Twitter Guide: Learn some interesting tips and tricks for Twitter.
Q: I am a blogger and want to cross-post articles from my blog into Twitter?
A: Go to FeedBlitz, type the address of the feed in the Subscribe box and choose Twitter from the subscription options. The other option is Twitter Feed but that requires you to have an OpenID.
Q: I know that TwitPic allows me to post pictures on Twitter but I want to use my existing Flick account with Twitter.
A: Go to TwitterGram and associate your Flickr name with your Twitter account. Now assign a special tag (say Twitter) and any picture that you post on Flickr with that Tag will automatically get posted in your Twitter account as well.
Q: I just ordered a laptop on eBay and the owner shipped it via UPS. I want to track this package on Twitter.
A: Follow TrackThis on Twitter and send this bot a Direct Message with your Airway Bill Number. You’ll be notified each time your package changes location. Works with FedEx, UPS, DHL and USPS.
Q. I want to add events in my Google Calendar using Twitter?
A: Go to Twittercal, add gCal as your virtual friend on Twitter and add events by simply sending direct messages to your new Twitter friend.
Q: I am a blogger. How can I add “tweet this” links to all my blog post?
A: See detailed instructions on how to add ‘Tweet This’ to Blogger or WordPress blogs. The permalinks are shortened automatically in the tweet.
Q: Oh! I just saw a spam profile on Twitter that is using my picture and tweets. I want to report impersonation on Twitter.
A: Send a message to Twitter spam watch team at @spam with the suspicious user name.
Q: My Twitter friend just sent me a tweet in French. I want to translate his message into English.
A: Follow twanslate and send a direct message with the text you want to get translated along with the language code of the target language (en for English, fr from French, etc.).
Q: I want to use Twitter as a Gmail Notifier.
A: Create a new Twitter account and set the status of updates as “Protected” so that the updates don’t appear in a public timeline. Now subscribe to your Gmail RSS feed using FeedBlitz and become mutual friends.
Q: I want to use Twitter as an alarm clock to remind me that I have to pick my daughter from school in 30 minutes.
A: Follow timer – send a direct message with the reminder time and it will ping you at that time. For instance “d timer 30 pick daughter”.
Q: I want to use Twitter for ego surfing.
A: Go to tweetbeep and set up alerts for certain keywords and web URLs. You’ll get an email notification as soon as someone mentions you or your brand or your blog posts in their tweets.
Q: While I like the default Twitter search engine, I want to know about other alternatives.
A: Try Tweet Scan and Monitter. Unlike Summize, you don’t have to refresh the Monitter page each time there’s a new result matching your search query. And it support multi-column search so may track multiple keywords on the same screen.
Q: I want to conduct a quick and simple poll on Twitter. Is it possible?
A: Go to StrawPoll and create a poll. Your Twitter contacts can participate in the poll by simply sending an @reply message.
More Resources:
1. Twitter Guide for Business Users
2. Popular Twitter Acronyms
3. Who Should You Follow on Twitter
4. Create a Mosaic of Twitter followers
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/twitter-guide-do-everything-with-twitter/4916/
Reader Comments
Hey Amit, this is a great post. It has some great resources and very good ideas. It is clear that you have your finger on the pulse of using Twitter to both speak to and listen to an audience.
The info on strawpoll and feedblitz are particularly useful. We have just launched a twitter id for IBM developerWorks and are trying to find ways to tell our audience what is going on without being too ‘noisy’. The other big reason that we are out there is to do informal polling – hence strawpoll will be useful.
Written by Branavan Ganesan on 10.13.08
Tight, terse list which effectively taught me some useful tips I didn’t know yet. THANK YOU for helping me get more out of my 140 characters! (And then some.)
Written by Torley on 10.13.08
This sure is an amazing list.
Though i would like to add the # facility that they provide thereby allowing you to club updates wtr 1 particular event together and then search them on Twitter Search.
For example I was tweeting about my experience about Nokia 5320 on Twitter, so i simply would tweet with #5320 in the beginning. Then all i have to do is go to Twitter Search (search.twitter.com) and search for #5320, the result is all my tweets with #5320 are listed. link
pretty handy feature for live tweeting about events.
Written by Manan on 10.13.08
Great tips. I have always been interested in making my twitter experience better. I appreciate it!
Written by Ellie on 10.13.08
This is cool! I didn’t know about half of these, and while some of them are redundant for me, others aren’t.
I agree with Branavan about the # feature. I believe it is technically called a “hash tag”
Oh, and FYI in the 2nd Q: it suggests that you might want to post images from Filck. Looks like spell check was a little too hasty.
Written by Willie on 10.13.08
Hey Amit,
Great post. I have just joined Twitter. What a great way to start – having someone to guide you through. Thanks again. I will certainly explore all the utilities as given by you.
Cheers !
Sudev
Written by Sudev on 10.13.08
thanks for that. as a newer twitterer, i sometimes wonder how to do stuff i see others do.
agree with Manan – just came from a tech conference where we all followed and posted conference related tweets using the # feature. it was a great way to build up personal networks too.
Written by Kelly on 10.13.08
Is there Any Way to Post Twitter Posts In Future… I mean Setting Date and Time .. for the Posts…
Written by Debajyoti Das on 10.13.08
thanks for the useful tips. many of these i never knew before, but now find interesting and useful to use services.
found this interesting too – link
Written by நிமல் – NiMaL on 10.14.08
Wow. I didn’t know Twitter was so useful! I really should be taking more notice.
Thanks for giving me a kick to get going, and for giving us all a fantastic starting point to use Twitter to its full potential.
Written by Leila on 10.14.08
This is really useful. Never knew about these usages of twitter!
Written by Veera on 10.15.08
Some great twitter extras listed, looks like ill be spending the next few hours checking them out.
Written by Gold Coast Internet Marketing on 10.16.08
One thing I use all the time via twitter is the task list tool Remember The Milk (www.rememberthemik.com). If you link your rtm account with your twitter account you can create tasks in rtm through twitter. I use this all the time since it allows me to create rtm tasks as text messages to twitter.
Written by Phil Hollenback on 10.18.08
+1 for RTM. It’s by far my favourite GTD manager, and since it syncs with both Twitter and Google Calendar, I have my alerts and mobile task creation covered.
Written by Sumant on 10.29.08
Tried link for monitoring keywords in tweets but I found there was constantly 40-60% CPU usage in Firefox when its running.
Written by techandlife on 11.29.08
Thank you for the great list of resources for Twitter. Look forward to seeing more Twitter action soon.
Written by Gold Coast Golf on 01.21.09
I have a strange problem with Twitter. Some months ago, I subscribed directly on a blog though feedblitz (having never created a Feedblitz account previously). Recently, I have discovered that every time the owner of tht blog updates, Twitter sends out a Tweet to my followers that the blog was updated. I used Tweetdeck, but these posts are sent through Feedblitz. I have done everything I can think of to stop this issue, but nothing has worked.
I know the owner of this blog, and she is an ethical person who would never run any sort of untoward practice like tweet spamming or anything. Neither of us know how to stop this.
Any ideas?
Written by Ros on 01.22.09
About Twitter as a Gmail notifier??? Is there another site to use that is free instead of feedblitz I am noyt interested in paying for Gmail notification
Written by Paul on 02.11.09