Twitter

Twitter Case Study: When I Decided To Tweet Every 20 Minutes

May 13, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

A while ago, I wrote a Twitter Case Study about how I tweeted every 30 minutes. Since then, several changes have been made to my Twitter strategy. I now use HootSuite Pro which gave me a lot of cool features such as the Bulk Scheduler. Since it became much easier to schedule tweets, I realized that there would be no harm towards increasing my frequency. The reason I did not tweet every 20 minutes until HootSuite Pro is becasue sending out that many tweets manually would have taken too much time.

Now that time is no longer a problem, I decided to see what would happen if I went from tweeting every 30 minutes to tweeting every 20 minutes. While tweeting every 30 minutes, I got around 175-200 visitors every day from Twitter. When I started tweeting every 20 minutes, I saw a noticeable increase in traffic. In less than a week, my blog was already getting over 300 daily visitors from Twitter alone. Getting that big increase in traffic also resulted in search engine traffic rising by 50%.

In my first case study, I came to the conclusion that tweeting about your blog more frequently increases your blog’s traffic. My second case study came to the same conclusion. Maybe I’ll decide to schedule 1 tweet every 15 minutes, but that won’t be happening for a while (or at all). The more you tweet links to your blog posts, the more traffic you will get. In order to get the best results, you need to be tweeting at a consistent, frequent rate.

10 Ways To Find Cool People To Follow On Twitter

May 11, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

In a social network with hundreds of millions of active users, some people find it very challenging to find the right people to follow in the big crowd. Many new users often get lost in Twitter’s search option as they look for people in their niche to follow. However, there are ways to find cool people to follow in the crowd of over 200 million active users. Here are 10 of those ways:

Search your niche’s keywords in Twitter’s search box. If you search for your niche’s keywords, you will be able to find the people who frequently tweet about your niche. After searching the keywords, Twitter will show you a list of people’s tweets about that niche with the top three accounts. On the top left corner is an option where you can display all of the accounts that tweet about your niche. By using this option, you will be able to see the best of the best in your niche. Those are the people who you should follow.
Use Twitter’s “Who To Follow” section. After following a few people in your niche, Twitter’s “Who To Follow” section will be filled with people who tweet about things related to your niche. By following the people on that list, Twitter will continue adding people to that list who tweet about things related to your niche.
Go outside of the niche. Outside of your niche is yourself. Who are the people that you admire? These people do not have to be in your niche. I have my favorite athletes, authors, and singers. Although these people do not necessarily tweet about things related to my niche, I follow these people on Twitter anyway because I like them.
Follow media outlets. The Huffington Post, Mashable, Tech Crunch and ABC News are four great media outlets worth following. There are several other media outlets that are worth following as well. Following these media outlets will allow you to keep up with the news and possibly learn about people who tweet about things related to your niche.
Follow the followers of someone in your niche with over 100,000 followers. Most of the social media experts will tell you to do this when you want to build a targeted following. However, implementing this strategy will also allow you to follow cool people. The people who you are following are people who are interested in your niche. You can have conversations with these people about your niche.
Follow guest bloggers who write blog posts about your niche. At either the beginning or end of every guest post is the name of the author. In many cases, clicking the author’s name will lead to a bio page where you will be able to see a link to that person’s Twitter account. After you get the link, follow that guest blogger. Then, tell him/her that you enjoyed reading their blog post. That’s how the conversation starts (and builds).
Look for social media icons on a blogger’s blog. All of my icons are located on the right sidebar of my blog. Many bloggers add their social media icons to their blogs so they can get more followers. If you like a blogger’s blog posts, you should click on the Twitter icon and follow that blogger. Then, start a conversation.
Follow motivational accounts. No matter what profession you are in, we can all use motivation. Out of all of the motivational accounts out there, in my opinion, @Sports_Greats sends out the most motivational tweets. The account has over 1 million to show for it.
Follow people who have a conversation with you. If someone has a conversation with you on any social network, chances are that the first conversation will not be the last one. In order to stay in touch with the person you are having a conversation with, you should follow that person. In addition, that person will be very likely to follow you back.
Look through tweets about trending topics. For certain trending topics, there are several tweets that will make you laugh. If someone’s tweet made you laugh, you should follow that person for more comedy. In fact, you should also follow your favorite comedian.

Although Twitter is a big place, it is not hard to find people worth following. There are over 200 million active users on Twitter, but somewhere in those 200 million active users are the active users who you need to follow as soon as possible. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you find people to follow through any other method? Please share your thoughts and tips below.

10 Reasons Why Twitter Would Suspend Your Account (And Solutions)

May 9, 2014 by Marc Guberti 41 Comments

Twitter suspension rules is not on the top of everyone’s reading list, but it is better to be aware of these rules now than it is for you to learn about them after your account gets suspended. Hopefully, it does not have to come to that. Sending an appeal is a messy process that still prevents you from tweeting to your followers. In fact, people who get suspended and do not get the desired result from the appeal would have to start all over again trying to build a strong following. I learned about some of these rules fairly recently and revamped my strategy so I would not be violating any of the rules. These are the 10 reasons why Twitter would suspend your account. If you are safe, that’s good. However, it is better to know that you are safe than it is for you to be sorry in the long run.

Aggressively following and unfollowing people in a short amount of time. This one is the most obvious. People try to hack the system by following a lot of people and then unfollowing everyone who does not follow back. People who game the system tend to have a perfect 1 to 1 ratio or something very close to perfect (something like a 1 to 1.01) and continue to gain followers at the same rate their following number goes up. Another tip is to avoid passing the 1,000 following limit. If you reach that limit multiple times in a row, Twitter will notice, and that won’t be good. When you unfollow people, you can unfollow some of the people who do not follow you back, but also unfollow some of the inactive users who have not tweeted for a while. Following inactive users will tell Twitter that you are not only unfollowing the people who are not following you back.
Favoriting too many tweets. I did not know about this rule for a long time. Before learning about this rule, I simply favorited tweets of people mentioning me at will. Now, I only favorite 5-10 tweets every day. If I do not favorite a tweet of you sharing one of my blog posts, that’s because I do not want to risk breaking the rule. Regardless of whether I favorite someone’s tweet or not, I am always grateful when people share or read my blog posts. A good way to substitute favoriting tweets is sending those people DMs. Not only does this reduce the risk of your account getting suspended, but DMs are more personalized messages for the people who shared your content or said something good about you.
Spamming people (this one is really important). When people think of spamming, they think of a bot that sends out 500 tweets every day about the same thing. However, spamming also means sending out a lot of tweets (even if that means 24 tweets every day) and not having a lot of conversations with your followers. It is a harsh definition for the people who do not mean to spam, but with the real definition in place, you might be “spamming” your followers. Having conversations with your followers shows Twitter that you are a real person and will make Twitter less likely to suspend your account for this reason.
Following too many people after creating your account. New Twitter users get too excited. They look around for all of their favorite celebrities and follow hundreds of them on the first day. Soon, these new users are following 1,000 people but only have 50 followers. Twitter does not like these kinds of accounts and associates them with spam and fake followers. The fake follower industry is a multimillion dollar business, and Twitter is doing everything it can to suspend users who look fake–whether those users are fake or not.
Tweeting too much. No user can tweet more than 1,000 times every day. If you are caught reaching the limit multiple times, Twitter will eventually suspend your account. My recommendation is to stay under 100 tweets per day. For most people, that will not be anything to worry about since few people have enough time to send out 100 tweets in 1 day. If you feel the need to send out more than 100 updates every day, you should split those updates amongst multiple social networks.
Creating too many spammy looking Twitter accounts. If you are creating too many spammy looking Twitter accounts with the same computer, Twitter will catch you. Remember how Twitter defines spam before deciding whether you are innocent or guilty. This tactic is used to catch and suspend fake followers that are created by the same person. When Twitter catches someone doing this, all of the accounts made by that person get suspended–even the real ones.
Harassing people. Think about what you say before you post it. If a user harass someone, that person will most likely report that user to Twitter for harassment. If enough people report that user for harassment, Twitter will look into the situation and most likely suspend that account.
Tweeting inappropriate content. In some cases, tweeting the inappropriate content may not be your fault. This is why it is very important to avoid getting your account hacked. Someone hacked my account, and all of the links for smart phone users led to porn sites. While my account was hacked, I was afraid that someone would report me for inappropriate content, but luckily, my followers knew there was something wrong with my account. The only way to solve this problem is not to tweet inappropriate content in the first place.
Misusing trends and popular hashtags. Be sure that you know what something means before you tweet it. You would have to be consistently (multiple times every day) misusing trends and popular hashtags in order to get suspended for this reason. Twitter does not want news or events to be misinterpreted which is why they enforce this rule for people who do this on a consistent, daily basis.
Twitter thinks your account has been hacked or compromised. Although it’s not your fault, Twitter may suspend your account if they think it was hacked or compromised. Just look through your list of third-party apps and make sure none of them are bad. In addition, choose a password that would be hard to figure out. If your password is 8 characters long, then it’s too short. The best way to avoid this problem is to make it harder for someone to hack your account.

Those are the 10 reasons why Twitter would suspend an account. If your account is not violating any of these 10 rules, then your account will be safe. If your account slightly violates one of these rules, you should fix that problem so your account is not in risk. What are your thoughts on the list? Have you been suspended for other reasons? Please share your thoughts below.

How To Track Your Progress On Twitter And Pinterest

May 9, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

If you want to grow on social media, you need to figure out how much you are growing. Many people want to improve their results on their social networks, but most people do not know how to find the results they are already getting. People who do not know the results they are currently getting are implementing a strategy with a blindfold on. Imagine trying to increase your blog traffic when you don’t know how many people are visiting your blog in the first place.

Luckily, there are ways to track your progress on social networks. The two social networks that I use the most are Twitter and Pinterest. Over the years, I have stumbled across many Twitter and Pinterest tools. Many of them were really bad, but some of them shined out from the rest. As a person who runs on statistic and data, I need to know how my strategy is already working before I implement a new strategy. In order to see if my new strategy works, I want to see how the old strategy works first. That is why I use two tools (one for Twitter and one for Pinterest) to track my statistics so I know what works and what does not work.

For Twitter, I use TwitterCounter. Although some people have complained about TwitterCounter not updating the statistics for you automatically, I get the best experience out of TwitterCounter because I update my own statistics every day. That way, I get to see different numbers instead of the same, constant number some users get when they do not check their statistics for a while. TwitterCounter does a neat job at tracking your number of followers, number of people you are following, and the number of tweets you send out every day for up to 6 months (free version). Premium services offer more statistics and allow you to see all of your statistics from day one.

For Pinterest, I use Tailwind. Tailwind is similar to TwitterCounter, but it has less features for free users. I go on Tailwind every day which is why I am able to get the best experience as a free user. Tailwind allows free users to see statistics for the number of followers they gained and number of pins sent out from 1 week ago.

Tracking your progress is very important towards identifying whether the strategy you are using is helping or harming your social media presence. Do you use any other statistics sites to track your progress?

4 Lessons I Learned From Getting Hacked On Twitter

May 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

AP Account Getting Hacked — What happened when the AP account got hacked.

It was definitely an experience I will never forget. With over 60,000 followers at the time, I had no control over what my followers would see when they clicked on my links. Links that were supposed to lead to my blog posts led to a porn site. Those two days were very rough. I wrote a blog post about how you could avoid getting hacked before getting hacked in the first place, but I decided to learn how to avoid getting hacked after my account got hacked (bad move on my part). The entire experience did allow me to learn several lessons:

The internet is dangerous and unsecure which makes your reputation fragile. If universities decided to review my Twitter account on the day the hackings took place, I would have been rejected by many if not all of them. Two days of activity that were not my fault would have ruined my reputation. I am sure some people unfollowed me when they saw the spam. It was not my intention to spam people, but in the end, a hacker was able to damage my reputation in the eyes of some people. That is a harsh way to look at it, but it’s hard to see why that would not be true.
We need to speak up about our problems. With no solution in sight, I was scared to tell everyone that my account had been hacked. As far as I knew, it could have taken several weeks or even months for my account to get back to normal. I tried contacting Twitter, but with this particular issue, contacting them is almost as challenging as using a Google tool that got updated a few days ago. I decided that the only solution would be for me to ask my followers and notify them about the issue. With fear and bravery intertwined into one, I sent out a series of tweets telling over 60,000 people that my account had been hacked. In the end, all of the people who contacted me were optimistic and very helpful. These people helped me reach a solution and told me whether they were redirected to my blog or not. I got to make some new friends, and when my Twitter account got unhacked, more people visited my blog. It was amazing, and it only happened because I spoke up.
Be prepared for the storm before it hits. The hack hit like a storm, and I was unprepared. What could have taken a few minutes took me two days. Although you should not spend too much time preparing for the storm, you should know what to do when the storm comes and how to stop it before it inflicts a lot of damage.
People support each other when both are against a common enemy. I highly doubt there is a single person who really wants his/her Twitter account to get hacked. When my Twitter account got hacked, some of the people supported me because they would not like it if their account got hacked. By identifying a common enemy, you will be able to create a team that supports each other with a common goal: taking down the enemy. Applying this to more than a hacked Twitter accounts, common enemies can include but are not limited to debt, procrastination, and stress.

I wanted to be sure that something came out of the two day experience of my hacked Twitter account. I was able to come up with 4 lessons. Although I am sure I could have come up with more lessons, these are the main lessons that you need to take away from my experience.

3 Quick And Easy Ways To Make Your Twitter Account Safer

May 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There is a crazy world of hackers out there that affect thousands (or even millions) of people on Twitter. The people who hacked Donald Trump and Burger King’s accounts taught us how important security is. However, many people have the, “That won’t happen to me” attitude towards a problem that has spread across numerous accounts. From “Lol I saw this bad picture of you” to “I can’t believe this is you,” spam has made a notorious splash into the social network.

You do not want to wait for your account to get hacked until you take action. Sadly, I did not take action until my account got hacked. It was a messy two days where I lost hundreds of visitors who were redirected to porn sites when they clicked on links to my blog posts. Those two days were very bad indeed (luckily, I had a good track race, so that made me feel better about myself).

Do not make the mistake of ignoring this blog post. The tips here will help make your Twitter account safer. You do not want to be reading this blog post when your Twitter account gets hacked. You will want to read this blog post right now and implement the tactics here so your account never gets hacked in the first place. Thee are the 3 quick and easy ways to make your Twitter account safer.

You need a (much) stronger password. Your password needs to be more than 8 characters long. In my opinion, everyone’s password should be at least 20 characters and have symbols to make things more confusing for the hacker. The longer your password is, the less likely a hacker is to figure it out.
Change your password every month. Although this will be hard for some people to remember, changing your password every month is well worth it. Heartbleed and the NSA have revealed to us how not so secret our information is. Maybe when the NSA keeps our data safe and secure, we would not have to change our passwords every month. However, hackers will still find ways to discover your password which is why you should change it every month. In a fascinating blog post from CopyBlogger, they mentioned that their blog gets 50,000-180,000 unauthorized logins every day. That results in over 1 million unauthorized logins every week. By changing your password every month, you will reduce the likelihood of getting hacked.
Remove third-party apps that you do not trust. Sometimes, we rush to give access to bad third-party apps by mistake. This was most likely the reason why my account got hacked and sent people to inappropriate content. The problem was quickly resolved when I purged through my list of third-party apps. In order to access your list of third-party apps, go to settings (the gear) and then on the left corner will be “apps.” Clicking on that will allow you to see a list of all of your third-party apps which you could revoke with a click.

Do not wait to implement these tactics until your account gets hacked. Because I waited, I had a race against time in order to find a solution. By waiting for my account to get hacked, I lost 300 visitors. If 1% of those people would have bought one of my books, then that means I lost three sales, but just as important, people who would stick around, read my content, and subscribe to my blog. Learn from my mistake so you will not get hacked, and if you do get hacked, you will know exactly what to do.