Are you familiar with the trending topics on Twitter?

If you are a Tweetizen, a habitué of the 140-character per tweet social media phenomenon that is Twitter, you probably are.

Looking at your Twitter homepage in its new layout or format, the trending topics can be found on the right side of the page with the heading “Trends.” Under “Trends,” you will find the most popular keywords that Tweetizens are tweeting about. It is usually preceded by the pound sign (#).

Trending topics on Twitter varies from time to time and it also varies according to location. A general feel of what the world is tweeting about may be seen by clicking on the “worldwide trends”. If you want to check “local trends” in your country or your city, just click the name of the country or city.

During the holidays, I got to spend more time following some trending topics on Twitter. It was so interesting to read everyone’s thoughts about a number of topics ranging from Christmas greetings, to love, to sports, celebrity sightings all over the world. But on one particular day I was really shocked to see a worldwide trending topic on “hate.”

Trending Topic on Hate

In a season of peace and gift-giving, I was really so surprised to see the following worldwide topics trending in one full day: #HATEMALAYSIA, #loveindonesia, #malaysians, #indonesians. It would seem that there was a full-blown Indonesia-Malaysia Twitter war happening right before my very eyes!

Well, the most sensible thing to do if you see trending topics like this one is to click on these topics and read about what other people are saying about it. I eventually found out that these trending hate topics were spurred by an ongoing AFF Final Cup football match between these two countries and fans were cheering and jeering each other. Apparently, the Indonesian Tweetizens, the second largest habitués of Twitter, were venting out their anger over accusations of cheating in the said football match.

But, this got me thinking: What if this Indonesian-Malaysian Twitter War instigated something more serious than just a war over a football match?

Trending Topic Of Peace and Love

I think when using social media like Twitter or Facebook, we should be mindful of the fact that we should not be instruments of instigating hate. Let these websites be instruments of forging connections, relationships, friendships, bridging gaps and borders, help, support, aid, and love. Opinions and personal thoughts and expressions are encouraged but I think we should be careful in making sure that we also do not offend the sensibilities of others.

In the next trending topic on Twitter, I pray that I don’t see the word “hate” ever again.

Read more about the Indonesia-Malaysia Twitter War here:

Spread Twitter love and peace! Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below. If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to share, retweet, or bookmark! Thank you!

To Your Success,

Elmar Sandyck

If you’ve been a Twitter user for quite sometime now, then you must already know about the changes
(Twitter Applications and OAuth) that they announced recently about Twitter Apps and URL wrapping. In case you missed these updates for Twitter Apps, let me tell you about it.

We all know that there are thousands of applications built using the Twitter API, right? They come in many varieties, including desktop applications, websites or Well, the first update has something to do with authorization rules for these applications:

The first update: Changes to how users authorize third-party Twitter applications.

Applications will begin to use OAuth to access Twitter accounts. This Twitter Applications and OAuth update is intended to make applications more secure and centralized.

OAuth enables Twitter applications to access users’ accounts without directly asking for, or storing, their passwords. Twitter says that desktop and mobile apps might ask for a password once this app update is in full effect, but will not need it again. We can view a list of all authorized apps under the “Connections” setting in our Twitter account.

For more information about Oauth, visit the Twitter blog.

The second update: Making URLs more manageable for users wanting to share links.

Many Twitter users use bit.ly to shorten URLs. There’s also ow.ly in Hootsuite, but Twitter is expanding its own URL wrapping service — t.co. Links shortened using this will still show the domain and part of the URL so that users know what they are clicking on, and the cool thing about this is that users will be quickly routed through Twitter’s malware checker before being processed on to the link itself!

According to Twitter, “a really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title.”

These updates for Twitter applications will be slowly rolled out for some users over the next few weeks, and should be available to everyone by the end of the year.

What do you think of Twitter’s new updates?

Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below. If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to share or bookmark! Thank you!

To Your Success,

Elmar Sandyck

My friend tweets a lot. She tweets when she wakes up in the morning, just before going to work, as soon as she’s back home, just before she goes to sleep, and at anytime in between that!

And no, she just doesn’t tweet to share about personal thoughts and activities…she uses Twitter for marketing her business.

What is Twitter?

Twitter, a micro-blogging tool, has become a powerful marketing instrument today. Almost every business uses Twitter for marketing, and why not? It has become a valuable tool in building your network, establishing connections, engaging in valuable conversations and making friends. All of these things are essential in marketing and public relations, and if you’re not yet sold on this micro-blogging phenomenon, now is the time to reconsider and use Twitter for marketing.

Here are the 5 ways you can utilize Twitter for marketing:

1. Promote blog articles, webinars, interesting news and more.
Share valuable information through your tweets. You not only promote your name and business – you get to share to thousands of people, who could retweet your information to their own followers!

2. Provide live updates.
If you’re attending a conference, seminar or trade show, you can use Twitter to announce last minute changes and events that are happening as it happens.

3. Announce specials, deals or sales.
If you have some exciting promotional activities, Twitter is a nifty way of getting the message across to your target market. Remember though, that Twitter should not be used as a pitch tool. This turns people off, so you don’t want to be doing any aggressive marketing here because this should be a place for sharing information and knowledge.

4. Eavesdrop and get valuable feedback.
You can also monitor what people are saying about any person, topic or company. Twitter has a search engine that lets you do just this. Or, you can use the hash tag #symbol.

5. Keep in touch with bloggers/media.
Bloggers abound on Twitter. Follow those who inspire you, and find others who have valuable information to share too. Be friends, and take advantage of the power of the retweet button to spread great information!

Indeed, Twitter is a great promotional and marketing tool, and for pointing to interesting things you’ve found on the web. It’s also great for building credibility and influence, so use it, and use it well.

If you have recently started tweeting for your business, or are just planning to use Twitter for marketing, I hope you found this post useful.

I do believe in the power of Twitter as a marketing and brand building tool, and if you like this post, please tweet this to your friends! You can also share this on any of your social networks. To get more tips like these and other topics on social networking, simply sign up using the form below to subscribe to my newsletter. Thank you!

To Your Success,

Elmar Sandyck

Are you using Twitter For Marketing?

Each online marketer who finds himself respectable or who is online for several months has a Twitter account nowadays; there’s no question about that.

But are they all using Twitter to its maximum potential AND, more important are they all at least using it THE RIGHT WAY?

Hmmm…. I don’t think so!

To be honest with you, when I first learned about Twitter, about two years ago, I didn’t see it’s potential; I even didn’t like it that much. It was a queer thing for me to send a short 140 character message multiple times a day to tell people what I had been up to. So I didn’t use it that much at first… and I certainly did not use it the right way…

Another “problem” I had was that the number of followers started growing, so it was impossible to keep up with the endless flow of messages from all the other people.

To cut it short, I did not see Twitters potential and I did not know how to use it in a practical way without spending hours and hours on it…

Maybe you feel or felt the same way, and I understand it exactly

But since I’ve understood how it works, I’m sharing with you some ideas and some useful Twitter applications that’ll make your Twitter experience such a pleasurable one and maybe most important will give you a way of using Twitter for marketing (without spamming other peoples accounts!)

You can use these resources to make your Twitter experience more productive and a great leverage of your time.

CAUTION !!! “When you read further from this point, you might end up being a Twitter Addict… So take it easy and brace yourself.”

Okay, since you’re willing to take the risk, read the overview for 10 Useful Twitter Applications:

• SocialOomph (used to be www.TweetLater.com) – Personally I use this to send automated Twitter welcome messages to new followers. There are many more things you can get from SocialOomph, check out the site for it.There are some bozos who use this tool to spam by sending their affiliate links on the welcome message. Don’t be one of them!! This is totally useless AND it will surely ruin your reputation.

→ “Remember with Twitter or any social networking site, you are creating relationships more than anything, so don’t ever spam!”

• TweetDeck – This cool tool makes it super easy for you to follow people you are interested in. This allows you to group people which makes their messages organized and easy for you to read along.
  They say TweetDeck is like the air traffic control for Twitter. With this great tool, you can connect with Facebook and MySpace friends through status updates, video and photo posts, comments, or voting and following your friends as they are placed in columns, to keep track of what they are doing.
  There is a similar service to TweetDeck, named HootSuite. The advantage of this service is that it is completely webbased.
  Find more about it on my post about HootSuite!

• Twellow is Twitter’s yellow pages directory, one of the useful Twitter applications you’ll surely love. This is the directory of Twitter accounts with hundreds of categories and advanced search features to find those people who really matter.
  There are many things you can do with Twellow. You can update your Twellow profile and categories as well as add links to your social media profiles. You can also come up with extended bio profiles and add all the links you want. It’s never too hard to follow anyone you are interested in with Twellow and the best part is that it also comes with free registration.

• Twollo is a keyword-based tool that automates the process of getting more targeted Twitter followers than you can possibly imagine. A very useful application that you can setup and forget. Once it’s set up it keeps running and working in the background without you lifting a finger.

• BubbleTweet is the cool tool that allows you to drop little friendly video notes to your Twitter followers, making it easier for you to have as many followers as you want with a Video Bubble Tweet.

• TwitterFriendAdder – This tool is very helpful in targeting specific followers. This allows you to easily remove and add Twitter followers as you want.
  There are other tools that can do this but if you want to do it fast and easy, you can get TwitterFriendAdder. This tool saves you a lot of time, you can find more information on this page.

• Twitter Karma – This is another tool that lets you remove and add followers. It’s one of the useful Twitter applications that are free but there’s a limitation to it. When you start having many Twitter followers, it takes a very, very long time to do so…

• TwitPic - This cool tool allows you to share your pictures on Twitter. Very cool!

• TwitterCounter – This highly informative tool let’s you know at a glance the number of followers, friends, and number of updates. This would truly help you in comparing one account with another.

• TwitterGrader – This great tool helps you gauge the power of your Twittering. With this tool, you can check on the power leveraged by your Twitter profile. It also includes the number of followers, these followers’ power, and the level to which you engage in a community.

This is merely an overview of some very useful Twitter applications I personally use. As said before these tools will help you a lot when you are using twitter for marketing.

This list is not all there is to it, there are much more twitter applications out there, but these 10 applications are very good and practical.

P.S.

When you find this post helpful and you want more information like this, you can leave your name and email address in the boxes below. We’ll send you more information you’ll be interested in.

You can also bookmark this page to look back to when you’re in need of a great resource and you can tweet it by using the green button on the top of this page.

Till Next Time,

Elmar Sandyck