How to Change your Twitter Profile Picture

Posted on October 19, 2011 by JPM

One of my Twitter Followers has asked for help with changing their Profile Picture on Twitter so I thought I would produce a quick guide and post it on here.

How to change your Twitter Profile Picture:

1) Log into your Twitter Account at http://www.twitter.com and click on your account name in the top right hand corner of the screen to display the pull down account menu.

Click on Settings to load the Settings screen

2) After the Settings Screen Click on the Profile link to display your profile settings.

3) When your profile loads the top option is the Change Profile Picture facility.

Click on Browse and select the picture that you want to use from your computer, and click on OK.

4) Click on Save at the bottom of the screen and Twitter will upload your image and set it as your Profile Picture.

Please be aware that you might not see the change in picture immediately as it can take a while for the changes to replicate.

How to get Traffic from Twitter and why Twitter is like TV Adverts

Posted on September 14, 2011 by JPM

In this previous post I discussed how I was finding that the content of the articles I was linking to was more important then how the actual tweet was written.
What I also started to notice was that when I sent a tweet the effect on traffic to my site was generally pretty instant rather then sustained.
This might be because when you catch a follower online your tweet appears at the top of their timeline but if they login sometime after the tweet is sent then can get hidden within dozens of other tweets.

With this in mind Twitter could be compared to TV advertising in that it’s at it’s most effective when people actually see the advert at time of broadcast, if it’s missed then it’s message is lost.

So how then can Twitter be used to it’s most effective to share your links and drive traffic to your site? Following the TV advertising example I tried sending multiple tweets linking to my iPhone site across my Twitter networks.
My Twitter network is shared across 4 Twitter accounts each focused on a technical theme so tweets about the iPhone should be of interest to some of my followers.

Rather the retweeting the same link several times in 1 day, I decided to pick a number of popular articles and schedule a Tweet linking to each at regular intervals throughout the day. Each time the tweet was published it was sent out across all 4 accounts, this allowed frequent visibility of links to my site without boring my followers with repeated identical links.

As seen in the graph below Using this method really boosted the amount of traffic to my site, nearly doubling the amount of site views.

By going deeper into the hourly stats following this method the individual traffic spikes (the blue line) matching the scheduled tweets can clearly be seen.

Does how a Tweet is written effect the number of clicks

Posted on September 5, 2011 by JPM

In this post I explained how I had Tweeted a link to my Twitter Network and wanted to see if there was a difference in the amount of traffic sent to the article, if the post was written in a different manner.

A link to the exact same article was sent out at the exact same same ‘optimum times’, on the 31st of August the Tweet was basic and too the point, on the 1st of September the Tweet was more descriptive and tried to sell the article more.

The results can be seen in the Graph below which shows traffic to the Article. Little if any difference was noticed.

Compare the results to the following graph which shows what happened when a tweet was sent out to all my Twitter networks at the same time and ignoring optimum tweeting times.
The Tweet was describing a way to find out how to find cheap iPhone games, so there was a natural incentive for my followers to click on the link.
Even though optimum posting times were ignored, the article attracted more readers.
Perhaps content is king over style.

How Tweeting Links can Improve Traffic

Posted on September 1, 2011 by JPM

In this article I wrote about an experiment I was running with Twitter about scheduling Tweets to tie in with when the majority of your Followers are online, and here are the results.

Twitter sent 21 visitors to the article, which from a potential pool of about 4.5k followers is a little disappointing as that it equates to not even 1% of my followers clicked through to read the article

However whilst the results weren’t as good as I was hoping the traffic to the article did double, but is there anyway that I can improve the traffic further using Twitter. This is a copy of the Tweet I sent: How to view iPhone Photos on your PC http://t.co/3e7zxLg

In all honesty the Tweet I sent wasn’t particually exciting or catchy, and could have probably have used a couple of Buzz words.

So with a bit of re-wording and polishing the tweet becomes: The iPhone can take great photo’s & heres a Great Article on several methods for viewing your iPhone Photos on your PC. http://t.co/3e7zxLg

I’ve scheduled the Tweet to be published to my Twitter Network at the same times as the previous Tweet.

I’ll report back here on the results

How to See when your Twitter Followers are Online

Posted on August 31, 2011 by JPM

Twitter is a great tool for sharing a message with many followers at the same time, however how do you know when the best time to Tweet is.

Given that most Twitter Users have busy timelines where older tweets can be missed, to reach a maximum number of followers it’s best to post when most users are currently online and looking at Twitter, so that they see your Tweet Arrive – but how can you tell when the optimum time is to reach your Followers.

Tweriod is a free service which will analyse your Twitter Followers Twitter usage over the previous month and generate a report of the optimum time frames when most are online. It’s free reports cover Sundays, Mondays, Weekend Averages, and Weekday averages. I tend to use just the average results.

Using one of my accounts from this twitter experiment it’s clear to see that the optimum time frame is around 4pm. You could then either manually Tweet or schedule a Tweet for that time frame knowing that as many of your Followers as possible will see the message

Tweriod is easy to use, all you do is log in to the site using your Twitter account details and they do the rest, you can get an updated report for free once every month, and whilst there are some premium facilities that you can pay for the free service will be fine for most Tweeters.

To put the results generated by Tweriod to the test:

I’ve used Google Analytics to pick a popular article from my site.
Write a Tweet about the Article.
Schedule a Tweet to each of the 4 accounts and also my iphonehints twitter account for their optimum time.

I’ll post the results here.

Quick Twitter Followers Update (29/07/11) (end of first month)

Posted on August 3, 2011 by JPM

In this post I discussed how I was testing TweetAttacks on Twitter Accounts that I created to see how quickly you could build up a large relatively targeted Twitter Audience.

Each time I make a post on iphone-experience.com I re-tweet on these other accounts to increase the number of people who are aware of my articles.

I have 4 accounts currently being increased by TweetAttacks, and I currently have a combined following of 1426 twitter users, and increase of 403 over last weeks total. During this week I was without a computer for a couple of days and manually followed other users using this process.

If your Twitter Followers were a Country, which Country would they be

Posted on August 1, 2011 by JPM

Twitter is a fantastic tool for very quickly reaching out to many people and sharing a brief message, but when looking at how many Twitter followers someone has can you really put that number in to context. To most people it will just be a figure, but to try and visualise numbers of users you could compare the populations of countries.

For example every time Stephen Fry writes a Tweet it appears on the the time line of ~ 2.8 million Twitter users, which equates to the population of Mongolia. Imagine any other situation where an entire population of a country can hear something you say, and what’s more a country who has chosen to listen to you by following your Tweets.

Here are some further examples of comparing Twitter followers to the populations of countries:

Lady Gaga – 12.1 Million – Senegal
Justin Bieber – 11.4 million – Cuba
Barack Obama – 9.4 million – Sweden
Oprah Winfrey – 6.8 million – Papua New Guinea
Stephen Fry – 2.8 million – Mongolia
Arnold Schwarzenegger – 2.1 million – Lesotho
Jason Bradbury – 130k -Saint Vincent and the Grenadines & Palau combined
Edna Fry – 108k – U.S. Virgin Islands
Pat Flynn – 50k – Saint Kitts and Nevis
iPhonehints – 1.4k Niue ( or 2.8k – Falkland Islands if you include the accounts from this project)

Interesting 2 pop stars (one of which is a young lad) has significantly more followers then the official Twitter account of the President of the United States and most powerful man in the world.

With popularity and an audience comes responsibility, as a small example Stephen Fry has accidentally taken a few websites down simply by providing a link to their site and the amount of traffic has taken down the server. Imagine if Lady Gaga linked to a site, the amount of traffic could be about 4 times larger.

We have recently seen how when Twitter collectively gets behind a cause the effect can be incredible, just ask the former staff at the News of the World news paper, and with millions of followers you could start to direct Twitter causes. This could (and I ‘m sure does) causes some cause of concern.

Even my little iPhonehints twitter feed reaches the same number of people as in a country called Niue, (which is a small island country of New Zealand citizens).

Hello Niue I feel I have a connection with you now.

Quick Twitter Followers Update (22/07/11) (over 1000 followers in 3 weeks)

Posted on July 22, 2011 by JPM

In this post I discussed how I was testing TweetAttacks on Twitter Accounts that I created to see how quickly you could build up a large relatively targeted Twitter Audience.

Each time I make a post on iphone-experience.com I re-tweet on these other accounts to increase the number of people who are aware of my articles.

I have 4 accounts currently being increased by TweetAttacks, and I currently have a combined following of 1023 twitter users, and increase of 308 over last weeks total.

On average I’m picking up an additional 48 followers per day, which means that if I did this process everyday for a year I could increase my followers by 17500.

Over the next week I’m going to increase the numbers of people I follow using TweetAttacks to see if I can accelerate the process with out upsetting twitter and getting banned

Using Twitter to Follow a Major News incident (Explosion in Oslo)

Posted on July 22, 2011 by JPM

Twitter is a great tool for allowing people to share their news very quickly, and nothing highlights this better then when a major news incident takes place.

Today there was a massive explosion in a government building in Oslo, whilst the cause is still unknown there is significant damage to buildings and probable casualties. We pray for everyone involved in the incident for their safe keeping.

Traditionally the world would have to wait for news reporters to get to the scene to start sharing the news of the incident, but modern technology, e.g. Twitter running on camera phones, allows people on the scene to share their own experiences and pictures of the incident. As soon as the incident happened on-lookers started to tell and show the world of what they could see.

This kind of crowd sourced news offers an unprecedented view at real time events, and we could all follow the real experiences of real people just by using the Twitter Search Engine.

Typing: near:Oslo within:15mi into the Twitter Search box displays the Tweets that were posted with a 15 mile radius of Oslo, and the Twitter keeps refreshing the search results so that you are always seeing the latest updates.

We can see the news through the eyes of witnesses rather then the condensed summary by the news agencies.

How to Access FaceBook on a Java based feature phone

Posted on July 21, 2011 by JPM

Facebook works very well and has a natural fit on Mobile Phones, and Facebook Apps are very popular on Smartphones.
Traditionally non-smart feature phones haven’t been able to provide Facebook access except through basic web browsers, however there is now a Java App which provides improved Facebook access more akin to the smart phone experience.
The App is currently being provided by 3UK to it’s customers and provides the ability to access updates and news feeds, synchronisation of contacts and to upload your photos.
Whilst SmartPhones are becoming more popular there are still a lot of traditional feature phone users out there and often they are overlooked.

How to Use Advanced Twitter Search Operators

Posted on July 19, 2011 by JPM

Twitter can be an incredible information tool, it’s just that sometimes the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming, and it can be difficult to find the specific information that you are looking for. Fortunately Twitter includes some powerful search tools.

The easiest way to performed advanced searches is through the Twitter Advanced Search Page which provides an easy to use interface but for true customisation Twitter provides a number of operators that you can input directly into a Twitter search box.

The operators in full can be found on this page but here are some useful examples.

I’m looking to connect with people in or around the English Coastal Town of Bridlington, so that I can find out about local events and news. I could just search for mentions of the town in the normal Twitter search box but it would be better to see who’s actually tweeting from there.

I can use the near: and Within: operators to see who’s been tweeting from around the town and surrounding areas, e.g. to see who’s been tweeting from within a 10 mile radius of Bridlington I can enter the following search parameter:

near:bridlington,uk within:10mi which returns a list of tweets from Users in Bridlington. Brilliant.

or perhaps you run a website and and want to increase your sites Twitter Following by following Targeted Twitter users, for example UK based tweeters who play GTA (Grand Theft Auto) you could search for something like:

playing GTA near:Leeds within:300mi which searches for tweets containing both the words “playing” and “GTA”, that are made within 300 miles of Leeds, you could then connect with these users through twitter.

You could also then increase your Twitter following by using this method or feed the search string to an Automated Twitter Following Tool

Quick Twitter Followers Update (15/07/11)

Posted on July 15, 2011 by JPM

In this post I discussed how I was testing TweetAttacks on Twitter Accounts that I created to see how quickly you could build up a large relatively targeted Twitter Audience.

Each time I make a post on iphone-experience.com I re-tweet on these other accounts to increase the number of people who are aware of my articles.

I have 4 accounts currently being increased by TweetAttacks, and I currently have a combined following of 715 twitter users, and increase of 315 over last weeks total.

How to quickly increase your number of Twitter Followers

Posted on July 8, 2011 by JPM

Twitter is a popular social network which can be used to reach a large number of people very quickly.
I’ve previously discussed how to increase the number of twitter followers but it is possible to automate the process.
This process is a little blackhat and can get your twitter account banned so it might be better to create new accounts for this process.
I’ve been testing a product called TweetAttacks which allows you to automatically follow the followers of a twitter account.

Tweetattacks works by simulating human interaction, and it allows you to set variables like the amount of time between follows so that it looks like a real human to twitter. I suggest that you set a max number of 200 follows per day and a time of between 10 and 20 seconds between follows.

The free version of Tweetattacks allows you to configure 5 Twitter accounts, and here’s why this is useful.
It’s very time consuming to get a single Twitter Account to 5000 followers but with Tweet Attacks you can easily get 5 account to 1000 users, so if all 5 accounts re-tweet a tweet from your main account it still gets seen by 5000 users. It is key that your new accounts have a similar theme to your main account, and there is content on those accounts, even if only re-tweets to make them worth following.

I’m current 1 week into this process, and I’ve picked up a total of 400 new followers I’ll feed back here on future progress.

Using Social Media to research breaking news – Eman al-Obeidy

Posted on March 27, 2011 by JPM

The world is a changing place, and thanks to world wide networks information and news can flow freely and rapidly.

The world was in shock when Libyan national Eman al-Obeidy burst into a hotel full of journalists to share her horrible and frightening experiences at the hands of the Gaddafi security forces, only for her to be snatched by Gaddafi loyalists despite the best efforts of the journalists.

Using the Internet and Social Media it’s possible to keep right up to date with all the breaking developments.Using Google it was very easy to find the name of the women, Eman al-Obeidy, and then that gives us a starting point for further researchMillions of Twitter users post tweets every second and many of them use it to report and share their news and to provide links to other news sources.

Twitter includes a fantastic search facility and provides the ability to save search strings so that you can quickly re-run your favourite searches.
By typing Eman al-Obeidy into the Twitter search engine quickly generates many results.

Looking at the results we can quickly see the latest breaking news on Eman al-Obeidy, and because the search is saved it can quickly be re-run.

It’s possible to use tools like Flipboard to present your twitter searches in various formats, or by using a Mobile Twitter client you can check the latest updates from the saved search when you are away from your computer.

Turn Your Social Media into a Magazine with Flipboard on the iPad

Posted on March 24, 2011 by JPM

Unlike traditional Laptops and Desktops computers, the iPad has a size and form factor which makes it ideal for Magazine style content, the touch driven interface is ideal for flicking between articles and pages.

Flipboard is a fantastic application for the iPad which in addition to providing a number of quality news streams, can turn your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader feeds into a virtual Magazine. The end results are fantastic, well presented articles with associated media that is 100% relivent to you as it uses your own Social Media Feeds to produce the articles.

This also opens up another avenue of providing content to your readers. If you readers follow you on RSS then you articles will appear in their Flipboard articles, also if you Tweet the links to your posts then any Flipboard users who follow you on Twitter will also see your articles. This is definitly a facility that you can promote to your readers, most Flipboard users will check their articles regularly, so this is a great way to reach them.

The use of Social Networks to Spread Information

Posted on March 15, 2011 by JPM

Late Last night in Scunthorpe there was a mysterious, loud and somewhat unnerving loud humming noise heard across the Town. It sounded not unlike a large roaring fire and lasted for over an hour.

Scunthorpe has a large Steelworks complex so naturally it became the natural focus of attention. Media Outlets can’t report on incidents straight away but what became apparent were the benefits of having access to Social Networks like Twitter.

Within minutes of the noise starting other local people starting posting about it on Twitter, and developments (eg the presence of emergency services & sirens) were reported on there as soon as they happened.

By simply setting up a search for the word ‘Scunthorpe’ on Twitter whenever a post was made about the town it became available in the constantly updating search window, this allowed the rapid sharing of information, especially when combined with the Re-Tweet Tool. Even on this relatively small scale event Twitter shows how efficient and effective it can be, and the benefits are scalable.

Twitter provides the facility for local people to report on local issues significantly quicker than traditional media and without bias, which is why when some regimes start to have uprising by the people one of the first things they do is try and block Internet use, as after information is out there on the Internet it’s in the public domain for ever.

Charlie Sheen Sacked TV Star to Internet Phenomenon

Posted on March 9, 2011 by JPM

It’s been an Interesting week in the life of Charlie Sheen, the Movie and TV actor who has recently been most famous for starring in Two and a Half men has formally been sacked by his bosses at Warner Bros following Sheen’s high profile criticism of the shows writer.

Sheen’s behaviour has apparently started to become increasingly erratic and a series of high profile, and somewhat strange TV interviews have generated an incredible amount of Internet Interest, as viewers have been curious as to what his next step will be.

Over the last week Sheen’s Social Relevance as soared.

Recent Video Interviews with Sheen on YouTube are getting millions of views, the number of people who follow him on Twitter has sored to 2.5 million and as this graph shows the google searches related to him has recently rocketed.

Charlie Sheen may have lost his job but with his sudden increase in popularity and demand for TV interviews it will be a while until he’s got time on his hands again.

A Cost Free Strategy for Increasing Traffic to your Blog – Part 5 Social Bookmarking

Posted on February 24, 2011 by JPM

Part 1 Using Twitter can be found here.

Part 2 Using Discussion forums can be found here.

Part 3 Face Book can be found here.

Part 4 Article Directories can be found here.

Part 5 Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking Sites offer the facility for users to share web based articles that interest them with other users of the Social Bookmarking sites.

If they see an article on a web site that they like, then they post the URL of the site onto the Social Bookmarking site for all to see, many Social Bookmarking sites then allow site users to rate the article that’s been linked too.

Many of these sites get large amounts of traffic and therefore any links to your site on there are shared with many potential readers.

Popular Social Bookmarking Sites include:

There is nothing to stop you posting your own links on Social Bookmarking Sites, but you should make it as easy as possible for visitors to your blog to share links to your articles. Many Social Bookmarking Sites provide their own widgets or tools to put on your site, put there are also several very good WordPress Plugins which you can place on your blog post to make too easy for your articles to be shared, like the tool under this post.

There are many good tools for social bookmarking

As well as providing visibility of your site to thousands of potential readers, the top Social Bookmarking Sites also carry high Google Page Rank scores, so putting links to your blog on these sites may help you index higher in Google.

A Cost Free Strategy for Increasing Traffic to your Blog – Part 3 Using FaceBook

Posted on February 1, 2011 by JPM

This is the second part of my series of guides to help you increase traffic to your Blog.

Part 1 Using Twitter can be found here.

Part 2 Using Discussion forums can be found here.

Part 3 Face Book

FaceBook has rapidly become a World Wide phenomenon on the Internet with Many Millions of users frequently logging onto the Social Networking Site to communicate with their family, friends & colleagues, and to take part with discussions with other Facebook users with shared interests. It’s certainly a very powerful and user friendly facility and well deserving of its position as most popular Social Networking Site.

FaceBook offers a number of ways for you to promote your Blog or Website.

1) Status Updates.
Simply tell your FaceBook Friends about your Blog updates. If you post a URL in your status update, Facebook will publish a hyperlink and a brief preview, including a thumbnail image, of the webpage in your Status. This is a quick and easy way to share your updates with a group of people who might be interested in the topic.

Click to Enlarge

2) Groups.
FaceBook lets you create Discussion Groups based on the topic of your choice, so you could create a group to match the subject of your Blog, and allow other Facebook users join in the discussion. Groups allow you to build keen discussion forums, increase your authority on a subject and also to network with other interested in your subject matter, and by posting links in your groups you can drive readers to your Blog.

Other users will be able to find your Group by using the FaceBook search tool, and you can link to your group Status updates and posts on other groups.

Before you start your own Group, it’s worthwhile checking to see if any existing groups covering your subject matter already exists. If an active and vibrate Group already exists you might be better contributing to and posting in that group rather than trying to build your own group from start.

3) Pages.
Facebook provides pages for you to provide information of your interest, Website or business. Working very much in the same to personal profiles, pages allow you to post updates, including URL’s to your Blog or Posts in a dedicated area that is visible to all Facebook users.
Users can opt to like your page and each time you post on your Page everyone who likes your Page will see the updates, allowing you to potentially reach many users and driving traffic to your site.

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