‘Conservative’ is 2,280

‘News’ is 49,100

‘PR’ is 8,420

‘New Media’ is 8,190

 What Bio words do you find interesting?

Tags: bio

As many of you know, recently I started a new Website for anyone who uses Twitter called,  iFollowback.com. The purpose of the site is to connect open networkers with fellow open networkers, and I am beginning to feature some users of the site. 

So how does one become featured on iFollowback.com? It’s really simple.  For now to become a featured user for one week, all I simply require is a guest post to my blog Twittertruth.com.  The post would need to answer these three questions:

1.    Why are you on Twitter

2.    How are you building relationships and networking

3.    Any suggestions you have to others from your experience on Twitter or Facebook .

I am taking this approach because I believe that there is great value in learning from others. So send your request to featured@iFollowBack.com

With much excitement then I would like to introduce Joe Weaver, RN, and his story of why he is on Twitter.

“I am on twitter for mainly two reasons: to gain knowledge from others–from around the globe, and to inform those, who follow me on health topics, smoking cessation, and topics that I find interesting, which give my followers a bit of who Joey is.

I have built relationships with others by sharing and receiving knowledge from others. My main focus is to remain true to myself and to others. For me, it isn’t about how many followers you have and/or the numbers or how many unfollow you from a post, but for me it is more important to build a symbiotic relationship instead of a relationship that is one-sided. I generally will unfollow, those who unfollow me and I will generally follow all, who follows me. Of course there are those, who may follow me and I just don’t share the same consciousness. I do follow about 100 people who aren’t following me. I try to keep that at a minimum.

The best suggestion that I have to people on twitter or facebook, is to be yourself. This is what I believe the twitter and facebook community is all about. Don’t think about the numbers or about marketing what you have, but instead just be yourself in mind, body and spirit. This is how I believe one can become very successful with Twitter or Facebook. Through Facebook and Twitter, I have found job recruiters; ex bosses; friends; editors, who have helped me with my book; as well as great knowledge from other’s tweets. I often wish I would have join twitter sooner.”

Joe Weaver, RN

rnjoey@yahoo.com
http://toqs.com

You can also Follow Joe on Twitter by clicking on this link

Thank you Joe! 

Many more featured followers and their stories are on the way.

Tags: iFollowBack, joe weaver, why

Tags: networking

Today I explain a bit further on my topic from last week.

Tags: following, secret

So your new to Twitter and you don’t know what a hashtag is. Let me explain. It’s simply a ‘#’ sign used in front of any alpha-numeric combination used as an identifier of a conversation, topic, trend, anything.  Think of it this way, you are watching American Idol and you simply want to see what everyone else is saying on Twitter. So you can go over to search.twitter.com and look up #AmericanIdol, and you can see what everyone else is saying about American Idol. Pretty cool. #AmericanIdol is the hashtag.

If you want to create a your own hashtag, it’s really easy and there are no rules on what a hashtag should be, but I do have some suggestions. 

1.    First do a quick search and see if the hashtag is currently in use.  If it is try and come up with another one.

2.    Keep it short.

3.    Keep it relevant to your subject.

4.    Make it easy to remember.

5.    Let others know about it.

Tags: americanidol, hashtag

Absolutely you can post any Avatar that you want to represent yourself, or use the default Twitter Avatar.  However some Avatars are better than others if you want to make friends on Twitter.   This is due to that the Twitter default doesn’t let other people know who you are, and if one of the purposes of social media is to get to know real people, then this is best to use a real photo of yourself.  So what type of photo?  One that best shows you as the nice person you really are.  I don’t like meeting mean people, a flower (though they are pretty to look at), Marge Simpson or any other cartoon figure.  Why? Because although you many love Royalty Roses, it’s kind of difficult to pick out you or Marge Simpson when I go to a tweet up and introduce myrself.  I do have a lot of friends who I have met who don’t follow this , but a great thing about Twitter is that at the end of the day it’s your decision how you want to represent yourself.  Only you now best.

Tags: Avatar

I’ll be back on track Thursday with my regular Video’s and tips. But for now I wanted to take a moment and talk about growing your network on Twitter. Lately I have been hearing of some really great tall tale stores of how to grow your network, twitter secrets to it, even some talk about lists and auto following.  But it’s all bunk and the result of fanciful imaginations.  I really like Occam’s Razor theory to explain it best:

“one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything”
OR
“The simplest answer, is usually the correct answer”

So here’s the truth.

If you want to grow your Twitter network you simply need to ask people to be your friend.  That’s it and here’s an example:

You like Corvettes (they are a really cool car) and you want to meet and friend other people on Twitter who like Corvettes.  So what should you do?  Easy, type in ‘Corvettes” at search.twitter.com and see who else likes Corvettes. Chances are that the majority of people that you find will follow or have followers who also like Corvettes.  So then you can extend your handshake and follow them. That’s it.  A few people might automatically respond to your request (a very few amount of users on Twitter do this), and follow you right back, but the vast majority of people on Twitter will look at this new person who is following them, and then make a decision to follow them back or not. They will make their own decision if they want to follow you back or not.  It’s your call then if you want to DM or auto DM thanking them to be your friend.  Any message is your choice. Then if after some time a person does not want to follow you back so that you can have a conversation with them, it is ok you unfollow them.  It is your choice what to do with your valuable friend request.

That’s it.  No list, no big story, no complex equations, just simply extending your hand of friendship just like you do in person.

Todays regular update…

I get asked quite often, “How can I tell is someone is following me on Twitter.   It’s pretty easy to find out if they are.  Here’s the test: Can you direct message them? If you can, then you know that they are following you.

Twitter is in the process of rolling out updates.  Check out these screen shots of what’s on its way to your Twitter Account! 

A TRENDS search function

 It even takes you to the TRENDS details

You can SEARCH right from your screen

Your PROFILE is reduced in size giving you more room

But you still can expand your PROFILE to look at the Details

Your SETTINGS are also reduced 

But you still can get the details

You can even search to add people right from the screen

and then dig into the details

UPDATE:

According to http://blog.twitter.com/ Twitter is about to release it’s Search (and in my opinion its best function) to the larger Twitter public with a more robust presence on Twitter.  However before they do this they are running test on a “limited set of accounts to get a better sense of how it works for folks before we release the feature completely into the wild. Most people will not see this test, just a small, random subset.”

Great job Twitter, this looks and works great! 

Update 12:00 AM 6 March

This is really cool too, and a great function.  When you do a search it now even identifies the related profiles.  Here you can see my three Twitter accounts: @jerell, @jerellklaver, and @IFollowBack.com  (btw.. you have to check out my new Twitter Application at www.IFollowBack.com ~ It will change the way people build their networks on Twitter, by building Twitter Networks fast the right way and for free)

Tags: new, Twitter, twitter search

Lately there has been a trend of some really big people on twitter engaging in massive unfollowings. For me I don’t agree with this as I really believe that the golden rule of Twitter is that you have to engage in the conversation.  This means that in my opinion it is a good idea to more or less have the same ratio of following to followers. My reasons are simple and I want to share them, but as always you should use Twitter as it best fits your needs, how you want to use Twitter, and not how someone should tell you to.

1.    You can’t engage in a conversation if you don’t follow people

2.    I don’t want to hear just myself speak

3.    I can learn more from others

4.    There are a lot more people interesting than me

5.    I’m not an expert in everything

6.    I’m not some self proclaimed Social Media Expert

7.    I’m not into pumping my EGO – (I’m not talking EGO in the Rand sense) but in the modern negative connotations

8.    You have a larger group of friends that you can talk to

9.    You have more opportunities to engage in the conversation

10. It opens up new opportunities and networking results.

Tags: conversation, Twitter