“What is this big thing, Twitter, all about?”

“How could I benefit from it?”

Well, twitter is very big now, and you have probably heard about it, but are still wondering what it is.

This article is going to tell you what twitter is, how to get started, and how to benefit from twitter.

So, now let me explain twitter…Ahem…

What is twitter?

1. Twitter is like facebook, except simpler, cleaner, less complicated, and easier to use.

2. When you follow (subscribe to) someone, their tweets (twitter messages) appear in your twitter timeline (Twitter homepage). They have to follow you in order to receive your tweets, too.

3. Those messages are limited to 140 characters, for simplicity.

4. You will see links like http://tinyurl.com/blabla or http://id.gd/link2post. Those are web addresses that are shortened using URL shorteners because of the 140 character limit, so that everyone can share links.

5. Twitter is what you make it.

Well, if you still want a clearer explanation of twitter, here is how twitip explained twitter:

Twitter is a tavern. You walk into a crowded bar and there are all kinds of conversations going on. At first it sounds like a lot of noise, but if you listen closely you’ll realize these conversations run the gamut – deep, serious, funny, irrelevant, irreverent – you name it.

Sometimes business deals get done. Sometimes you’re just killing time. You drift in and out of these conversations, but you always leave the bar knowing folks a little better, knowing what’s going on a little more. That’s what Twitter is like.

Or, precisely,

By the way, some avatars are green in support for the Iran Election!

Why should I use it?

Back in March, I posted an article on the top 5 reasons I use twitter, and I realized those are the reasons you should use twitter too. Here are the points I listed in that post:

1. Network

2. Driving Traffic

3. Share

4. It’s useful

5. It’s fun

To read more about these points, please head over to the article!

Getting Started…

1. Secure your name
If you don’t want to use twitter now, want to use it later, or never, you should always secure your name.

You are securing your name from name-squatters. People can easily find you. If your name is already taken, using your nickname or your blog name would be good.

2. Upload your avatar
One of the common reasons people don’t follow you is that you don’t have a avatar, or, profile photo.

Professional
Uploading a professional photo of yours, and not a photo you took in the bedroom, will give you a better impression.

Logo
If you are a company (or just shy), upload your brand logo. It is still better than no picture at all.

Better than nothing
If you don’t have any professional photos or logos, just use whatever photo you have. As I said, it is better than nothing at all.

3. Fill in your bio, web, and name
Another reason people don’t follow you is because you didn’t fill in your bio, web (if you have one), and name.

Humility is key
Humility is key when filling in your bio. Don’t include any words like expert or guru. You would get more followers by being humble.

4. Tweet a “Hello world!” tweet
”Hello world! I have just joined twitter! I look forward to learn more about twitter and help others! ”

5. Tweak your profile colors
Change your profile a bit to help you stand apart from thousands of other default Twitter profiles. You will look more unique and “professional”. It will also brand your twitter profile.

6. Follow people
This is what you should do to get some followers. You follow people, and they follow you back (Well, not all of them will follow you back, but if you build relationships with them they probably will).

To find people to follow, go to WeFollow, a twitter directory. You can also follow the most powerful users on twitter. Or, go to http://virl.com/250.htm to follow the top 250 users that are very likely to follow you back.

Here are the criteria to look for for when following people.

Interactive
An interactive twitterer makes friends easily. If you follow an interactive person, you are more likely to make friends with that person faster.

Does not spam
Would you like to receive annoying tweets? No. Then, you better not follow people (or bots) who like to spam. Although they might follow you back, they clog up your timeline and make twitter life harder.

Posts interesting/useful tweets
Not only should the people you follow not be annoying, but they should be useful as well. If they post tweets that interest you and are helpful to you, you are going to benefit a lot from twitter.

7. Build relationships…slowly
Yeah, I know, I was not following this rule when I first joined twitter. I followed as many people as I can, because twitter brought Gloson Blog lots of traffic!

Big mistake. I should have stared slowly, making quality relationships with my followers. I would benefit from twitter more if only I had followed this rule.

To build relationships, reply, retweet, and share (I will explain this further on).

8. Post beneficial/interesting tweets
Now, it’s time to give your followers some benefits. This will make your relationship with your followers closer. You help them and they will probably benefit you in return.

(I will talk more about this just a little further down.)

9. Get a background design
Finally, you should create a twitter background. You are free to put in whatever information you like there – more bio, other social media accounts, what your blog is about, etc. There is a service called twitbacks that allows you to create twitter backgrounds for free.

Or, you can check out these 13 tutorials that teach you how to brand yourself with a twitter background.

Continue reading…

Hooray! I won an Acer notebook computer (and a Kaspersky Internet Security pack for a year) from a blog ‘k’arnival in Malaysia sponsored by Kaspersky. I’ve always wanted a notebook computer.

The computer I used before (some sort of a cross between a notebook and a desktop) was too inconvenient and the screen was too small (800px x 600px). That was why I badly wanted a notebook computer.

Blog 411

If you’ve read my blog post yesterday, you would know that I was attending the blog 411 session at the blog carnival, where famous Malaysian bloggers share their tips and experience on blogging.

There were two contests there: The K.O. Quiz contest, and the live blogging contest. The grand prize for each of the contests is an Acer notebook computer. To be honest, I wrote yesterday’s post because I participated in the live blogging contest, but I didn’t win probably because I am good at writing tips, not events.

So, I entered the quiz contest, in which you would be asked questions on blogging, Internet security, etc. Here are some pictures of me participating in the K.O. quiz contest. (Thanks to Niki Cheong for taking these photos below.)

I am the one in the white shirt. The stuff on my face is a Kaspersky logo sticker. 

That’s Amanda Choe asking me the final question of the quiz.

And… to my surprise, I was the winner! I felt very touched because I’ve never won 1st place in a contest like this before. I just couldn’t believe it!

First of all, I want to thank my parents for taking me to the blog carnival. I also want to thank all the people there in the carnival for supporting me. Lastly, I want to thank my blog readers for encouraging me to blog. Thank you very much!

Now, with this notebook computer, I’ll enjoy blogging more! I’m looking forward to writing more quality blog posts for you, so, please stay tuned!

Cheers!

Hey guys, I have been attending the blog ‘k’arnival today at Petaling Jaya in Malaysia today. It was a very exciting event. In fact, this is the very first blog carnival I have ever been to. Now, I want to share my experience on the Blog 411 session.

Blog 411

I attended the “Blog 411″ session in the carnival. There were quite a number of people there at the seminar. It’s when popular Malaysian bloggers, like Kenny Sia, Jason Goh, Niki Cheong, and other popular Malaysian bloggers speak and share their experiences and tips on blogging.

Oh, and here is some (cool) pictures I took from the blog 411 session:

Yeah, I think those are some of the best tips they’ve shared, and I agree with that. The seminar was awesome and I enjoyed hearing the top bloggers speak and had a lot of fun! I learned a lot from the seminar and I am looking forward to attending this blog ‘k’arnival next year!

Update 22nd June 2009: Yay! I won a notebook computer from the K.O. quiz contest in this carnival!

Hey guys, guess what? My book, Creative & Funny Poetry for Kids, is finally launched! It is filled with creative poems and colorful illustrations to make you creative, funny, and happy!

You can get the book at the price of $9.97 USD.

If you order this book before the end of June, you will get a digital (PDF) version of my book, which costs $7.00 USD, for free.

There is also a two-tier affiliate program for this book; no purchase needed. If you are interested to become an affiliate, please join.

My mother also wrote a message regarding this book. It tells you about the production of my poetry book and some precious advice for all parents.

To know more about this book and its benefits, please head over to the article on Poetry Talents. You can also take a quick view of its contents here.

I came across this English educational site, MySasas.com recently. It is one of the best educational sites I’ve ever seen.

I find this site really helpful for students who want to improve their English.

MySasas means Smart and Adaptive Student Assessment System.

It has over 10,000 no ordinary English objective questions for you to answer.

You have to register in order to access the site. Don’t worry, registration is a quick process and you’ll have access to the awesome quizzes.

Continue reading…

Do you know the orange icon with radar-like waves? Well, that’s a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) subscription icon. When you see that icon, it means there is a feed (A feed is the queue of updates you receive) you can subscribe to.

When you subscribe to a blog, it means you like its content and you want to be notified whenever it has a new blog post.

You can either subscribe to an RSS feed via email or a reader. A reader is a place where you can read the updates of all the blogs you subscribe to. If you subscribe via email, you get updates sent to your email.

When you unsubscribe from a blog, you’ll no longer receive updates from it.

Sometimes, I unsubscribe from some blogs because of these following reasons:

1. The blog updates too fast and I couldn’t catch up with all the posts.
2. The posts has dropped in quality.
3. It suddenly changes to a whole new topic (e.g. From blogging tips to golfing tips).

Why do you unsubscribe from a blog?

So, why do you unsubscribe from a blog? What makes you unsubscribe from a blog? I’m looking forward to hear your views in the comments .

In this post I’m going to show you 7 things you can to improve your blog. You probably haven’t done most of them. If you do, you give a better impression of your blog and make it more reader-friendly (and friendlier to you, too).

And so, here are the 7 things you can do to make your blog better.

1. Make links titled

A link title is what you see when you hover your mouse over links. For example,

@Gloson

When you hover your mouse over that link, ‘My twitter profile.”’ will show. That is the title of the link.

I recommend that you put the title of the article you are linking to as the title of the link. You could also put a short note on the post (e.g. How To Set up a Blog – All the information you need if you are starting up a blog) in the title of the link to give it a better impression.

Usually, when you want to link some text, you highlight it and hit the ‘Link’ button, right? In the link option also lets you add the title of the link.

Titled links give a better image of what the visitor is going to visit after they click the link, and if they are interested, they might click it.

2. Use a favicon

A favicon is the icon that you see beside address bars when you visit a site. It is also shown beside your browsers bookmarks.

Giving a favicon to your blog helps to brand it. It helps to make your blog unique (and stand out in a person’s browser bookmarks, if he bookmarked your blog).

To learn how to give your blog a favicon, read this article.

3. Enable Gravatars

In case you do not know what gravatars are, ‘gravatar’ mean Globally Recognized Avatar. And, they are the avatars (pictures) of the commentators you see on some blogs.

You can get a gravatar at www.gravatar.com. Every time you post a comment on a blog that has gravatars enabled, they can find your avatar by searching for the avatar assigned to your email address, and you would see your avatar next to your comments.

Gravatars give personality to your blog. They also help your readers recognize the people who comment. However, there are some themes that don’t have the gravatar code in their comments code.

But…you can still enable them! All you need to do is insert the code which calls for the commentators gravatar. Here’s how to enable them if you use wordpress.

4. When placing update notes in your posts, write the date

Update notes are the notes bloggers place into their posts because they’ve made a mistake, missed out something, wants to tell their readers something, etc. An example of an update note is:

Update: Oops! I’ve just found out that this plugin isn’t free anymore. Luckily, I found another similar service that is free, that you can use. Click here.

That update tells people that a certain service the blogger mentioned isn’t free anymore, and tells them to use another similar service (Of course, the link isn’t available. It was just an example).

But, wouldn’t it be better if there was a date? If you don’t write the date, your readers will never know whether that update was posted 1 second ago, or 1 year ago.

Update (3th September 2008): Oops! I’ve just found out that this plugin isn’t free anymore. Luckily, I found another similar service that is free, that you can use. Click here.

P.S. Be sure to write the month in word, not numerals. It is to avoid confusion as different countries read numbered dates differently (In Malaysia, we read 3-9-2008 as 3rd September 2008. But in some other countries, it is 9th March 2008).

5. Make an archives page

An archives page is where you can find every post in the blog, listed. You should create an archives page. You would generate more page views because your readers can find more articles to read.

To create an archives page, install an archives plugin on your blog. I recommend SPR Clean Archives (the archives plugin I’m currently using for my blog) and Snazzy Archives. This is how Snazzy Archives looks like.

6. Write in shorter paragraphs

Which do you prefer to read, a long paragraph, or short ones? People prefer the latter.

When I read long paragraphs, I find me reading the same line a number of times and having a hard time squinting at the text. But when I read small paragraphs, I find it easier to read. I can keep track of where I’m reading with ease.

So, break down the long paragraphs into shorter ones. Your readers would thank you.

7. Dress up your 404 pages

Instead of the “rude” default ‘404 error – Page not Found’ 404 page, why not edit it and make it friendlier?

When a visitor from a search engine lands on a default 404 page, they simply press the back button on their browser. Even I do that. Why? Because I simply can’t find what I’m looking for.

When writing your 404 page, be polite, but don’t write loooooong messages. The visitor won’t read it if he sees that it is long. Keep the message simple and to the point, like Digital Photography School’s 404 page.

Show a list of your latest posts on your 404 page. If your posts have a catchy title, 404 page visitors might click on the posts and even convert to loyal readers. You can also list your best posts instead of your latest posts.

Here’s how to modify your default 404 page.

If you own a wordpress blog, first, go to its administration area. Then, under ‘Design’, click Theme Editor. Now, on the right of you, there are the list of files in your theme. Click on 404.php to edit the 404 page.

Here’s how to create custom 404 pages -

WordPress tips and tricks – custom 404 (error) pages

(After you are done, you can edit it to write your very own 404 page. You need to have some HTML knowledge, though.)

For more tips on making 404 pages reader-friendly, click here.

By the way, you can have a look at Gloson Blog’s 404 page: http://www.glosonblog.com/this-is-a-404-page What do you think?

_____

Have you done any of these 7 things? I bet your readers (and you) would love your blog more if you have done so .

Do you know anymore things to do to improve your blog that are beneficial but not many people are doing? Let us know in the comments!