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

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

I was so excited to let everyone know last week how you could send up to 255 characters in a Direct Message in Twitter.   Well about two days after my post Twitter changed its Direct Messaging.  So now just like a regular tweet you can only send up to 140 characters.  Additionally when you type in your Direct Message and hit 124 Characters (20 left) you will notice that the characters remaining (count icon in the upper right side) turns from grey to bold to alert you that you only have 20 available characters available. Then when you hit 140 characters you can no longer click on the ‘Send’ button, and the send will turn from bright shadowing, to really light shadowing.

Enjoy the video showing this.

Tags: Twitter

Terms of Use Update

Thsi morning Ev gave us a heads up on the direction of Twitter in that they have raised significantly more funds from both Benchmark and Institutional Venture Partners.

From Twitter’s blog:

posted by @Biz at 10:40 AM

Update

The total amount raised was $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital.

Before this Twitter had raised $22 million, and bringing the total raised to more than $57 million.

Although behavioral norms on Twitter and social networking are in their infancy, there still are some clear trends that are emerging. One of these I have been defining as the golden rule of social networking:

“social networking means:

you have to be social”

What this simply describes is that you have to be part of the conversation, and not just an observer or doing all the talking. Until about 6 months ago on Twitter the vast majority of users simply wanted their voice to be heard, and didn’t give much credence to how often they heard others voices, or even engaged in a conversation. Although they didn’t openly discuss it, we can infer that their goal was simply that to brag about, “look how many people are following me”. The example of this is the person/company is how they have 30 people that they are following, yet they have some 10,000+ who follow them. They often simply push links, press release updates or just want to hear themselves talk. Boring. Thank goodness this era for the most part has ended, and we are now in a trend of people understanding that conversation takes two or more people. In fact I believe that the trend will continue to evolve and it will become the norm to follow more people than follow you. Imagine that, a trend encouraging conversation and listening to more people. Sing Kum-Bi-Ya with me now.

Then yesterday I say a report on Twitter that said “”Apple brands top “social media index”".  As I looked into it, the summary was from a report by vitrue.com on ‘The Vitrue 100 - Top Social Brands of 2008′

My first response was that this has got to be a joke. Why? Apple isn’t part of the conversation. Yes they make some great products, and arguably the very best tools that enable many of us to be sociably mobile. But simply put:

Apple is not part of the conversation,
heck Apple doesn’t even listen to Steve Jobs
That’s right they follow no one, nada, 0.  They simply fail in social interaction. How do I further know this? When I look up the analytics on @apple @appleinc you wind the following from twitterholic and twitter-friends

and 

 Apple simply doesn’t engage in conversation. Everyone talks about Apple and all of Apple’s products, but Apple doesn’t talk to others.

So I looked and asked everywhere on Twitter to find out if an official Apple support account exists. However at the time of this story I can’t find one, if it’s there, it’s hidden. A hidden account is basically the same as a not having a support account at all. A pretty sad act for the company that creates many of the tools used, and the beloved iPhone. Yes I know how the Apple lovers are saying that their Apple product doesn’t break like a PC, Apples are plug and play, Apples are… etc, and because of Apples quality, Apple doesn’t need customer support, etc.

However my commentary isn’t about Apples products, but about how in today’s world customer support by a major company IS expected on Twitter, and how a company like Apple that makes the vast majority of tools used for social networking, doesn’t do social networking itself.

My recommendation to Apple, get your accounts up to speed before you get even remotely close to being Motrined. Word and conversation analytics can’t do the same job as having a real person interfacing with your customers.  Apple you need to engage in a conversation with your customers. …its this or hire back Guy Kawasaki as your CEO since he gets social media.

It’s not that hard to engage and converse with your customers: Step 1, talk to us, and preferably without the twittering press releases.

Tags: apple, appleinc, Twitter