Twonate, giving is good, twitter is fun!

The Basics

Twonate lets you donate to charities you think are worthwhile. They make it easy for you to donate, encourage new donations and even start your own cause.

What They Say

By tweeting donations, word about your charity or cause is spread across the twitter network. Once a donation is tweeted, that person’s followers may also be inclined to do the same. Then of course more people will be made aware of your charity or cause drawing even more donations.

Pros

• helps remind others to donate too
• great list of charities on the FAQ’s

Cons

• will people be comfortable

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

Twonate is a simple way to donate and promote a cause. Retweet when needed.

Visit Twonate to support your favorite cause:  http://twonate.com/

1. Add a ribbon to your avatar using twibbon.
2. Visit the experience project to tweet a cause
3. Donate with twonate
4. Encourage your blog readers
5. Tweet your followers
6. Visit The Red Cross , Oxfam or Care are just a few of the many relief charities
7. Donate supplies, medicine, fresh water, clothes and food
8. Organize a local event with twitvite
9. Consider donating your time

Those are just a few quick suggestions. Remember to always verify that the site you are on is real – make sure you are donating to a cause before you give them your details.

auto dm is a waste of time

I’m pretty sure it’s not just me. I think it’s time to banish auto dm  on twitter or at least have a rethink. The dm feature is a great tool to connect in a private conversation with any of your followers but it becomes hard to do when your box is full of spam type message that say “thanks for following, I’ve got a gift” or something along those lines. A private message is something that should benefit a user in a way that adds immediate connection and value.

I’ve seen very few well done auto dm messages and the time it takes to remove them all or go through them to discern which ones are real is a vast chore.

One solution might include auto @reply instead, which would make a user consider the value instead of splashing out a message across the board that everyone can see. If a message doesn’t contribute it wastes time (in that instance). The other problem is how do you as a user choose the ones to reply to.

Maybe the follow process should be refined or a little more difficult. I go to great lengths to choose my followers and actually manually review most of them. I want to find users that not only have common interest but ones that create quality tweets and have a small enough community that it will allow them to interact with me on a regular basis.

share your solutions and thoughts

Curious then, what do you guys think about auto dm? Do you have any solutions and ideas to make it a more efficient and pleasurable experience? Should it be banished. I’d love to hear some thoughts and solutions, so please comment and retweet this article to create a dialogue that will provide an effective long term resolve.

The Basics

Refollow is one of the few fully functional follow management tools.  Lets you filter, unfollow and follow your twitter user effectively.

What They Say

Twitter relationship manager that was developed by Originate Labs. Most of that won’t mean much until you dive in and play with it, so give it a spin

Pros

• easy management of followers and non followers with great filters
• quick access to twitter api
• very up to date and detailed user info

Cons

• doesn’t find new “ideal” followers

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

Refollow is one of the best twitter tools and one of a handful of effective follow management tools. Will retweet this one permanently.

Visit Refollow to manage your profile: http://refollow.com/refollow/index.html

The Basics

Twitter Karma helps you sort and filter your followers. Login and WHACK your profile and retrieve your follower list. After you’ve filtered you can do a mass follow or unfollow on the users you have marked.

What They Say

Twitter desperately needs page navigation on followers / following list. Also sort functionality by type (reciprocated or not) is a must.

Pros

• does an effective job filtering and sorting
• quick unfollow or bulk unfollow

Cons

• would be nice to integrate into a client or twitter
• profile views limited
• perhaps batches of 25 to make review easier

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

Twitter Karma is an effective follow management tool. Will add to list of followers.

Visit Twitter Karma to manage your profile:  http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

We will not be posting over the holiday season – next post, January 4th, 2010. See you in the New Year. Be safe and enjoy.

the easiest way to promote your cause through twitter

The Basics

twibbon let’s you promote your cause or someone else’s by overlaying an image on your icon profile picture. Follow a trend, support a cause, promote your team. Thousands of causes and hundreds of thousands of users.

What They Say

a team who are passionate about the immediate and viral power of Twitter, and who believe that there has never been a better time for small groups of talented individuals to affect global change using the web.

Pros

• takes only seconds to add
• wide selection of causes
• excellent way to promote your cause

Cons

• perhaps more assistance in creating your own twibbon – a tutorial?

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

twibbon is a nice branding touch. Already following this one.

Visit twibbon to tweak your profile:  http://twibbon.com/

Twitter is a useful tool for productivity, promotion, search and community but with a large user base that’s growing every day, I bet you never thought of a few ways Twitter can help you for Christmas.

Here’s a list of a few simple things you can do. With so many tools and profiles, I’ll let you discover those needles in a haystack and give you a few that I’ve found.

1. find your presents for a deal, perhaps using cheaptweet
2. discover last minute vacation deals
3. find or arrange great events – you can use twitvite for a simple tweetup
4. track santa at Norad
5. discover and find great Christmas recipes
6. stuck for great gift ideas – try a twitter search engine like twazzup and get realtime ideas and answers
7. share and enjoy the spirit
8. promote your favorite charity
9. find organizations in need of a volunteer
10. send a card via twitter, instead of using snail or email

It seems that life is getting more and more easy if you use the tools we are given to your advantage. Give it a try and you can continue to use these ideas for the remainder of the year.

I’d love it if you shares your Christmas twitter use in our comment thread.

1. want Christmas tips – follow @christmas on Twitter
2. want Christmas cheer – here’s a good list of fun people to follow
3. change your Twitter background & blog theme to a nice seasonal theme
4. put up a nice seasonal avatar
5. change your blog header
6. add a follow me button to your blog with a Christmas theme.
7. write some great Christmas content for your users
8. do keyword research and optimize your postings
9. use Twitter and other social media to search for users that are “looking for something” – don’t wait for your audience to come to you
10. send out some free gifts or deals to your online friends and audience
11. donate and promote a charity on your site this season – and then do it all year round
12. whether you get into the Christmas spirit or not – spread some Christmas cheer anyway

There you have it – twelve twitter twips for christmas to make your audience a little more festive.

simple siment – do one thing from this list to get in the spirit time: 5 minutes or less

keep your tweets short

If you leave people room to retweet they are more likely to do it. Things have to be easier for everyone. Think about it! You need to at least leave enough space for the characters in your user name plus 3 for the RT and space between. But…what if they want to comment too. Give them a chance to say something in return. Try it. I think you will find an increase in your retweets.

say things worth retweeting

If you just tweet fluff, nobody is going to retweet it. It reflects them too. So, take the time to think about what you tweet, blog, link to and share on the web as a standard rule of thumb. Adding a relevant #hashtag may help too. If you are retweeting something with a link, make sure it is from a reliable source.

Thinking about what you say will go a long way. While tweeting catchy titles and being clever might help, general quality content is also key. If you don’t know how create great sentences, check out the quality tweeters in your community and start to emulate the type of messages they get out. Practice will make it a habit.

retweet your community

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But if you don’t take the time visiting your community, checking out their websites, viewing tweets and sharing them with others they are less likely to pay attention to you. Gratitude goes a long way and relationships is what it is all about. A few simple tweets every day will help you build a reputation as a member that participates and shares.

simple siment – retweet 3 people every day this week.

Those three things will definitely increase your retweets. If you want to get retweeted more just practice them on a regular basis.