Secret Twitter Tricks for Newbies & Pros
1. Choose a client software
Most individuals install a client software program (a way to send and receive Twitter “tweets”) on their computer. Here are a few choices Twitter shows on their download page, along with other popular clients:
Digsby IM + Email + Social Networks
Twitteroo Fast Tweeting, a few nice settings
Twitbin Uses Firefox Browser - plugin
Spaz Mac/Windows/Linux
Snitter Mac/Windows (Linux in the works)
Twhirl Mac/Windows (Connects to multiple accounts - very popular)
TweetDeck Mac/Windows/Linux (my personal favorite)
Twitterrific Mac (Application that lets you read/post “tweets”)
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2. Twitter Shortcuts
Currently I subscribe to a few news groups. However, there has been an occasion where I just didn’t wish to receive any “tweets” (text messages) from Twitter for a short period of time on my cell phone. The following commands will allow you to take full control of Twitter from your cell phone.
Type the following commands into your SMS device (for the newbie, here is how you can use your cell phone to command Twitter in a pinch):
1. Text Twitter (with the phone number of 40404)
2. Enter the following commands as a txt message, and send the message with your command of choice.
OFF: turns phone notifications off, to silence direct messages too, send ‘off’ again
ON: turns phone notifications on
SLEEP: turns phone notifications off
WAKE: turns phone notifications on
FOLLOW username: turns on notifications for a specific individual
LEAVE username : turns off notifications for a specific individual
D username message: sends a private message to a specific individual, but they must be following you to receive it (D joesmith Hello World)
@username: sends a public message to a specific individual (@joesmith Hellow World)
WHOIS username: returns bio info for a Twitter member
GET username : returns the last update from a specific individual
FAVE username : marks the last update of a user as a favorite
TRACK word : returns updates from the Twitter community containing the tracked word
TRACKING: returns a list of words you’re tracking
UNTRACK word : stops tracking a word
UNTRACK all : stops tracking all words
INVITE 4155225678: invites a friend via SMS/text message to join Twitter **(use their phone number with no spaces or dashes)**
STATS: returns statistics with your number of “followers” and “following”
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3. How to Backup Twitter
On July 24, 2008, Twitter lost many users following/followers. Twitter.com states “We’ve restored 99.6% of following/followers that disappeared. numbers & profile pics in sidebar may not be accurate until tomorrow afternoon 07:37 PM July 24, 2008 from web.”
I felt a large pit in my stomach, knowing I had lost many individuals I followed, and could not recall all of them to “search” their user name again. Many wonderful individuals were stumbled upon.
After much research on the Internet I located two choices.
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If you do/don’t use MS Outlook, here is very good reason to use it. There is a plug-in tool called “OutTwit” which allows you to “tweet” with MS Outlook. The benefit of using MS Outlook for your tweeting needs out weighs the desire to not use MS Outlook. Here’s a quick explanation why. Outlook downloads the usernames you correspond with daily from Twitter.com (the same way e-mail works). This pulls the information from Twitter’s server to your hard drive. Now you have the usernames stored in MS Outlook that you correspond with, if Twitter happens to lose our information again.
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The best I saved for last. The brilliant Twitter member vkoser, posted a wonderful step-by-step guide on how to download your “following” and “followers” directly from Twitter, and export them into an MS Excel file, for safe keeping. Thank you vkoser!
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4. Schedule Future Dated Tweets & Autoresponder
Have you ever wanted to “tweet” an announcement for something upcoming, but knew you wouldn’t be available? Have you ever wanted to keep your “tweets” going while you were playing with your children? With TweetLater, you can set several “tweets” for a specific time to appear on Twitter.
TweetLater.com has a user friendly interface, with free service to boot. Members can set up an account to autorespond to new followers as well.
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You Won’t Break It…
Play around with these suggestions. Don’t be intimidated, or afraid to break something. You will never know what a wonderful world Twitter can be, until you unlock the power of its tools.
Now go play…
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