Israeli Consulate Uses Twitter as Virtual Press Conference

The Israeli Consulate in New York has started to leverage Twitter as a virtual press conference. They have been answering questions posed by Twitter users about the ongoing conflict. The Israeli Consulate wanted to bring their point of view to the younger demographic on Twitter that may not read the main stream media. The Israeli Consulate first launched their Twitter account, @israelconsulate, on Monday. So far they have over 2700 followers. This is just another great example of using Twitter for public relations.

Geek's Guide Yourself or Business with Twitter

Geekpeneur has an e-book, A Geek's Guide to promoting Yourself and Your Online Business in 140 Characters or Less with Twitter. This 48 page e-book on Twitter is a good resource for businesses or individuals to get caught up on using Twitter.

State of the Twittershpere by HubSpot

Hubspot released their Q4 report, "State of the Twittersphere". Hubspot first released this report in Q1 of 2008 so any comparative analysis will have to wait until Q1 2009. Some interesting data to note:

• 4-5 million users
• 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008
• 20% of Twitter users joined in the past 60 days
• 5-10K new accounts are created everyday
• 30% of Twitter users are relatively new or unengaged - do not post more then once a week and follow few people
• Traffic has grown by 600% over the last 12 months

The report also looked at what days were the most active to Tweet. They found that there is about 50% more activity on the weekday versus the weekend. People tend to tweet most often on Wednesday and Thursday. So it may be best to release a product or promote a blog during these two days.

Twanslate - Translate

The Twanslate service provides translation services through direct messages on Twitter. The service can translate the direct message into 21 different languages. All you need to is to follow @twanslate and then send your direct message with the appropriate language code. Twanslate will respond with the tanslated text through a Twitter DM. Could be a handy tool to have when vacationing abroad.

Twitblogs - Macro Blogging Meets Micro Blogging

Twitblogs is a "macro blogging" platform. When I say "macro", I mean the traditional blog platform without the 140 character limitation. Yeah so what? Well the interest thing is that Twitblogs has integrated in a 120 character section to the input form so you can write your "micro" blog entry for your main blog entry. As you post your blog entry it will post your "micro" blog entry to Twitter with a link back to your "macro" blog entry. I see this as one of those a-ha moments where you see into the future. I really think that this is a feature that we will start to see with some of the "macro" blogging platforms.

Tip: Since the service is in Alpha there are still some bugs with it and it could change quite drastically after this post is published. Currently they pull in your Twitter bio and provide a DoFollow link to the link in your bio. They also provide a DoFollow link in the post itself, but you need to use the www.domainname.com without the http:// to make it active.

PollDaddy - Twitter Polls

Came across this nice little service to send out polls in your Twitter stream. The service, Twitter Polls, is offered by PollDaddy. It is pretty straight forward to use. They provide you 110 characters to ask your question and allow you to have up to 20 answers. The service is offered in 30 plus languages. You can see my test poll at http://poll.fm/psjp.

Tip: Each poll gets an unique landing page that pulls in your Twitter bio. The Twitter profile link and the bio link are both DoFollow links.

Tweeple - Twitter Group on LinkedIn

There is a pretty active group of Tweeple (aka people on Twitter) on LinkedIn. The group boast over 3000 members and provides some insightful information and discussions about Twitter. If you are on LinkedIn and are a fan of Twitter, you should consider joining this group.

Mr. Tweet - Conceirge Service to Build Your Twitter Network

I was first alerted to Mr. Tweet through a tweet from @leeoden. Mr. Tweet is a service that finds influential people that you should be following. All you need to do is follow @mrtweet and the service will generate a report of influencers outside of your network based on your existing network and interactions. The service also provides a report of current followers that you should be following back (somewhat similar to FriendorFollow). Once the report is generated Mr. Tweet will send you a direct message with the link to the report.

The "Influencers in my network" report ranks the influencers from most important to least important. They show you the top Followers for each person as well as how often they post Tweets. The report provides a Following-to-Follower ratio. This ratio provides some insight into how influential the person is (the higher the ratio the more influential). There is also a link to the Google search results for each person. I like this feature because it provides some additional insight into who the person is and how they relate to your network.

Tweetwasters - Find How Much Time You Waste on Twitter

Want to find out how much time you spend on Twitter? Tweetwasters will just do that for you. Tweetwasters estimates that on average a user spends about 30 seconds on creating a Tweet. Multiply that by the number of Tweets you have produced and they provide you with the approximate number of days of your life you have spent on Twitter. The site provides a Hall of Fame of the Top 50 wasters on Twitter. Since this is a new service the Top 50 is changing often as more people come aware of the site. If you really want to promote how much time you waste on Twitter, just use the handy Wordpress plugin. You can see an example of the plugin in action on Sugarrae's blog.

Tip: The site provides an individual link to each profile that they calculate. While they nofollow the website link from your Twitter profile, they dofollow the Twitter profile link. So another easy way to build back links to your Twitter profile.

TrackThis - Track Packages Via Twitter

Need to track you Christmas package? Well the TrackThis program can help. TrackThis allows you to track packages from FedEx, UPS, USPS, and DHL right from your Twitter account. Just follow @trackthis and they will automatically follow you back. Then just send a direct message with the tracking number at the beginning of the message, followed by your nickname for the package. Every time there is a change in the location of the package TrackThis will send you a direct message. Another cool Twitter program!

TwellowHood - Find People in Your Hood

If your familiar with Twellow (a Twitter user directory) then you must check out their new addition, TwellowHood. TwellowHood allows one to search by state and by city to find neighboring Twits. It is pretty simple to find other interesting people within just two clicks. I searched Orlando and found over 1100 people from Orlando on Twitter. They rank the users by the number of followers and I come in at #78. This may be a great tool to use if you want to start a TweetUp in your area.

TwitSnip - Quote Text on Any Web Page

The folks at Twitter.Grader.com are providing a free tool called, TwitSnip. TwitSnip is a bookmarking tool that allows you to highlight a portion of a web page and post it to Twitter. The service will provide a shorten link back to the original source as well as the @user name associated with the URL. The service will also shorten any text within the snippet to decrease the length of the Tweet. The tool is available for FireFox, Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer.

Webinar: Twitter for Business

Duct Tape Marketing will be providing a FREE webinar, Twitter for Business. The webinar will feature guest host, Chris Brogan, a community and social media expert. The webinar start at 12noon CST on December 11. Register here.

Brand Yourself on Twitter

When setting up your personal or corporate Twitter profile, there are several things you should keep in mind.

If the Twitter account is to extend your personal brand always use the combination of your first and last name when setting up the account (note you only have 15 characters for the Username and 20 for the Name fields). If it will not fit you may even consider adding your profession (i.e GaryK_Lawyer). This may even help gain additional followers that maybe looking for people in a certain profession. If your name does not fit within the allowed number of characters you may want to include your full name at the beginning of your One Line Bio.

I have found that the character limitations prohibit some companies from using their branded name within the Username field. This can be a challenge, but there always seems to be a way to provide a meaningful Username that conveys the corporate name. I would also recommend adding "The official account of COMPANY NAME." to the beginning of the One Line Bio. This can help separate your real company account from a "fake" one. Jeremiah Owyang, of Forrester Research, even goes as far as to recommend cross linking your Twitter account from your corporate website to bring additional credibility to the Twitter account.

Well what happens if your company name is already taken? There has been some companies that have successfully gained control by contacting Twitter support and pleading their case. Darren Rowse, of Problogger, suggests following the account name and then @reply to them to see if they are willing to transfer the account over.

Tweetmas - Christmas Gift List

Want to create a Christmas Wish List? With Tweetmas, you can let all of your followers stay up to date on what Christmas gifts you would like to receive. All you need to do is just tweet @tweetmas and they will pull your gift request into their Twitter stream.