Tips for using Twitter and not getting overwhelmed

About a week ago at work one of my coworkers saw the Twitter window at my desk. And he asked me “what do you use twitter for, I have tried this about an year ago, but it seemed just another way of fooling around and wasting time. And not to mention the distraction it brings to your desk.”

Well I gave him an honest answer and I am going to share with you what I told him -I do find twitter overwhelming in the beginning. And I used to spend a lot of my time reading tweets and participating in open discussions. Though I was spending a lot of my time on twitter, I would still not say it was a time waste. If you are following the right people and know the right tools, you can accumulate a lot of knowledge and can use twitter to expand your business by developing relationships.

e.g. If you are a startup blogger and you know nothing about online marketing, I would suggest you go to http://twitter.grader.com/search here you can search other users specialized in your niche and can interact with them directly, so you can search for online marketing in our case. Most of the times users on twitter are very helpful and knowledgeable.

@problogger, @shoemoney, @mashable are some of the users that I have been following even before I started blogging.

I’ve also found that Twitter isn’t something you can explain, and it’s not something you can understand until you’ve used it for at least a few days. You have to use it to get it.

Follow a very Moderate approach

When I first started using Twitter I’d wake up in the morning and try to read through all the tweets, or at least scan them. Then I’d try to keep up periodically throughout the day. It was stressful. And i was falling back on a lot of other important tasks.

So remember DO NOT TRY TO KEEP UP

Twitter will be there for you and you can login anytime to find all the useful tweets, don’t sit there refreshing your screen to wait for more tweets, you can use twitter search (http://search.twitter.com/) to go through all the tweets that you have missed at any time of the day.

Follow people that you can learn from

Don’t follow people simply because they follow you back. Also by following a lot of people you will fed with a lot of not so useful information which defeats the very purpose of you using Twitter, unless you have some other good reason.

Don’t be on Twitter all the time

Personally I always had hard time concentrating on other tasks if my twitter window is open. So like I said, I close it most of the time and open it a few times a day to see what’s going on. And to market my BLOG links or any other affiliations that make sense to me.

There should be a Full Stop on your tweets

Make sure you don’t tweet whole day long. Your followers might get annoyed and might stop following you. Tweet only about something that makes sense.

Reduce the number of feeds and emails.

If you use Twitter regularly, you can probably reduce your need for RSS (my favorite blogs are on Twitter anyways), email (you can DM people), IM, news sites, and so on. It’s nice to consolidate, as long as you use it intelligently. This will help in saving a lot of time by replacing a lot of stuff with twitter.

Twitter is a wonderful tool if used right. Wish you all the best for your tweets. Please leave any further comments or suggestions about using Twitter effectively and not wasting a whole lot of time while tweeting.

Follow me on Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/coolwebdev

How some of the corporate logos will look when the financial crisis is over

I got an interesting email today by one of our marketing managers. Email was about the current state of financial crisis and how the corporate logos will depict the state of the respective organization after the crisis is over.

I am sharing the LOGOS with my readers. Here they are -

Motivational phrases for startup blogger’s

When I first started blogging, my main idea behind blogging was to gather information and keep myself up to date with the info for efficiently making my regular work decisions and to be on top of emerging technologies for professional development. I have subscribed to a number of RSS feeds and I was a regular gold member and reader of number of tech blogs.

While following this habit my passion grew and I started my own blog to share my ideas and information gathered from my day to day work. I was getting around 200 hits a day at that time.

That is when a friend of mine suggested me to try making some money out of my blog. I have tried since then and it took me some time to start earning some amount of money. I would like to add here that first and foremost purpose of this BLOG is still to share accurate info and to help other techies for no cost involved.

Back to making money -

I know its very easy to give up initially and I have experienced this myself. A lot of blogger’s step in the blogging world thinking of making easy bucks. But slowly they began to realize that its not an easy job and requires a lot of hard work and patience, and on top of all a very knowledgeable and a very smart head above your shoulders.

Well I am sharing some of the motivational phrases that I have used for being energetic and motivational all the time. If you are a start up blogger I will suggest you print them out and hang them on a wall somewhere in your home office or behind your computer.

These phrases will always remind you to of the perseverance required for running a successful BLOG. And some of these phrases come from very successful blogger’s who are earning more then six figures. And always remember one thing - Always treat people as people, You will meet Internet personalities and famous people over your life span, but never undermine yourself. And treat all as people you meet everyday.

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

“Yesterday’s failures are today’s seeds that must be diligently planted to be able to abundantly harvest tomorrow’s successes.”

“Don’t let the opinions of the average man sway you. Dream, and he thinks you’re crazy. Succeed, and he thinks you’re lucky. Acquire wealth, and he thinks you’re greedy. Pay no attention. He simply doesn’t understand.”

“Never Give Up”

“If you can make something for a little less than your competition, and sell it for a little more, then you’re doing OK.”

“Choose to blog about something that you can see yourself still blogging about in 3-4 years - it takes that long to build a successful blog.”

“You have to earn their trust, before you can make a successful sale.”

“you are enough”. You are enough to become a millionaire, you are enough to have an attractive partner, you are enough to fulfill your dreams. You don’t need to keep adding things to yourself, you need to take away the things that hold you back such as doubt, fear and limiting beliefs. You are enough to do [insert anything here].

“Follow your passion”

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.”

Why social media is not catching up within the corporate setup?

Wikipedia definition - “Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.”

On a general scale for an average person, social media is a way of sharing your life on line. Or more precisely it is sort of like a bar. You can go order up drinks and play a game of pool with people that you might never have come across. It gives you an opportunity to interact, socialize in a civilized manner. Or you can either be a drunkard (spammer) and sink your overall value or how you are perceived at a bar (social media) due to irrational behavior.

Social Media is going to be corporate marketing tool of future, Its going to be an online virtual bank or virtual utilities portal where people will be able to perform all kind of e-commerce and fun stuff from one virtual place. So it becomes very important for big corporate houses to adapt this culture fast. But we have not seen this happening.

That brings us back to our question - Why Social Media is not catching up within corporate setup?

Lets take a look at the demographics of social media users. Social media is much popular amongst the 17-34 age group. They are people who are enthusiasts, evangelists or experts in social media field. Even if they are not experts but as regular users they do understand the importance of social media. Now for social media to work in a corporate setup, the decision makers have to be these people which clearly is not the case right now. But clearly, sooner or later when these group of social beings will rise up the corporate hierarchy, then surely social media will touch base more strongly than ever.

So does that mean in next 10 years, Social Media will play a major role in corporate’s web presence? Please leave your comments.

Will we have our first flying car by end of 2010?

As per Times Online, if all went well we should have our first flying car by end of 2010.

The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.

If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.

Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage. Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.”

The Transition, developed by former NASA engineers, is powered by the same 100bhp engine on the ground and in the air. Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Up to now, however, it has been tested only on roads at up to 90mph.

Dietrich said he had already received 40 orders, despite an expected retail price of $200,000 (£132,000).

“For an airplane that’s very reasonable, but for a car that’s very much at the high end,” he conceded.

There are still one or two drawbacks. Getting insurance may be a little tricky and finding somewhere to take off may not be straightforward: the only place in the US in which it is legal to take off from a road is Alaska.

Dietrich is optimistic. He said: “In the long term we have the potential to make air travel practical for individuals at a price that would meet or beat driving, with huge time savings.”

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