Twitter Spring Cleaning Time!

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend, and I hope you're all ready to be back to the "creative grind" today!

I had a nice, lazy weekend and I spent a lot of "down time" messing about on the internet. Due to the fact that I had too much time on my hands, I wound up staring at my twitter account for way too long. This boredom induced "twitter coma" led me to a conclusion: I follow far too many people on twitter who have nothing to say. (Meaning, I realized I was following in excess of 500 people, yet only about 150 of those actually tweet on a regular basis!)

I decided that I needed to remedy this situation, and the only way I could think of was to individually go to each page and "unfollow" the unwanted. Well, in case you haven't figured it out by now, I hate doing things the hard way. I prefer to maximize my laziness by making efficient use of the tools found on the internet. So the search was on for a new twitter tool!

Thanks to the kindness of my useful tweeters, I found two tools that I want to share with you today. They are called UnTweeps and Twitoria. The first, UnTweeps, is a quick, simple tool that allows you to check to see which of your followed users haven't tweeted in a set amount of time. Twitoria does the same thing, but it gives you a little more control and detail. Below you will find screenshots and walkthroughs of each.

UnTweeps

(The benefit of UnTweeps is that you don't have to go to each profile to unfollow. You can unfollow a group of people at once, but you get very little information about the user.)
To use Untweeps, simply go to their page, enter your username/password (from twitter) and choose a time frame from the drop down menu. Once you've filled in all the blanks, hit "List Stale Tweeps". You will then see a list of all the people you follow who haven't tweeted in the time frame you picked. To unfollow them, just leave the box beside their avatar checked and hit "Unfollow Selected Tweeps". Easy peasy and no more silent tweeple!

Twitoria

(I actually like Twitoria better, as it seems to give more comprehensive info than UnTweeps. It takes only slightly more thought/effort, and you get to see details like the exact date of last tweet and the tweet itself. You also get more time frames to choose from, and your password isn't required!)
To use Twitoria, go to their page and enter your username. Choose a time frame (in which to look for "nontweeters") from the drop down menu, and just wait till the page changes! You will see a list of all the tweeters that fit your criteria, and you can click on each username to unfollow them. (I would recommend right clicking and opening each profile in a new page, so you don't have to constantly be hitting the back button on your browser.)

So there you have it: two simple, quick tools to help you begin your Twitter spring cleaning! I would recommend checking out and bookmarking both. I've already found that each has it's place in my twitter arsenal, and I hope, given time, that you will find them useful as well!

If you know of any other great spring cleaning tools, please feel free to share them in a comment! I would love to hear about any option you'd care to show me!

♥

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Adding a Retweet Button to Your Posts

Sometimes when I'm browsing my favorite blogs, I see something I really want to share with others. What better way to do that than with a simple little "ReTweet" button? (The button we will be using is from TweetMeme, and it's awesome because it keeps track of how many times each post has been retweeted and displays it right there on the button!) If you want to add one of these to your posts, just follow along!

(These instructions are for Blogger, but if you use another platform and need help, please let me know!)



1. Log into your blogger account and go to your dashboard.

2. Click the "layout" tab and then the "edit HTML" tab.

3. Just to be safe, back up your template. You can find where this happens at the top of the page you are on. It looks like this:

Just click "download full template" and save it to your computer in case something goes wrong.

4. Once you've made your backup, go back to your layout editing window and make sure the box that says "expand widget templates" has a check mark in it.

5. Scroll through all that mumbo jumbo you see till you find this:

<div class='post-footer'>

(This should be near the bottom of your code. I know it's hard to find, but this is the worst part, and it's almost over!)

6. Copy and paste this code directly below the line you just found:

<script type="text/javascript">

tweetmeme_url = '<data:post.url/>';

</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"> </script>

7. Hit "preview" at the bottom of your window. You should now see a button like the one at the end of this post that says "X tweets" and "retweet". As long as you see this button, hit "save template" and you're done!

To get an idea of how this works when someone clicks the button, go ahead and click the one at the end of my post and hit send! You will be amazed how easy it is!

♥

* Have a suggestion for a future post here on Ninja Knowledge? Be sure to leave a comment or contact me using the suggestion box in the middle column! *

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Twittertise and How to Use It

Due to the popularity of the "Crazy Marketing Train" that PicardCreative initiated on Artfire, I've decided to explain how to use Twittertise. This handy little tool will make your marketing train tweeting simple and efficient, as you can schedule all your upcoming tweets on the day you get your "artisan list". If you set them all up at once, that's just one more thing you can "fix and forget" for the week, giving you more time for yourself! (You can also use Twittertise to promote your own studio, just be sure you're sending quality tweets as well, not just advertising alone.)

Just be sure you have your Twitter login information ready, and click this link: Twittertise

1. Scroll down the page till you see this:

Enter your twitter username and password in the appropriate boxes and hit "log in".

2. You should be taken to a screen that looks like this:

Choose your time zone and hit "save".

3. Your screen should now look like this:

Click the link that says "create a new tweet".

4. You should now see the "New Tweet" box:

In the first box ("Tweet Text") type what you want your tweet to say. (Let's use our first tweet to get some more readers over here! To do that, just copy and paste this: Are you up to date on your Ninja Knowledge? ) In the second box ("Link") put a link to the shop/item/blog you are referencing (Copy and paste this: http://NinjaKnowledge.blogspot.com). In the third box, type the date and time you want the tweet to show up on your twitter profile. (You may also click the calendar icon and choose a date that way) Once you have all the boxes filled in, it should look similar to this:


5. Hit "save". (To make another tweet, click "Back to Listing of Tweets")

You've now created your first "twittertise tweet"! Now, all you have to do is wait until the scheduled time and your tweet will show up on your profile! (If you'd like, you can create a "test tweet" for about 2 minutes in the future, and then check to see if it shows up. That way, you will know you've done it correctly before you go to all the effort of adding lots of schedule tweets.)

One more interesting thing you can do with Twittertise: Once a tweet has been published, you can track the number of clicks the link you sent gets. To do this, log in to your Twittertise account and go to your dashboard. Click the link that says "Sent Tweets". You should see a screen similar to this:

At the end of each tweet, you will see 3 "paper icons" (). Click the first of these (the "blank paper"). If the tweet is less than 24 hours old, you will see this:

If the tweet is older than 24 hours, you will also see this:

By using the start and end dates below the graph you can see how often the links were clicked and when, or you can use the graph as it is to see the clicks for the life of the tweet! (Just FYI, the second and third paper icons are for editing and deleting the tweet, respectively)

Now go forth and market the heck out of each other!

♥

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How to Link your Plurk to your Twitter

Did that title crack anyone else up? It sure has me giggling over here!

Anyway... This is just a simple little tutorial that will allow you to link the two. Once you've done this, everything you Plurk will show up on your Twitter page. (This does not mean that every time you type anything on Plurk it shows up there. This does mean that the initial plurk you start will show up.)

1. Log into your Plurk account.

2. In the upper right corner of your Plurk home page you will see this:

Click the link that says "My Account"

3. You will now see a pop up box like this:

Click the link that says "Plurk to other networks".

4. Now it should look like this:

Click the tab that says "twitter".

5. Your screen should now show this:

Type your twitter username and password in the appropriate boxes.

6. Hit this button:

(on Plurk, silly!)

7. As long as it worked properly, you should now see something similar to this:


You're done! Just remember, if you ever want to type something on Plurk that you do not want to show in twitter, just type "!TW" at the beginning of the Plurk!

♥

p.s. If you're not already a Plurk buddy of mine, please add me!

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How Do I Get People to Follow Me on Twitter?

Hopefully, you saw my earlier post about Twitter, and you already have your account all set up. And hopefully you are out there tweeting your heart out! But do you have followers? Or are you tweeting to an empty room?

If you're like most new Twitter users, you don't have a huge following yet. And trust me, I know how discouraging this can be. It's sort of like being at a party but being stuck in the bathroom, isn't it? You can hear everyone talking about how cool the party is, but you just don't seem to be in on the fun yet. Well, I am about to show you how to open that door and join the party!

Fortunately for us that are "stuck in the bathroom", there are some really cool Twitter tools available. Today, we're going to focus on one called TweetBeep. TweetBeep is a free service that allows you to essentially "stalk" other tweets. Now, as scary and crazy as it sounds, it's really not that bad! It's actually a great way to find other Twitter users who share your interests!

So, if you're ready to get the party started, click this link, sign up, and log in! Then come back here and follow these directions to get things going!

Setting up keyword alerts with TweetBeep:

1. Log in to your TweetBeep account and click the link that says "New Keyword Alert". You should see a page that looks like this:


2. In the first box ("Settings"), you want to name your alert. Choose a short name that will be easily understood later. For instance, if you want to search for users who like Artfire, just call this alert "Artfire". You must fill out this box. (All the other sections are optional, but you have to fill out at least one other thing in order to set up an alert.) You also need to tell TweetBeep how often you want it to search for you. While you can tell it to look every hour, it can be pretty tiring to deal with an hourly email, so i set mine to once a day. Choose whichever you prefer!

3. In the 2nd section ("Keywords"), you can tell TweetBeep to look for certain key phrases. Let's discuss these sections a little more in depth:

* For illustrative purposes, I'm going to use the phrase "artfire artisan studio" and show you what you will get if you put that in each box. *
All of these words: TweetBeep will tell you when a tweet includes all those words, but they may not be in that order. For instance, if someone tweets "I was on artfire talking to an artisan with a cool studio" that tweet will show in your results.
This Exact Phrase: TweetBeep will ONLY tell you when that EXACT phrase is found. Using this box will exclude the example tweet above.
Any of These Words: Your results will include any tweet where artfire, artisan, or studio is used.
None of These Words: Your results will exclude any tweet where artfire, artisan, or studio is used.

This Hashtag: a hashtag is essentially a word preceded with a number sign, like this: #artfire. Hashtags are used to identify certain common topics in tweets. If you wanted to look for tweets about artfire, you could type #artfire here and this would return all tweets with that hashtag.

You may also set up what language tweets you wish to see in the settings section.

4. In the "people" section, you can track certain Twitter users, or certain people that others are tweeting about.

* For this example, I am going to use "JennNinja" (that's me!) *
From This Person: TweetBeep will alert you every time I tweet something.
To This Person: TweetBeep will alert you every time someone tweets something to me.
Referencing This Person: TweetBeep will alert you every time someone tweets about me.

5. In the "places" section, you can set up your alert to tell you when someone mentions a certain place. You can also tell it to alert you to references near that place by changing the "within x miles" option.

6. The "attitudes" section will allow you to look for tweets that are in a certain mood. For instance, if you wanted to see who likes me, you could use the people > referencing section by entering "JennNinja" and then check "positive attitude".

7. The last section ("links") will allow you to look for tweets containing links.

8. Once you've decided what you are looking for, hit save. You will be taken to a screen that shows all your alerts like this:


Now, all you have to do is wait and check your email! Pretty soon, you will get an email containing up to 50 tweets that meet your alert criteria!

Ok, now that you have TweetBeep all set up, what do you do with it?

Well, you can use those tweets it sends you to find people who are interested in what you're selling! For instance, I use my account to search for things like "handmade" and "scrabble", because I know that these are topics that I can talk about! When I get my search results each day, I can scan through them and choose to follow users I think may be interested in me and my studios! Additionally, you can look for fellow artisans by entering terms like "artfire", "etsy", or "1000markets". When you find someone whose tweets you like, just follow them! Twitter will send them a message that tells them you are following, and, ideally, they will check your page out and follow you in return!

* I realize this is a SUPER long post, but before we go I have just a few warnings for you*

1. Be sure you are specific in your alert terms. If you enter a term that is too broad, you may end up with a lot of useless tweets. It's ok if this happens, though, because you can always go back and edit the alerts you have set up. Just keep tweaking them until you find what works for you!

2. Don't follow people just for the sole purpose of promoting yourself. It's totally fine to talk about your listings or your blog or whatever, but people can tell if you're just stalking them to make a sale. And trust me, they will unfollow you! (And nobody wants to be kicked out of the party, right?)

NOW - go forth and set up your TweetBeep alerts! Good luck, happy stalking, and may the force be with you!

♥

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Twitter and How to Use it Effectively

Ok, let's start with the basics. Twitter is a micro-blogging service that you can use free of charge. Essentially it's a quick easy way to tell the world (in 140 characters or less) a little about yourself. Think of it as a "What am I doing right now?" tool. It's super easy to sign up for, and once you sign up all you have to do it send out the occasional update, or "tweet". You can follow others, and they can follow you. You can also "retweet" others' posts, and you can reply to your twitter friends or send them direct messages (DM's).

So what should you tweet about? Anything really! Use your Twitter account to tell us about your day. Tweet about what you just listed in your studio. Show off those awesome earrings you just hotlisted. Whatever!

Just be sure you are sending quality tweets on a regular basis. Also, be sure you aren't just tweeting your self-promotion. It's fine to promote yourself, but you won't get many followers if that's all you're doing. Just like your "real" blog, you need to make your Twitter page personal. If someone addresses you on Twitter, be sure you acknowledge them, just like you would in real life. Use your Twitter as a tool and you will surprised at the results!

Btw, this is just a quick intro to Twitter, but if you check back soon, I'm going to be showing you how to use all the nifty tools available for Twitter. So go ahead and set your account up now! (Please be sure to follow me once you do!)

♥

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Twitterfeed and Your Artfire Studio - A Tutorial

Hi everyone! I was planning on waiting a bit to go all "computer nerd" on you again, but it seems that a lot of people are eager to learn to use Twitterfeed, so I thought I'd go ahead and post this now.

In order to use Twitterfeed, you need a basic understanding of RSS Feeds first. If you haven't already done so, it may help to read my post about RSS feeds before you try to tackle Twitterfeed. (Go ahead... I'll wait... :wink:)

OK. You guys ready? (This is so easy it's gonna blow your minds!)



*** I'm going to use my studio again, but you can feel free to use yours so you don't have to do this twice! LOL ***

First, you're going to need a Twitter account. (If you haven't set that up, please go here and do so before you go any further.)
Once you have your Twitter username and password set up, follow these steps:

1. Open one window and go to Twitterfeed. Click the blue link that says "Login to twitterfeed" and you should see this:

Also, you need to open another window and go to your Artfire studio feed. (Just use the directions you learned in my earlier post to get there!) Once you have this window open to your studio feed (and it looks like this:)

go back to the Twitterfeed window.

2. Go to the little box that says "OpenID Login". See that little "Blogger B" to the right of the box? If you click it, a pop up will show up that looks like this:

The easiest thing to do is to use your Blogger ID (assuming you have one). As you can see, mine is already showing in my example. (If you don't have one, you can use your google login, your yahoo login, your LJ login, and so on. Hopefully you will have at least one of the logins listed. Just use whichever you prefer! Be sure you remember which login you use, though, as you will need it to edit your feed or add new feeds later!) Anyway, to use your Blogger ID, just click on the Blogger icon in the popup box. You will see that the box now looks like this:

Just highlight the part that says "username" and change it to your own username, then hit "login".

3. Your page should now look like this:

Click the blue link that says "go to my twitter feeds (or create a new one)". This will take you to a page that looks similar to this (Yours will be different, because I already have 4 feeds set up... don't panic if yours doesn't look exactly like this yet! LOL):


4. Near the bottom of the page, you will see a link to "Create a New Feed". Click that, please. You should now see this:


5. In the "username" box, type your Twitter username, and in the "password" box type your Twitter password. Just to make sure you did it right, click the link that says "test twitter authentication ". If you did, you will see a green check mark. If not, retype it until that green check shows up. (If you can't get it to show up, you may need to go to Twitter and make sure you can login using the info you are typing.)

6. Go to the 2nd window you opened (the one with your studio RSS feed showing) and copy the address from the address bar. Come back to the Twitterfeed window and paste that address into the box that says "RSS Feed URL". Be sure you click "test rss feed" after you paste the address, and make certain you get another green check mark! If you don't get that check, you won't be able to create your feed later!

7. At this point, you can change how often Twitterfeed checks new feeds, but it's already set to check once every hour. This is usually sufficient (unless you're one of those "power listers" out there LOL), so I'd just leave it as it is. Also, you can type up to 20 characters in the box labeled "Prefix each tweet with:" if you'd like. For my Artfire feed, I typed "New on Artfire". You do not have to do this, but if you do, each time Twitterfeed tweets for you, it will place whatever you type at the beginning of the tweet.

8. The last thing you need to do is to click "Create". Once you click "create" it should take you back to this page:

As long as you make it back to that page you are done! You have now created your very first Twitterfeed! Now, all you have to do is wait an hour or two and check your Twitter page. You should see tweets showing from Twitterfeed! (Just FYI, the very first time Twitterfeed checks your newly created feed, it will only show the last thing you added to your studio. After that, it will show up to 5 new listings. This means that if you add more than 5 listings between checks, only the last 5 will be "auto tweeted" for you. Likewise, if you only add one listing, just that one new item will show on Twitter.)

I hope this has been helpful. If something isn't clear, please let me know, and I will do all I can to make it better. Also, if there are any other things you'd like me to try to help with in the future, please leave me a comment and I will do all I can to help!

p.s. You can also use this with your etsy shop! Just follow the steps but substitute your Etsy feed for your Artfire feed! ;0)

p.p.s Please add me to your Twitter friends if I'm not already on your list! I would LOVE to see all of your Twitterfeeds in action!

<3
* Originally posted on Ninja Jenn's Blog *

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The Mysterious RSS Feed Button

Recently Artfire added an RSS feed button to each artisan's studio. While this made me super excited, it has come to my attention that this little button is a source of confusion for quite a few people out there. So, in light of this new revelation, I thought I'd try to do a little "de-mystification" post and hopefully help some of you guys use and understand this valuable little tool.

First of all, let's start with what an RSS Feed actually is. If you try googling "RSS Feed Definition" you will come up with all sorts of computer mumbo jumbo. You'll see all sorts of "geek speak" relating to "XML documents", "aggregators", and "metadata". But just ignore all that for now! What you really need to know is that an RSS Feed is essentially a nifty little way to get the newly-added contents of a web page delivered directly to your virtual doorstep. Instead of waking up and having to go to each page you frequent to see what happened, you can use an RSS Feed to make the information come to you. RSS Feeds are a great way to keep up with your favorite studios, as a properly set up feed will deliver all the newly added listings right to you every single day! To do this, you'll need a few basic tools.



First of all, you will need a feed reader. There are primarily two types of readers available: a standalone reader or a "plug in" reader. A standalone reader is an application you download and install to your computer that compiles the information for you and works as its own, self-functioning program. You can often find these for free at sites like Download.com. Standalone readers are great because you can pull and read the information as you need it, but on the other hand, you have to actually tell the application to open and run every time you want to see your new feeds. I prefer to use a plug in reader, because it eliminates that need! The difference in a plug in reader is that is functions as part of another application you are already using. For instance, your plug in reader will work in conjunction with your web browser or Outlook. By using a plug in, when you open Outlook, IE, or Safari (just to name a few possibilities), the content you are being fed is right there waiting on you! One caveat though: if you already have a lot of information running (like bookmarked items or tons of email folders) you may end up slowing down your browser too much to make this a viable option. I would recommend trying a plug in reader first (and most of the standard browsers already have these built in!). If you find it slows you down too much, or you feel like your pages are "bogging down", you may want to look into a standalone reader.

The next tool you will need is the feed itself. I'm not going to go into making a feed at this point (if you need to know that, please email me or leave a comment and I'll make a seperate post on that later!). For now, we're going to stick to pages that already have that wonderful little RSS Feed button showing. That button makes this whole thing so easy, and after you figure it out you will be eager to have that button on all your personal pages, blogs, and studios I'm sure! Anytime you see this button () it means that the page you are viewing has an RSS feed available and waiting for you. The words attached to the button may change, but that is the universally accepted symbol for RSS Feed, so keep an eye out for it!

Ok, we know what a feeder is, and we know what button we're looking for, so how do we put it all together? Easy! Follow these steps and you can't go wrong:

(I am going to use my Artfire studio and Safari in this example, but the steps are essentially the same across the board)

1. Go to a web page. (Let's use this one: Ninja Jenn's Artfire Studio)
2. Locate the RSS Feed button. If you clicked the link above, you will see this:

Now scroll down and look to the left of the page till you see this:

3. Click the middle button (the one that says "RSS Feed for this Studio"). Your page should now look like this:

4. Look at the address bar of the page, and you should see "feed://www.artfire.com/rss/studio.php?id=20464". As long as the address you see is prefaced with "feed", you've done it right! (And we're almost done! LOL)
5. Bookmark the page once you are sure you're on the feed page. I keep my feeds in a folder called "RSS Feeds", but you can place them in any folder you like. (If you're using a stand alone reader, copy that address and drag it to your feed reader.)
6. (Final step!!!! And this is a "one time only step, too!!!) If you're using safari (like I am), you need to tell Safari to check your feeds for new information. To do this, go to Safari ---> Preferences and click the tab that says "RSS". Make sure you see this:

Now, just tell Safari what to check and when. For me, my feeds are in my Bookmarks Menu, so I will check that box. Also, I need to make the drop down menu "Check for Updates" say "Every Hour". (This is a good default checking time, just FYI)
*You can also choose to change new article colors and discard posts after a certain time, but you don't HAVE to ever throw them out.*

To read your newly fed articles and updates, just go to the folder where you save your RSS feeds and they will be there and waiting on you!

P.S. I know this seems like a lot, but I promise, once you do it once, it will be super easy sailing from then on! ;0)

Let me know if you have any questions, and check back soon because I will be posting about how to use your new RSS Feeds with Twitter!

<3

*Originally posted on Ninja Jenn's Blog*

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