Recently Twitter has announced several changes… the latest ones are:

1. Terms of Services. Four main areas were affected by the Terms of Services – Advertising, Ownership, API’s and Spam.  The most important one to many users is the Ownership. 

Ownership—Twitter is allowed to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute” your tweets because that’s what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you. Added to this is more notice to users that because of this term, you need to be sure to give credit where credit is due when retweeting or reposting other Twitter Users content.

2. Design.  Twitter has added four new background designs available under your profile, settings and design.

Great for people just wanting to use the templates, gives a few more choices. I still think most people should take the time to create their own custom background or have one created for you. We talked about this back in July and how important a background is to your branding.

Twitter is definitely evolving and trying to keep up with the needs of users yet make it a worthy and worthwhile service to users.  Great to see.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, twitter background

I have kind of experimented somewhat with Twitter these past few months when I opened a second profile.

When I started @timeontaskva I built my following one by one, picking people I wanted to be connected with and following them back if I made the choice.  Nothing automated about it.

With @mytwitrva I started it off with some followers and then sent it on its merry way with some automated systems for following.

The results are most interesting…

The profile I built by hand has more followers that have value to me, ones I enjoy connecting with. The more automated profile is building up contacts that seem to have tweets/updates that don’t do much for me.  Oh, there are contacts there that I do value, but the majority seem to publish updates such as: Make Money online guaranteed or Quickly grow your Twitter following go here …

The scary part is a few of these (not these two above) I recognized from having helped clients fix up some spamming and hacking issues with their twitter accounts. Each time, my clients had signed up and entered their twitter username and password to the systems promising lots of followers. Soon after, some funky stuff started happening with their accounts – spam posts/updates were published from their twitter accounts. In one case the account was suspended. Not good.

I keep cleaning out the second account so that it will give me connections I would prefer, but that takes more time and eventually I will have to spend even more time and energy to make the contacts I wanted in the first place.

Lesson learned from this is an age old one: Quality vs Quantity.

You can certainly build up quantity and have quality; but only if you seek out quality while doing so. Many of these promises and guarantees may not bring you the value you are looking for, not that I am saying they are all bad .

A little something to keep in mind as you go about “Building your Tribe”.

Technorati Tags: contacts, quality, Twitter, virtual assistant

One of my clients – and one who is my best social media success story – recently had their Facebook fanpage disappear.

No warnings, no explanation – just gone. It was a fanpage we have been working on for a few months and one that had more than 500 fans and a lot of good interaction with the fans.

I sent off an email to several areas of facebook, but will not be holding my breath for a quick response. I did get the automatic emails stating they have received my request and that ‘we may contact you for more details’

Honestly, I expect nothing less from support of a ‘free’ platform that has millions of users. Users of any of these types of applications are at the mercy of the limited resources available to support them.

This loss of a fanpage is one more scenario that makes me think the unthinkable for many people.  Is it time for some of these applications to evolve and move to the next level? A level that requires users to pay (Yes, I said pay) for a service in order to receive more reliable support and service.  A service you can count on, especially when using it for business.

“You get what you pay for”, my Mom always said. A statement that certainly rings true when you are dealing with millions of people using a free platform.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Social Media, social networking, Twitter, virtual assistant

You know, I honestly enjoy my time on Twitter…

Tonight I saw a tweet about a live party on Ustream with @MariSmith (for those not familiar, she is a “Relationship and Buzz Marketing Specialist” born in Scotland, lived in Canada -yay – and now is in California.  She is very successful with Facebook, Twitter and Social Media) , so I decided to join the party. My virtual friend @Teri8D is always a reliable source of good social media fun, and it was her tweet!

Onto Ustream (a type of live broadcasting)  I go and find about 60 or so people live online with Mari who is streaming from her kitchen in California. A friend flits about in the background helping prepare for the ‘live’ party a little later.  It was great fun, chatting about some social media tips and even just chatting.  She even had a few draws for some prizes, and I won one of them!

I correctly answered a question about facebook and won @Davelakhani ’s Book “How to Sell when Nobody’s Buying”  (I think it was, in the excitement I may have won a different title of Dave’s – no matter I say, It’s Dave Lakhani!)

Why so exciting? I have been following Denise Wakeman’s blogs for some time and she has mentioned Dave and his book many times. It is too cool that I won a copy and cannot wait to receive it!

So, that’s my Twitter Good News for today, I won a book.

Have you any good news or success stories from Twitter?

PS. I asked Dave’s permission to put his book pic here… so it’s ok

Technorati Tags: social networking, Twitter, virtual assistant

Personally the biggest item on my list is an easy way to Retweet someone’s fantastic post. Quickly, easily and directly in Twitter.

I find it odd that an application that discusses and has rules regarding Reposting others’ content, does not make it easy to do so.

One of the hardest things I have to teach during training sessions with clients is teach them how to do send an ‘at reply’ directly on Twitter. (I know it’s easy on Tweetdeck and other platforms, but getting into a management system is even more complicated and sometimes too overwhelming for people new to Twitter)

So, that’s the #1 item on my wishlist.  What’s on yours? What would you like to see? Think of what would make your life on Twitter easier/more efficient?

List your items here, and I will forward the entire list off to the guys at Twitter… you never know, feedback can sometimes be a great kickstart for new ideas!

Include your Twitter id as well, so we can connect there too!

Technorati Tags: Social Media, Twitter, virtual assistant

August 6th, 2009… the day that Twitter almost died.

My fear was near realized today when both Twitter and Facebook were part of targeted attacks that caused issues with their service which means for us users – we cannot Log In!

Once I realized this early in the morning…as it is part of my practice daily to log on to Twitter and Facebook – I then ended up doing some unexpected blog reading – Mashable is fabulous at keeping me on top of things with his updates.  This lead me to sending notes to clients and after finishing some other work, I realized this Denial of Service Attack was not going to end soon.  I headed to the beach with the kids, got out my pen and paper and started writing some blog posts.

Yes, your Blog.  it’s another way of using social networking though some don’t always realize the benefits in blogging. (more…)

Technorati Tags: Social Media, social networking, Twitter, virtual assistant

I have been getting many inquiries lately and thought maybe it would help to tell people how I learned to use Twitter and Facebook and more…

How did I start? Well, I read… a lot!  If you check the Resource Page on this site, you’ll find several great places to kickstart you.  There will be more added as well, so feel free to re-visit this page to see the updates. (more…)

Technorati Tags: Facebook, online training, social media training, social networking, Twitter, virtual assistant

Recently, there was a grand example from Nova Scotia (my home province) that makes it clear to businesses and consumers exactly how social media has changed the way these parties interact.

Dave Carroll , a musician from Halifax, Nova Scotia, had his guitar broken in the spring of 2008 when his band was on a United Airlines flight.  United refused to acknowledge responsibility or pay for the damages even though there were witnesses who saw the ‘luggage” being thrown around during unloading.

After many months of trying to get United to accept responsibility for the damage (it cost $1200 to have his guitar fixed) Dave finally decided to take his frustration out the best way he knew how… via his music. (more…)

Technorati Tags: business, Social Media, social networking, Twitter

As many know, the Twitip Blog is one of my favourite places, among others, to keep up to date with all things twitter-related. Twitip is run by Darren Rowse, a blogger from Australia (@problogger) with help from some others as well (@larakulpa)

Well, yesterday I joined in many others to help answer a reader question – What are your top tips?  There were many great tips from people all over. Today someone send me a note on Twitter congratulating on being mentioned on the Twitip blog. This is when I discovered that Twitips blogger, Lara Kulpa, pulled out her favourites from all those comments, and mine was one of them.  Too Cool! and an honour for a devoted Twitter user.

There is always great and up-to-date advice here for anyone using
Twitter and I encourage you to read and subscribe to Twitips!

What tip of mine did they pick out… you’ll have to jump over to Twitip to read it!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, social networking, Twitter, virtual assistant

One of the most important branding tools you can do with your Twitter profile is to create a customized background.  Personally, I create them in Adobe Photoshop using clients unique images, logos and anything else possible to make it part of their business brand and image. 

Not everyone has Photoshop, nor the skills to use it… there are many other resources on the internet and several are very easy to use.  Today, in my readings, I came across a blog post that makes reference to several of these do it your self sites and other ones that help you create twitter backgrounds.

Thanks to Bill Stevens at the DailyTwitip for his great post and I am sure many of you can use one of these resources to set up your own custom background.

Technorati Tags: branding, Social Media, Twitter, twitter background, virtual assistant