Full fledged Twitter Convert

So a few weeks ago I did a post called Twitter Doesn't Suck. I thought I would update you on all my twitter discoveries and thoughts since then. The above vinyl wall decal would be perfect for the twitter lover or a future twitterer in a child's room. It is by Old Barn Rescue Company from St. Louis. I have seen their work at a show and fell in love with their recovered barn hangings.

When I last updated I was at 1,300 followers and hoping for 1,500 by the end of the week. As you can see I'm now at close to 2,500 followers. It's really not all about the numbers. But just for fun if you want to see my twitter counter stats showing my progress you can see them here.

I've continued to follow interesting people and then dropped anyone who hasn't followed me back after a few days. I refuse to feel guilty for unfollowing people who don't follow back and I am the queen of guilt. I have given up the rule of following everyone that follows me however. There are just too many "marketing specialists" that were following me and I just couldn't stand it anymore, not to mention the "Asian beauties" and smut pushers. But any legitimate people will still get my follow back.

I also just had my 500th tweet last night. I enjoyed the moment with some other tweeters that were around at the time, although Mike had nothing but scorn for it. So what have I been tweeting about since my life really isn't all that interesting. Besides the twitter feed updates from my Etsy shop and blog there has been a lot of tweets about interesting things I find on-line. I post articles and sites that would primarily be of interest to other creative types since those are my main audience. I also retweet (RT) things that other people have posted that catch my eye. I always give them credit which will generally garner a retweet by them of something for me to keep the love flowing. I also post a lot of quotes that I like or see on my blog surfing. I recently found a great tool to help me with this called BigTweet. You just add it to your bookmark toolbar and whenever you highlight something from a page & click on the bookmark it will update your twitter and give credit to the site. It also says that it will allow you to tweet up to 240 characters, bypassing the 140 rule but I haven't experimented with that yet.

And finally I've relaxed some and started interacting with other people and making some "friends". When you are following over 2000 people you aren't going to get to know each one of them personally but there are definitely some that you will find similarities with and who will be fun to tweet with. Just like with blogs that you feel a kinship with you will find twitter profiles that feel especially inviting to you. I haven't gotten any sales from twitter yet but my hope is that when it gets cooler people will think of that nice girl they tweeted with and will check out my stuff when looking for cool weather accessories.

The truly lovely thing about Twitter is the simplicity of it. There really aren't a lot of bells and whistles on the site. Leave it to the ingenuity of its users to come up with some cool applications and tools though. I found a great article that outlines 62 of them by Skyje Weblog. I have tried using several of them and they make the tweeting experience all the more enjoyable.

TweetDeck appears to be the most popular app but I haven't tried it yet. It requires a download which I don't like to do on my work computer. It appears to allow you to keep up with both twitter and facebook and post to both at the same time. You can create a personal dashboard and create groups to show certain people's updates in real time.

I just signed up for TweetLater which allows you to schedule tweets for a later time (great when going on vacation to keep your status updated), you can vet new followers to see if you want to automatically follow back, and my favorite tool is the ability to purge your Direct Message box and stop Automated DM's from coming in. I get really sick of the welcome DM's clogging up my box so this is a great find.

I also really like FriendorFollow which tells you who you are following that isn't following back and who is following you that you aren't following. It will also tells you when they last updated so you can see who isn't very active and will take you directly to their profile so you can remove them.

There are also a few twitter directories that I have submitted to that I believe have brought me quite a few followers. Twellow calls itself the Twitter Yellowpages and is a good way to search for profiles by categories. WeFollow is a user generated directory of profiles.

If you have any other twitterlicious finds please share for all of us to enjoy!~