Click Image to go to Feel Tip Top Twitter Search Engine

I recently wrote about How to Increase Conversions By Sharing Pillar Content When Your Audience is Most Receptive and mentioned using the semantic Twitter search engine FeelTipTop and a unique Twitter alert search and respond app iTweetLive.

By using TipTop first to see typical search results for any given keyword phrase you can fine tune what you set up in iTweetLive and greatly reduce the amount of time you’ll spend weeding out searches that were either too general or have too many other meanings.

It is faster to fine-tune your searches first than to
manually review and delete those that did not work later.

iTweetLive Example Setup:

It is often easier to understand when you see a real life example – and understanding is a faster way to be productive with a new tool than trial and error – and that gets you results much faster.

If you are tempted to skip this I encourage you to read on.

I recently set up iTweetLive to promote two valuable school assembly programs offered by DominoTheGreat:

• Read to Succeed program to encourage reading in this Library Blogs post.
• Buddies Not Bullies: his bullying prevention assembly program featured in this bullying statistics post.

By first searching for the word “bullying” in FeelTipTop it is immediately obvious that there are far too many tweets that include that word – most of them from people who are reacting to news or other tweets who would not be in need of a bullying prevention program.

That one insight saves HOURS of
deleting tweets that do not need replies.

FeelTipTop suggests additional keyword phrases that I can test to find just the type of tweets that are worth replying to and eliminate most of the ones that would not be interested.

Additional "Insightful Topics" Suggested by FeelTipTop related to my Bullying Prevention Search - Ignore those not revelant - hone in on the ones that are.

Clicking on any of the suggested words highlights the tweets that contain that word. For example, ‘School’ is highly relevant because anti-bullying programs are most commonly presented in schools as is ‘assembly’.

Clicking on ‘assembly’ pulls out the tweets for ‘bullying prevention assembly’ from the existing results:

FeelTipTop shows which of the results includes Bullying Prevention Assembly

Notice that Tip Top provides you with an important and time-saving web usability feature: breadcrumbs to get back to your previous search.

See the red arrow and text in this image pointing out the Breadcrumbs - All sites and especially ecommerce stores should use these so your visitors know where they are on your site and how to jump back one or several pages to where they were.

By testing each potential search first I am able to hone in on tweets by people who can benefit by knowing about Domino’s anti-bullying program and the excellent statistical data provided by Statista on bullying.

• Bullying Prevention – very targeted
• Bullying Statistics – very high volume of people searching for these who will be very happy to have the statistics in my post

Notice that on the original search screen – which you need to remember can be accessed at any time by clicking the Inputs tab – there is a ‘select city’ dropdown.

If your business wants to reply to geographically targeted tweets this feature could become very useful. We need the developers of Tip Top to let us know what that feature is trying to do? Does it use the location in the Twitter bio or is it looking for locations?

This post explains how to build refined Twitter searches using Tip Top. See part two to be published soon for how to set up iTweetLive using these searches to automate the search process to increase conversions through offering solutions when your target audience WANTS them.

What if you could share just your most important links with influencers you don’t even know yet and have them retweet them to their 1000s or tens of thousands of Twitter followers? You can.

Join us at JustRetweet.com where it is fast and easy to share what we would most like to have retweeted.

Using JustRetweet is the easiest how to get retweeted method.

JustRetweet ~ The Retweeting Site for Influential Bloggers- CLICK THIS IMAGE to GO TO JUSTRETWEET.COM

Why Use JustRetweet?

• Getting started is fast, easy and free.
• When you have more money than time, you can buy more credits to promote your small business, worthy cause, or blog.
• If you have more time than money, you can earn credits by paying it forward = sharing what is most important for others, following them, and checking out Websites and blogs.

The Sites and Blogs You Preview on JustRetweet
May end up being your most important collaborators!

Retweeting Tips:

• Only share your most important landing pages.
• Write compelling tweets that invite JustRetweet users to share them and Twitter users to click on your links.
• Include RELATED hashtags (and additional @usernames if applicable).

IMPORTANT:
Only Retweet tweets and links your followers will be interested in!
Requests go live throughout the day and are NOT pre-screened.
Do report any that you feel are inappropriate for any reason.

NEW FEATURES:

We just added several new features to make JustRetweet even more effective for you and your followers:

• Refer a friend
• Retweet buffering – When you choose ‘Post Later’ your Retweets go out gradually instead of immediately. You can schedule up to 50 retweets to be sent one at a time so they do not flood your Twitter timeline.
• Credit Summary – allows you to see at a glance who retweeted what you have shared, who followed you, website views and how your credits have been spent.

PROHIBITED CONTENT
Do NOT request Retweets of sales pages, get rich quick schemes,
unethical plugins or tools like these trackback spammers like those
commonly seen on Warrior Forum. They will be deleted.

Repeated infractions will result in account deletion.

Quick How to Use JustRetweet Reference:

Refer a friend

1. Log into your JustRetweet account.
2. Click on the Settings Tab.
3. Find your referral link below the navigation bar and above the five blue buttons.
4. lick that link to send an email or send or link to it.
5. 25 credits will be added to your account for each referral you make.

To Request Retweets:

1. Log into your JustRetweet account.
2. Click on the Settings Tab.
3. Click the blue Retweet button (in the center just above the tweet box).
4. Type in your tweet – DO NOT include your Twitter username as it is automatically added for you.
5. Choose how many credits you will offer – the more you offer the higher on the Retweet Exchange your tweet will appear.

RETWEET TIPS:

• Choose different credit amounts to spread your Retweet requests out and get more of them shared.
• To decide how many total credits to allocate multiply how many credits you offered by how many shares you would like. You CAN edit this field to add more credits at any time.
• If you choose a high follower count only Twitter users with that many followers will see your Retweet request. Many times Twitter users with lower numbers of followers actually have more influence with those they follow.

To Earn Credits Retweeting for Others

1. Log into your account.
2. Click the Retweet Exchange Tab
3. Decide which requests you want your Twitter followers to see. If one does not fit for you, click Skip this.
4. When you click Retweet that tweet is immediately sent to your Twitter followers.
5. RECOMMENDED: Use Post Later most of the time so that your retweets are shared gradually.

TWITTER RETWEET TIPS:
How to Use Just Retweet
Ileane’s How to Get More ReTweets Video
Twitter Best Practices

Have questions? Use the contact us link on Just Retweet or send a regular tweet to @GrowMap and @JustRetweetCom to get a reply as soon as your question is seen. We both pop in and out on Twitter all day long. Want a faster answer? Use Skype or IM to reach Gail or use the contact tab on GrowMap.com for more ways to reach her.

WARNING ABOUT COPYCAT RETWEET SITES:

There are numerous sites similar to JustRetweet and at least two copycat sites to be avoided:

• EasyRetweet was created by the programmer originally hired to design the JustRetweet site. Instead of doing the work he built his own site using Valentine’s idea and then tried to get him to pay to be a “partner”. He was wise enough to know partnering with someone unethical will never turn out well.
• WeDoRetweet appears to be a clone of the JustRetweet site parked on a domain registered by the current developer and on the same temporary server as the official site. It is unclear why that site exists, but it looks so similar that it may confuse users of the real site – so remember JustRetweet.com is the correct domain.

None of the other sites has going for them the most important
reason for using JustRetweet ~ our influential collaborators.
JustRetweet attracts the most social media savvy bloggers.

DISCLOSURE: Valentine contacted me when he first launched JustRetweet.com and I agreed to support it and become a half interest partner because I feel the site is beneficial to small businesses and bloggers.  Other bloggers like Ileane @BasicBlogTips also saw the potential in using this particular retweet site. It is a new site and there are challenges to be overcome; however, I will do my best to help Valentine to keep it on track.

Click image to read Why 97% of Prospects Have the WRONG GOALS

Are YOUR small business goals
ineffective or downright useless?

I hope not – but I see this over and over again. Business owners are sold all the wrong goals by people who make a living doing what is easy instead of what actually works.

Probably the majority of agencies and consultants offering services that provide little benefit – if any – to your business really don’t know any better. Others are simply more concerned with making a living than they are with your results.

Examples of Bad Business Goals:

TWITTER: Wanting x number of Twitter followers
is NOT a goal that will convert to sales or leads!

Far too many people are paying to “increase followers by x amount” or “get to x followers” and the easy way that is done is to just follow whoever will follow back. Except for the illusion of importance, how many followers you have is irrelevant.

You should NOT focus on how many followers you have – focus on finding and interacting with followers who are interested in what you to offer! How will having those specific followers or fans achieve your PRIMARY goals?

Your primary goals must be more sales, more clients –
something tangible that will keep your business IN business –
not some fuzzy ego-driven goal to be more ‘famous’.

You must get really clear on what results your actions are intended to produce and then focus on doing only those activities that will eventually – and it does take time – lead to increases in REAL BUSINESS, i.e. sales or leads.

BLOG POSTS

Writing x number of blog posts is
NOT a relevant business goal.

What you expect those blog posts to ACCOMPLISH (more sales? more clients?) is the real goal as I explained in my recent post on Why QUALITY is More Important than Quantity.

Increasing traffic to your blog or site is a weak goal if that traffic is not TARGETED to real people interested in what your business has to offer. What content you create and how you promote it is more important than how many posts you publish.

Create relevant incoming links targeting your best anchor text
while simultaneously offering only the highest quality content.

Doing so increases traffic both from search engines due to
higher search positions AND by attracting real people.

The traffic you don’t drive through publishing less often can more than be made up for by promoting your very best content. See How to Succeed by Sharing QUALITY Content When Others are Most Receptive for exactly what content you should be creating and what to do with it once you have it.

GUEST POSTS

A goal to have x guest posts published is NOT an end in itself.

WHERE you are published is vastly more important. You want to place excellent content where your target audience already is.

What do you want those guest posts to do? Raise awareness? Bring real people to your blog or business? Plant the seeds of relationships with potential customers, influencers, and related businesses?

Many SEOs focus on writing quality content to get published on blogs like this one so they can add a link or two in the bio because they are focused on link building to improve search engine positions.

Place content ABOUT what your business does or
how what you have to offer solves the problems of others
where real people in your target audience will read it.
This is a much better use of your time -
and far more effective for link building as well.

Why do just link building or just content creation
when you can do both at the same time?

At some point common sense must kick in and at least some of us will stop playing these silly link building games. We all know that people write content to get links. What we need to do is be willing to publish content ABOUT products and services we and our readers would actually be interested in!

Do YOU know what you are really trying to achieve?

If you are not sure you need to get some assistance to figure that out – and the sooner the better.  This is such an urgent need that I created a new Small Business Mentoring program. <<< Read more about it at that link.

Those who work with me have almost instant access
to me for quick answers most of my waking hours and
personal one-on-one mentoring in any skills you need.

We will work together to build YOUR comprehensive
Social Media and Internet Marketing Strategy.

Initial consultations are free with no obligation

If you’re serious about your small business I sincerely
hope you will read that page and be in touch – for your sake.

This is one of the most important revelations I’ve had since I started blogging and it applies to everything we do:

Quantity is NOT necessary!

Focusing on quantity is the reason that the Internet is littered with useless blogs and Web sites created by people desperate to make money online.

Having multiple blogs seems like a good idea when you first start blogging because a blog needs to give the audience what they want and ONLY what they want as much as possible.

It doesn’t work though because there are only so many hours in the day and each blog needs someone who is passionate about creating exceptional content and interacting with readers.

FOCUS ON ONE QUALITY BLOG!
Guest post on related high quality blogs.
Collaborate with social-media savvy bloggers.

In all things you do FOCUS on RELATED collaborations!

That reality leads to trying to find ways to automate content which dilutes quality and sends your blog or business toward failure. Many viable sites drift along because the person who built them can’t focus enough attention on them.

People THINK quantity is required because they believe
that is what it takes to rank in the search engines –
especially Google.

Fortunately that is NOT true because
QUALITY and RELEVANCY work even better!

I can prove this. Do a search for the phrase gift affiliate program and check the positions of posts on MurrayNewlands.com, GrowMap.com and ExecGiftsBlog.com or see the screen capture below:

Google Results for search Gift Affiliate Program Dec 15, 2011

Prior to doing this search I logged out of Google and I used Google Unpersonalized so the results should not be affected by personalization.

You can see from the screen capture above the positions of these
three posts that are today ALL on the first page at Google:

• Third: MurrayNewlands.com
• Fourth: GrowMap.com
• Tenth: ExecGiftsBlog.com

Note the dates of these three posts: Oct 23, Nov 1 and Nov 2, 2009 - over TWO YEARS ago. I have NOT done any link building to any of those posts and have rarely even shared or looked at them since 2009.

They immediately went to the first page and there they still rank.

Sometimes one of them will slip to the top of the second page and sometimes all three on the first page. This is in spite of there being several very strong affiliate marketing forums ranking, that being a very good phrase, and there being who knows how many hundreds of gift affiliate programs.

WHY ARE THEY ON PAGE ONE?
Simple. They are highly relevant quality content
related to that phrase and they link to each other.

Will my publishing this cause them to fall off page one? I don’t know, but we’ll find out, won’t we?

SEO MYTHS:

What does this tell you about commonly held myths about SEO such as:

• Reciprocal linking is ineffective – obviously not.
• Huge numbers of incoming links are necessary – doesn’t look like it to me.

That is NOT the only example of my using that strategy, but it is the only one I’m going to share. I invite you to try it for yourself or if you don’t have access to relevant blogs or blogging skills you can hire me to implement this strategy as part of blog outreach for your blog or small business.

Instead of focusing on more than one blog, massive link building, article marketing – and especially instead of using horrible automated linkbuilding tools that steal the time of others do this:

Focus on ONE high quality BLOG
Guest post on RELATED quality blogs
Collaborate with social-media savvy bloggers.

In all things you do FOCUS on RELATED collaborations!

If you don’t already have one blog consider NOT starting your own blog at all – at least for now. Almost every top blog has evolved into a group blog even if they aren’t “officially” a group blog because they publish many guest posts.

Whether you have a blog of your own or not, what we really need are collaborations of related blogs and group geo-targeted blogs because reaching a specific niche geo-targeted audience is the logical next step for bloggers AND businesses.

Every blog (or collaboration) should have both a niche
AND geographically specific content
AND a geo-targeted Twitter account

Think of the blogs you read most or sites from which you have bought products or services:

• Q: Do they have auto-generated content?
  • A: Of course not.
• Q: Do they spam other blogs? 
  • A: Certainly not!
• Q: Do you buy anything from blogs covered in AdSense ads with mediocre content?
  • A: No? Then why would anyone else?
    
• Q: Would you buy from a site that is spamming you with blog comments, spam email, or on any social network?
  • A: Not if you have good sense.
    

I assure anyone reading this that quality always trumps quantity and I hope by what I have shared here you now realize that huge quantities are NOT necessary.

I am NOT saying that link building is not important.
What I am saying is that links from a quality RELATED site
are more valuable than a zillion links from auto-generated junk.

Success will come from focusing all your efforts on reaching the audience most interested in what you have to offer. That is true on social media (and easily done on Twitter), in your blogs, through guest posting on related blogs, and in building collaborations.

RECOMMENDED READING: Hubspot has an excellent blog and offers exceptional advice on lead generation and management. Start with their post Content Quantity Diminishes Quality [Research] Here’s an exerpt:

The quality vs. quantity content debate isn’t an uncommon one in marketing, especially in the world of inbound marketing. High quality content is beneficial from a thought leadership and brand perception perspective, but marketers also struggle with the need to produce content regularly and frequently to compete for higher search engine rankings and fuel their inbound marketing strategies.

With recent developments in ranking algorithms such as Google Panda, however, quality has gained a competitive edge, as search engines are starting to value content high in quality and ding websites with low quality content.

That intelligence, coupled with the insights from the Presenter’s Paradox, make for a compelling case for quality over quantity in content creation, doesn’t it? The lesson is simple:

Don’t dilute your high-quality content
with mediocre or low-quality content.

Don’t take my word for it. Test it for yourself. Or hire me to show you by doing it for you. [NOTE: I only work with 2-3 total clients per month because I give them vastly more time than I charge them for and so I can mentor them in how to blog, do social media, grow their influence, etc. - so if you want my personal assistance contact me asap because once those spots are full I won't be able to accept more clients.]

Read quality blogs about SEO, especially Aaron Wall’s SEOBook. Start with this interview with Aaron and Andy Hagans on Link Building. Don’t miss probably the most important post I’ve seen on Google’s plans and my comments in that post.

Lastly, check out the brand new SEO Infographic below by SEO Book:

SEOBook Organic Link Infographic

The information in the above infographic combined with my posts detailing why Google IS Evil and How Google Limits Our Freedom of Choice By Discriminating Against Small Business clearly show that Google has declared war on small businesses.

As always, my readers are encouraged to comment and leave relevant links. Businesses and bloggers alike should take advantage of putting their best keywords in as anchor text in their comments. See the information about How to Use KeywordLuv for more details on how that works and how it benefits you.

CONTENT MARKETING EVENTS:

• Content Marketing World: The largest and leading content marketing event on the planet. The 2012 event takes place at the Columbus Convention Center in Columbus Ohio, September 4-6.

CONTENT MARKETING WEBINARS:

• Content Marketing Institute Monthly Content Marketing Webinars

CONTENT MARKETING BLOGS:

• Content Marketing Institute Content Marketing Blog
• See the Junta42 Top Content Marketing Blogs List for the best content marketing related blogs

Did you know? For many businesses, holiday sales are the key to finally getting into the black for the year (black ink on their accounting page = being profitable for the year – which is why it is called Black Friday).

Read this post for details: How to Get More Traffic Being Featured on JustRetweet

For bloggers who offer anything for sale, this time of year can also bring them increased income through affiliate products, additional advertising, or offering their own products like Kristi’s Blog Promotion Guide.

This year we have a new fast, easy way to increase your traffic so you cam potentially increase your income: a joint venture project I am partnering in for promoting blogs and small businesses called Just Retweet with a primary purpose of driving more traffic from Twitter. <<< Click that link for more on how to use JustRetweet.

Holiday VIP Special Discounts ~ Be featured on JustRetweet:

• Only $15 to be featured for one week – regular price $25
• Featured for two weeks – regular price $35 now only $25
• BEST DEAL: Featured for a full month for only $35 - you save $30

To buy just click this link to go to the Buy Credits Tab on JustRetweet

Being featured will get you more Twitter followers and the more you use the site the more Twitter users who will share your content, products, special deals – whatever you most desire – with all their followers.

Many of the influential bloggers invited to use JustRetweet have 10s of 1000s of followers and now YOU have an easy way to reach their followers IF they believe what you share will interest them!

Ileane from @BasicBlogTips where you can get blogging tips and find out how to optimize your social media has created this wonderful How to Use JustRetweet video:

[Notice that the embed code does NOT display the video cover Ileane used in the video; apparently YouTube wants their ads to display instead. They could at least include the actual video cover, too.  This image style will reduce clicks on images shared elsewhere.]

TWITTER RESOURCES:

• Kikolani: How to Increase Your Retweets, Twitter Followers and Klout
• GrowMap: Twitter Best Practices – all my Twitter tips in one place
• TweetSmarter: Excellent site for how to use Twitter effectively

Special Thanks to Kelli Miller @3boysandadog who created the image in this post and the 125×125 ad block that links this offer on the JustRetweet Homepage to this blog post explaining it.

HOMESCHOOLERS: Anyone who homeschools - or is considering it – should check out Kelli’s homeschooling freebies and every serious blogger  should consider one of Kelli’s Blog Media Kits available from her BlogPrintMedia Digital Design site.

Click Image to read why we need Geographically Targeted Group Blogs

Small businesses and bloggers are missing enormous opportunities that can be easily accessed by creating geographically targeted Twitter accounts and blog content.

By adding a local component to your social media accounts and blog, or creating accounts specifically to reach a location based audience, your Twitter account becomes far more valuable – for you and others.

Any business that operates in a limited geographic area will want to implement these tips as will all bloggers – whether you think this applies to what you are doing or not. Read on to find out WHY your geolocation is your strongest niche.

Small businesses probably already realize that a Twitter account with followers scattered around the world is unlikely to increase their local leads or sales. They will understand why the people they most want to reach are their neighbors who could be interested in their products or services.

Small Businesses Need to Reach Local Audiences –
Bloggers Who Have Local Influence Are Invaluable
Because when you can reach a local market
It makes sense for businesses to buy advertising
on your blog or pay you for blog outreach services.

Bloggers frequently tell me they do not want to “limit” their audience to a specific location and I spend a lot of time explaining to them why adding geo-targeted information to their blog positions them where the money is and will get them more recommendations.

Blogs and Twitter accounts providing LOCAL information that
shares content specifically beneficial to people in your location
makes others want to share it with others
BECAUSE IT IS UNIQUE and provides value.

Adding a local component to your existing blogs or Twitter accounts OR creating a Twitter account or blog specifically for a particular geographic location is not difficult.

WHY GEO-TARGET YOUR TWEETS?

Are you a tiny fish lost in a HUGE ocean?

When you are a tiny fish
in an enormous ocean
of 1000s or 1os of 1000s
of Blogs in your niche –

WHY should anyone recommend you?

Be one of the Biggest fish in your LOCAL pond

Decide to become a HUGE fish in your Local Small Pond and provide content on your blog and on Twitter that is interesting and useful to that local audience you give them an excellent reason to share what you are doing with others.

Go out of your way to create content of local interest and connect with people interested in what is happening locally.

You become a more effective influencer
With a much more targeted audience.

HOW TO TWITTER LOCALLY:

1. Claim a Twitter username that includes your location. Consider common abbreviations and local nicknames. You must use a different email address for each Twitter account. You can get a free email address from mail.yahoo.com and many other sites.
2. Add an Avatar image related to your location and write a bio specifically about that city, metro, state or country.
3. Create a blog page about your new location and link to it from your Twitter account and make sure your Twitter username is easy to locate on that page and on your blog or site.
4. Follow Twitter users in your desired location (see tools below for how to find them).
5. Find interesting content about what’s happening, live events, local entertainment, or even the local news and weather and use Twitterfeed or something similar to feed useful information to your local followers.
6. Manually share additional tweets of interest locally.
7. Interact with others in your target location.

Join experienced bloggers with social media influence
on JustRetweet.com ~ Read about how we support other
bloggers and small business with Twitter retweets.

DoFollow CommentLuv Bloggers Add Your Blogs Here
to be considered by our special projects and private forum.

Small Businesses AND bloggers should also read
CommentLuv Your Way to Business Prosperity

HOW TO ADD A LOCAL COMPONENT TO YOUR EXISTING BLOG:

1. When writing about your usual niche add specific information useful to your local readers at the end. For example, if you’re a deals blogger add a few local deals at the end of your regular posts.
2. Write some posts specifically for your local readers. To continue with our deals example, if your blog has lots of deals content it won’t hurt to write a few posts about deals that are only available locally. Put those in a separate category.
3. Create categories for your geographic niche. When you include local info at the end of posts about your usual topics put those in the usual category AND the geo-targeted category. If a post is ONLY of interest locally, put it in the geo-targeted category only.
4. Use local businesses as examples in posts about your usual topics.
5. Write featured reviews, interviews, and human interest posts about topics of interest to your local audience. Your national or international readers are likely to consider these interesting for the same reason travel blogs are so popular. Those that don’t can skip over them because you’re putting them in a separate category.
6. Offer a separate RSS feed for you geo-targeted category so non-local readers can opt out if they wish. I will research and add a post on how to do this as soon as time allows.
7. Use these tips from professional copywriter Donna Anderson (@SheWritesALot) on writing compelling local content and read about or join our local blogging collaborations.

Join us at Just Retweet ~ Bloggers supporting bloggers and small business

TWITTER LOCAL

Although there is an account for the Twitter Geo Team @Geo and there were posts about Twitter Places there does not appear to be anything happening as far as an official Twitter Local offering except for prompts from the Tweet Location Feature

Ways tools can determine location:

1. Information in the Twitter profile.
2. Locations mentioned in tweets.
3. Profiles completed on third party sites.
4. By pulling data from additional sources.

All our Twitter related tips and strategies can be reached through
Our Twitter Best Practices post on How To Use Twitter Effectively.

TWITTER SEARCH TOOLS

Listed in order of usefulness at the time I tested them:

• Advanced Twitter Search ~ Type the location you are interested in into the Places /near this place field and select the number of miles around you want to search. Many of the results returned will be from Twitter users in that location. For large metro areas like Dallas Ft. Worth I use 50 miles. For small locations you may want to reduce that and if you are targeting an entire state you would select a city near the center of the state and select the number of miles it is from that city to the state boundary lines.
• FollowerWonk ~ Includes an option to search your followers by location. Use this when you create Twitter account(s) for specific locations so you can follow those you already have relationships with in an existing Twitter account.

ONLINE TWITTER GEO TOOLS:

1. WeFollow by City ~ Search for Twitter user by city; choose results ranked by most followers or most influential.
2. TwellowHood ~ Simple tool to use – just type in a location to find Twitter users who mention that location in their Twitter profiles. Results are ranked by number of Twitter followers by default. While you may find disabled accounts Twellow is a good way to locate blogs, businesses and individuals by niche, interests, or location.
3. TweetGrader ~ Twitter Elite by Top City – lists of the top 50 Twitter users for a given city, but although their blurb says the lists are ranked by number of followers that is clearly not true now. Exact criterion for ranking unknown. If you know how they are ranking, leave details and/or relevant links in the comments of this post and I will update this section.
4. Twitaholic – while not intended for the purpose, you can find someone in the location you are interested in on Twitaholic, click on the location link, and you will get the top Twitter users for that location ranked by the number of followers they have.
5. Twibs ~ Search Twibs for Twitter users by Geographic Location
6. ChirpCity ~Find out what Twitter users in a city are tweeting OR what tweeters around the world are saying about a location. Searches by keyword so all results will not be what you’re seeking.
7. Local Tweeps~ Looked like a good idea: Register a location for your Twitter account, then log into the site to follow other Twitter users in that location directly on the Local Tweeps site.  Unfortunately I was not able to get logged in and none of the four people listed on their about page has tweeted since at least Nov 15 or between Nov 15-Nov 22, 2011.
8. NearbyTweets ~ I was unable to get this tool to pick up my location because I recently tweeted about New York and clicking preferences in FireFox and Chrome did nothing. If there is a way to manually enter your location I haven’t found it yet. If you are able to get this to work for you, please leave a comment with details.

TWITTER LOCAL TOOLS:

• TwitterLocal.net – Adobe Air based tool that has to be downloaded to be used.

How to Find Local Twitter Users:

• Mashable: Local Tweets: 9 Ways to Find Twitter Users in Your Town (Jun 8, 2009)

MEET LOCAL TWITTER USERS:

• Tweetup Meetup Groups – Use this Tweetup link to search for Twitter Meetups around the world.
• Twtvite ~ Site to create Tweetup groups by location or plan local tweetups

LOCAL iPhone Twitter Apps:

• According to Mashable Local Tweets Post from Jun 8, 2009: “Four iPhone Twitter apps that include location-based search are Twinkle (free), TwitterFon (free), Tweetie ($2.99), and Twittelator Pro ($4.99). “

INACTIVE TWITTER APPS:

After I had come across so many Twitter apps that used to have local features that are no longer available I added this section so that I and others will not be looking for them.

• Tweetmondo

Do you have tips or additional resources
for geotargeting Twitter accounts?

We’d love to hear from you. Just leave a comment
or use our contact tab. Relevant links always welcome.

Image Credit: ConserStations ~ Click Image to Read Why and How He Uses Twitter

WHAT you tweet makes all the difference.

Do it well and your followers and influence will grow. Do it badly and you will never get any traction because people will first ignore and then unfollow you faster than new people follow you.

Even those wise enough to join JustRetweet and use the Retweet sharing function that encourages others to share your tweets do not clearly understand what kind of tweets will work.

Yesterday I wrote What NOT to Tweet on Twitter so today I am continuing with what TO Tweet - with tips in order of importance.

Before I write about actual tweets, fix this huge omission that far too many Web site designers, website owners, and bloggers are making:

Put your Twitter Username on your Sites AND Your Blogs
ideally in an obvious place near the upper right corner and make
sure the word Twitter in text can be found using a Ctrl-F search.

If your Twitter Username is on your sites, people like me will include
it when we share your content, follow you, and use it to contact you.

Don’t make us use a search engine trying to TRY to find it!

I am amazed at the number of people – even SEOs and bloggers and people who work in social media agencies – who do not have their username on their site and blog and do not include usernames in their tweets. That makes no sense.

When tweeting from other sites and apps:

Include Twitter usernames in your Tweets!

If you have a tool in your blog that makes it easy to tweet your posts – and you should – make sure you put suggested text in the tool and INCLUDE YOUR TWITTER USERNAME!!!

Look at the tweets in your Twitter stream. Which ones sound interesting enough for you to click on their links or retweet to your followers? They will give you ideas for what YOU should be tweeting. What do YOU click on? Tweet what YOU would click on.

If you are sharing a link DESCRIBE what
the user will find if they choose to click on it.

No one wants to click on a link when they have no idea where it goes – and anyone who tricks them into clicking on a link that is NOT what the text said it was will be unfollowed or even blocked or reported as a spammer – so never do that.

When you Retweet always check the link
to make sure it works BEFORE you reshare it.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE:

The key to having an effective Twitter account is to intentionally build an audience interested in what you share. That could be your niche or a specific location – or both. (I HIGHLY recommend BOTH as I explain in Why Your Location IS a Niche.)

This is especially important if you have a local business. You need to follow and interact with people in your geographic location and share with them:

What THEY are interested in –
NOT what YOU want them to do for you.

Share what is happening in your area – events and activities or maybe even sales of interest. Locate the best local blogs and add their blog feeds to your Twitter stream.

NEVER Just Keep Tweeting Your Own Content
OR even worse – about your company over and over again.

And finally, Twitter is ultimately about relationships. While you can automate some of what you do, what really matters is interacting with real people. That is true whether you are a blogger, or have a business, or run or work in an agency.

HOW TO USE TWITTER EFFECTIVELY:

• Reply to people who tweet at you. (Use the @Mentions link and search for your username without the @ symbol or set up alerts to find tweets sent directly to you.)
• Retweet content that interests you. You can do that directly on Twitter or using your favorite Twitter management applications or by joining us on JustRetweet or all three.
• Send tweets to those who share something you want to know more about – maybe ask them a question or thank them for sharing.
• Make it a point to know who is interested in what and introduce people who have similar interests.
• When you share LOCAL INFO put LOCATION first in your Tweet.
• Online Events: Be sure to include TIME w/ time zone, hashtag, and ideally a link to additional information explaining how to use Tweetchat or at least a link to Tweetchat with YOUR hashtag already filled in on their search.
• Physical events: Put location FIRST in at least some of your tweets and last in others. Include TIME including time zone and best link to additional information. Event hashtags are nice to share info about an event but not that helpful when someone doesn’t even know about the event yet so use hashtags for niche, location, or keywords in some tweets.
• Do NOT keep tweeting the same tweet over and over. You will bore your followers and Twitter may block or filter them. Do send DIFFERENT  tweets with varying information - If you need to reach many people send tweets to specific individuals throughout the day. Use a tool like CoTweet to schedule them if you send more than just a few at a time.

I have done a lot of posts on how to use Twitter because Twitter is the most useful social network for connecting with other influencers and reaching really busy people who have gatekeepers or assistants. You can sometimes connect with them on Twitter when there is may be no other place you can reach them directly.

For more Twitter Tips Follow @TweetSmarter
and visit their Twitter Tips blog.

You do not have to remember where they all are. I have created a comprehensive Twitter Best Practices post and will add these latest two to the other links there. You will find everything from How to Tweet videos for newbies to advanced Twitter strategies there.

And don’t forget to join us at JustRetweet
where influential bloggers want to meet and follow you
and share your content to send you more traffic.

Image Credit: Simply Zesty ~ Interesting: Why Twitter Needs to Wake Up and Start Working with Businesses

As I moderate what is being shared on JustRetweet.com it occurs to me that many people – even bloggers – do not really understand what to tweet.

First it is important to keep in mind that there is one thing you really need to know about Social Networks:

They are called SOCIAL networks because they are about
RELATIONSHIPS – actually interacting with other people.

People don’t like advertisements so don’t advertise on Twitter. In other words, your tweets should not SOUND like advertisements!  Here are some examples of what does NOT work on Twitter:

What NOT to tweet:

• Just a link with no text – no one is going to click on that – at least no one with online experience who knows better
• Automated programs offering to grow your  Twitter followers or Facebook friends
• Sales pages like http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/429548-600-sold-total-twitter-domination-make-twitter-submit-your-will.html – if you want to recommend something WRITE A POST or SHARE A REVIEW but don’t share a sales page because people will think it is a scam. The key to ethical marketing is HONESTY.
• Only your own blog posts – people are rarely interested in the self-absorbed – see How to Share Interesting Content on Twitter
• Only links to or tweets about your business – see Why You Should NOT Just Keep Tweeting About Your Business

If you want more tips on how to use Twitter
see my comprehensive Twitter Best Practices post.

IMPORTANT OTHER THINGS to NOT TWEET:

• 10 Things You Should NEVER Share on Twitter or Facebook
• What NOT to Tweet: Ways to Commit Social Media Suicide
• Things You Need to STOP Tweeting About – Remember your audience – if they are bloggers and social media influencers tweeting about Twitter, small business and social media IS interesting to them.

Click Image to Go to JustRetweet

OVERVIEW of JustRetweet:

JustRetweet is a Twitter related site that rewards users for following each other on Twitter through the site and for sharing posts fed into it via RSS or for retweeting manually entered tweets.

PLEASE READ THIS because it is important
to understand how the site works:

The basic premise is that bloggers and businesses can either
buy credits to promote their sites OR they can EARN credits
by following and retweeting content they find valuable.

JustRetweet is the brainchild of Valentine Belonwu @JustRetweetcom. He had the site built and contacted me to review it and I felt it could be very useful to bloggers and small businesses so when he asked me if I would partner with him and promote the site I agreed.

One key to that potential is that Valentine agrees with me on how to promote the site and we have already invited in all of the bloggers on my PeerIndex Influencers list so you KNOW there will be some major social media influencers on board to send you traffic.

What will make JustRetweet stand out from some other similar sites is
bloggers like you who are willing to benefit others as well as yourselves
are on board and already know how to use social networks effectively.

Valentine is willing to add features to benefit social media
savvy bloggers and small businesses.

HOW TO USE JUST RETWEET:

1. Go to JustRetweet.com and log in using Twitter. That will give you 100 credits.
2. Click on settings, go to the General Tab and fill out the basic information there. That will give you 25 more credits.
3. Click on the Twitter Tab and verify that credit is set to 2 and active status is on.
4. Skip the Retweet and Website Tab for now and click on the Blog tab. This allows JustRetweet to automatically share your blog posts as you publish them.
5. Enter your RSS feed URL and verify it works.
6. Please use 2 in the credits field. You’ll understand why shortly.
7. Put a number between 20 and 40 in the total credits field.
8. I set my minimum number of followers to 0 for now because this is a brand new launch. We can increase that as the site grows.
9. Under feed type I use Title so that the title of my blog posts is what appears when my new posts are displayed on JustRetweet, but you can use Description if you prefer.
10. Click on Websites Tab. I put my blog information in that section, too, but if you have another site or a primary URL different than your blog URL you want in there use that information instead.
11. Click on the Retweet Tab. The settings here are the same as on the feed tab.
12. Use the Retweet Tab to add tweets or to share links that you most want RTed.

The key to this working is that each of us should manually share only share our top content – either pillar posts or pages (the ones you would build links to for search engine traffic) or new posts that are important to us – NOT EVERY POST WE EVER WRITE!

Remember that everyone is really busy and will assist WHEN THEY CAN – sometimes they will be too busy – but by using this system we can all support each other when we have time more easily by being able to quickly see which links are most important to each other.

You may still wish to contact your key collaborators directly if you see that they have not shared. Just as you would not do that for every post because you don’t want to wear out your welcome, we don’t want to overuse this system – but used wisely this is a highly scalable way to drive traffic and support other bloggers.

If you know of any DoFollow CommentLuv bloggers I have missed or of bloggers you feel are like us and should be invited, please let me know.

So many influencers are already featured that I’ve asked
Valentine to add more featured spots on the main page!

You can leave a comment here or contact me on Skype (I’m the only GrowMap there – chat only as my microphone isn’t working) or on Yahoo IM (see contact tab) or by sending a regular tweet to @GrowMap. (If you DM let me know via regular tweet.)

Why not add some Retweets for your best content NOW?
And add your RSS feed so your posts will automatically be shared.

PROHIBITED CONTENT
Do NOT request Retweets of sales pages, get rich quick schemes,
unethical plugins or tools like these trackback spammers like those
commonly seen on Warrior Forum. They will be deleted.

Repeated infractions will result in account deletion.

Click this image for many LISTS of Exceptional Bloggers with Twitter Usernames for Follow Friday

Friday is a popular day for link roundups and Follow Friday recommendations.

Both are excellent ideas for bloggers and social media users to emulate.

I highly recommend you
seek out other bloggers in your
niche and physical geography.

Reach out to them by linking to and
commenting in posts you appreciate.

Share and recommend them on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google+ and elsewhere.

Develop a group of bloggers who support each other’s efforts and recommend each other for Follow Friday on Twitter. Encourage them to use Twitter and share my Twitter Best Practices with them.

The ever popular Kristi Hines has long done what she calls Fetching Friday Link Roundups and I know that many blogs I regularly visit do similar roundups so I’m asking YOU to remind me where they all are!

Just today I discovered a new DoFollow CommentLuv Premium blog thanks to a REAL trackback including one of my guest posts in his TGIF Resource Mashup.

SmallBizTrends published a roundup yesterday of the Best Small Business Advice and many other top sites publish exceptional research that is well worth republishing.

Think about what people where you live or interested in your niche would most want to find and you can compile research that many are highly likely to link to, share and appreciate.

Here are some examples (and if you’ll add YOUR favorites – either on your own blog or anyone else’s site – I will move them up into this list):

• Library Blogs
• Gardening Blogs
• DoFollow KeywordLuv Blogs
• 100 Twitter Ready Quotes
• CommentLuv Premium Reviews
• Top Black Social Media Influencers and Black Social Media Influencers
• Google Plus FollowFriday: 50+ Bloggers Worth Following on Google+
  
• Example Follow Friday Roundup where the blogger used optimum anchor text for each blog she recommends.

Many blogging collaborations do unique types of roundups like these:

• Recipe Roundup
• Budget Recipe Roundup
• Organic and Natural Coupon Roundup
• Green Resources

If you regularly publish a link roundup series
please leave a link to a post about that OR
to your latest roundup so I can include
YOU in this post. Thanks!

Your relevant links are ALWAYS welcome in the comments here and do take advantage of KeywordLuv to link to your most important search phrases. That’s what we offer it!