The Beginner’s Guide To Twitter

By Tim Priebe on July 30, 2009 at 6:30 am in Social Networking

Twitter bird winkingThinking about starting a Twitter account? Want a quick overview of Twitter and its lingo and customs? Then this is for you!

What is Twitter?

Simply put, Twitter is like instant messenger on broadcast. People who sign up for Twitter can subscribe to multiple people’s updates, and those updates will then appear in chronological order on their home page.

From a business standpoint, there are several advantages to having a Twitter account. If you can create an account people are willing to subscribe to, your updates will appear on their home page. So you can market directly to them without spending anything but your time.

Another advantage is being able to establish relationships and maintain them easily online. You can “meet” people on Twitter, then eventually meet them in real life and already have an established relationship. You can also follow people you met in real life, but would otherwis be in contact with on a regular basis. And you can help others by answering questions.

Twitter Lingo

Twitter home page

There are many terms that are unique to Twitter. To get you up to date, here’s the definition of many of those terms.

Tweet - This can be either a verb or a noun. A tweet is an update or micro-blog that you sent out. To tweet is to write and send out that update.

Tweeter - Someone who uses Twitter.

Follow - To subscribe to someone’s updates, so that they will appear on your home page.

@Reply - A tweet that is publicly broadcast, but directed to a specific person. You write one by simply putting @username anywhere in the message, generally at the beginning. i.e. @tandswebdesign Do you design business cards as well?

Direct Message - A private message, only viewable by the intended recipient. You can only send direct messages to people that are following you.

Retweet - Rebroadcasting a tweet someone else posted. Generally done in the form: RT @username: Original message. i.e. RT @amber_hanks: http://twitpic.com/9jbjy - I hate ie6

Hash Tag - A way to track topics on Twitter. You add a #, followed by a keyword of some sort. i.e. Thanks to everyone who came to the Marketing Rxpo. We had a great time, and loved talking with everyone! #edmondrxpo

Other Twitter Customs

Twitter Fail WhaleWhen mentioning other Twitter users in posts, use their @username so they will be linked to. i.e. Going out on a date with my lovely wife, @priebechick, tonight

On Fridays, there’s an event called Follow Friday. The convention is to use the hash tag #followfriday, and to mention several people worth following on Twitter. i.e. My 1st #FollowFriday! Check out @divainteriors, @shawnJroberts, @sastubblefield, @WhitneyFleming, @moniqueterrell, @rhukill & @fallonbrooks

The Fail Whale is the screen shown when Twitter servers are over capacity, and Twitter is temporarily unavailable. Generally, immediately clicking the refresh button on your browser will clear up the problem.

Because Twitter limits messages to 140 characters, many services exist to shorten URLs from something like http://www.tandswebdesign.com/blog/2009/07/bocce-ball-on-fun-friday/ to http://tr.im/tdlI. Those include sites like http://tr.im, http://bit.ly and http://tinyurl.com.

If you have any Twitter questions, be sure to ask. We’d be happy to help!

P.S. Feel free to follow me on Twitter, or to follow T&S Web Design.

Bocce Ball on Fun Friday!

By Tim Priebe on July 20, 2009 at 2:00 pm in Fun Friday!

Recently at T&S, we started having Fun Friday! every Friday at lunch. We take a two hour break at lunch-time to eat and have fun together.

Last Friday, we played Bocce Ball. The guys were thoroughly beaten by the girls, at an embarrassing 21 to 7. Here are some pictures of our terrible defeat.



Free One Page Website Workshop

By Tim Priebe on July 18, 2009 at 10:39 am in Technical, Workshops, freebies

Laptop in Field - One Page Website WorkshopJoin us for this free workshop! In an hour and a half, learn how to create a website and get it online.

We’ll be providing attendees with several one page website templates to choose from. Then you’ll learn how to fill in your template with actual content.

Once your one page website is ready, we’ll show you how to purchase a domain name and hosting, so your website has a place to live online.

Finally, we’ll look at testing and uploading the final website.

We’d love to see you at this event. If you think you might come, please RSVP through our One Page Website Workshop event page on Facebook.

Free T&S Orange Icon!

By Dave Roach on July 17, 2009 at 6:00 am in freebies

Orange Sizes

Now everyone can have fun with their very own ‘Orange’ icon fresh from T&S. You can use it for whatever you want! Here are a couple ideas:

  • You could change all of your icons to oranges
  • You could change just some icons to oranges
  • You could change one icon to an orange
  • You could put an orange on your dock and look at how pretty it is
  • You could print out a copy of the orange and pretend to eat it
  • You could invert the orange and make it a blue

As you can see, the orange icon is very fun and versatile, so download it for free today!

Download Orange Icon

Help 8 year old Dillon go to camp

By Tim Priebe on July 16, 2009 at 2:48 pm in Client Plug, General

Diabetes Solutions of Oklahoma logoOne of our clients is Diabetes Solutions of Oklahoma. One of the things they do is run camps for kids with diabetes, so they can hang out with others in a similar situation to their own, and learn how to take care of themselves. I recently received the following email from Casey Bottoms, our contact at DSOK.

Tim,

I recently came across a camper who really needs some help. Dillon is 8 years old and has Type 1 diabetes. His mother passed away and his father works on a limited income. His dad is a very hard worked (as well as a very dedicated parent) and is having some trouble sending his son to diabetes camp. Dillon desperately wants to meet friends with diabetes and feel like a “normal” kid. We were able award him with a $300 scholarship. He still needs $150 to be able to attend.

Do you know of a business or individual that would be interested in donating to Dillon? I really feel like this family could use some additional support and that he would greatly benefit from this program.

Thank you for your time,

Casey Leigh Bottoms

Community Liaison
Diabetes Solutions-OK, Inc.
4005 NW Expressway, Suite 600
Oklahoma City, OK 73116
(405) 843-4386
(405) 843-3455 (Fax)

Please feel free to contact Casey directly, or, if you feel more comfortable emailing me, you can do that as well.

Thanks!

Display the top level category in Wordpress

By Tim Priebe on at 12:00 pm in Development, How-To, Technical

Wordpress LogoThe is just a quick Wordpress code snippet for those Wordpress programmers or code dabblers out there.

Recently we needed a page in Wordpress to display the top parent page title rather than the current page’s title as the heading on the page. Here’s the code we used to accomplish that:

<?
$currPost = $post;
while ($currPost->post_parent) {
  $currPost = $currPost->post_parent;
}
$title = get_the_title($currPost);
?>

<h2>[ <?php echo $title; ?> ]</h2>

Manipulating Wordpress strings that print directly

By Tim Priebe on July 13, 2009 at 9:00 am in Development, How-To, Technical, html

Disclosure: This post is for tech-inclined Wordpress users, who like to code, or even do it out of necessity. If that doesn’t interest you at all, or you have no idea what I’m talking about, feel free to ignore this post.

We’re big fans of Wordpress around here. Unfortunately, many of Wordpress’s functions directly print out text and HTML instead of returning a string that can be manipulated directly.

Fortunately, there is a way around that limitation, ob_start. You can feel free to read the  documentation of ob_start, but the short version is that it buffers your output temporarily so you can save it as a string and manipulate it before outputting it.

Let’s look at an example. We’ve added some meta data to a post to display some dates and locations on a page. (Click to enlarge)

Wordpress meta data

Now let’s look at the code.

<?php the_meta(); ?>

The above code outputs the following HTML:

<ul class='post-meta'>

<li><span class='post-meta-key'>July 14, 2009:</span> Marketing Rxpo</li>

<li><span class='post-meta-key'>July 7, 2009:</span> Client Mixer</li>

</ul>

We want two changes. First, we don’t want the colon (:) after the date. Second, we want the spans to have a class of Date instead of post-meta-key. With the code as is, Wordpress just displays the info, with no way to change it. So let’s use ob_start instead:

<?php
ob_start();
the_meta();
$out = ob_get_clean();
$out =  str_replace(':</span>', '</span>', $out);
$out =  str_replace('post-meta-key', 'Date', $out);
echo $out;
?>

Here’s the output we get now:

<ul class='post-meta'>
<li><span class='Date'>July 14, 2009</span> Marketing Rxpo</li>
<li><span class='Date'>July 7, 2009</span> Client Mixer</li>
</ul>

Naturally, any string manipulation that can be done in PHP can be performed, this is just a simple example.

Follow our staff and partners on Twitter

By Tim Priebe on July 11, 2009 at 12:00 pm in Social Networking

Twitter BirdIn the spirit of Twitter’s own Follow Friday, here are the links to follow our staff on Twitter:

And here are just a few businesses and people we partner with or just recommend:

Learn from Half Price Books’ Social Network Marketing

By Tim Priebe on July 7, 2009 at 7:00 am in Reviews, Social Networking

Twitter bird hiding behind Facebook LogoA new Half Price books opened up recently here in Oklahoma City, and this past weekend my dad and I went to check it out. Great store. I grew up in Dallas and frequently visited the original Half Price Books while there.

$50 later and back at home, I decided to look up Half Price books on all the social networks. They’re doing a great job with their Facebook page, and I became a fan of them there. Then, after some searching, I found their Twitter account. Wow. Did they set it up with the intention of failing?

Edit: While the tips in this blog entry still apply, Half Price Books has contacted me directly to let me know that they did not set up the Twitter account and have already had Twitter suspend the account. They may not be responding on Twitter, but they replied to my blog with a blog comment, then with an email, all in less than 36 hours after the blog went online!

Let’s take a look at both the great things they’ve done with the Facebook page, and the terrible job they’ve done with the Twitter account.

Twitter

Half Price Books' Twitter page1. They’re not promoting it on their website.

In the spirit of full disclosure, we at T&S are not yet promoting our Twitter account on our website. But we should be. And so should Half Price Books.

2. They haven’t entered in a name.

Companies need to enter in their company name, not just their username. Initially, I searched for “Half Price Books.” That got me nowhere. I tried a few variations, before finally just typing in http://twitter.com/halfpricebooks. So they need to make their account easier to find. This will also help in search engines, as currently the Twitter account does not show up in searches for “Half Price Books.” (Note: I only checked the first 15 pages of results.)

3. They aren’t using it.

Here’s a blindingly obvious one. Twitter is a great method for communication. Half Price Books’ news page on their website has plenty of available content they could be reusing on their Twitter account. But I’m not visiting their website on a daily basis, and neither are you. The average consumer is much more likely to visit Twitter on a daily basis than they are the Half Price Books website. That’s not conjecture, it’s based on hard data.

4. People are talking about them on Twitter, and they aren’t responding.

At the time of this blog entry’s writing, a Twitter search for “Half Price Books” revealed 34 mentions of them within the past 24 hours. And only two results for @halfpricebooks, because people don’t know it’s there. (One of those two is a tweet I wrote.) Most of the tweets are praise, which they should be thanking those customers for. And what kind of statement is it making when they’re not responding to criticism?

Facebook

Half Price Books' Facebook page1. They’re letting people know it’s out there.

They’ve linked to the page on their main website. What a concept! It’s on the front page, it’s prominent, and people are obviously clicking on it, because they have over 14,000 fans. And I’ll tell you a secret: They didn’t have to get a Facebook ad, they just used a website they already had. (I have no clue if they’ve also purchased Facebook advertising.)

2. They have a username.

They’re keeping up to date on Facebook developments, and have obtained a username for their page. This definitely hasn’t hurt their search engine placement in Google, as their Facebook page is on the first page of Google results for “Half Price Books.”

3. They’re actually using it to communicate.

At the time of this blog entry’s writing, they had five entries over the last month or so. They could probably use it slightly more often, but they’re definitely making use of it while not spamming fans. As with Twitter, more people are visiting Facebook than Half Price Books’ website, so this is a great communication tool for them.

So what’s the overall lesson we can take back to the social network marketing our businesses do? Simply put, utilize what’s out there. Remember, these tools are free, aside from time spent, and are even better than your own website at keeping in contact with current and potential customers. You still need your own website to provide in depth details about your business to those who are interested, but making use of the social networking tools that are out there is a no-brainer.

10 Tips For Managing Twitter As Your Usage Increases

By Tim Priebe on July 1, 2009 at 1:44 pm in Social Networking

Twitter ButtonJust came across 10 Tips For Managing Twitter As Your Usage Increases. This article has some great tips, some of which I’ve been doing for awhile now, some of which I recently started doing, and some of which I’m going to start doing.

Here are a few items the article mentions that are quick and easy to do:

1. Use Your Real Name In The Name Field, Not Your Username

9. Stop Your Automated Direct Message Tweets To New Followers

Obviously, the actual blog post goes into more detail, so I would suggest you check it out.