Archive for Twitter
Have You Been Phished?
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Please be careful what you click on in Twitter (and all social networking sites)!
If you receive a DM on Twitter saying something like “haha is this you?” with a link or other strange DMs please do not click on the link.
If you do click on the link please do not give them your Twitter Log In info, even if it looks like a Twitter page (it’s probalbly not).
This is how people get in to your account and send out those icky DMs to all your followers. This is called phishing, the mean person or program on the other end tricked you in to thinking you are just relogging in to Twitter but really you are not, you are giving someone else your log in info.
This can happen on Twitter, Facebook, eBay, PayPal, you name it… always check the url at the top of your browser, if something feels suspicious it probably is. If you do click on a link and you are asked to log in to Twitter again… don’t. Close your browser, re-open it, and start all over entering Twitter.com.
Scott Stratten explains phishing much more eloquently. Please read here.
If you are going to participate in social networking, it is uber important that you know how to protect yourself and your followers.
If your account did get phished you can easily stop the problem by quickly changing your password.
Thank you!
3/1/10 Update: There is a new phishing scam going on today. If you receive a DM that says: “Some1 wrote something about u on his blog” IGNORE it or DELETE it but please do not click on the link.
Twitter Lists
Posted by: | CommentsTwitter Lists: Lists made by individual Twitter users to categorize people they are following. If you are wondering how to use Twitter Lists you can read about it here on Mashable.
Have you ever taken a look at the Twitter lists you are on? You might want to. I find it fascinating how people categorize me. These lists are a great way to tell what people think of me. I may think I am putting one image out to the world but the world may be seeing a whole other image. Or maybe the world sees me as I see me. Anyway, it’s late and I’m babbling but still go check and see what lists you on. You may be surprised.
Here are the names of some of the lists I am on:
business tech, in genius local, business services, sf bay area deals, social media, face to face, marin, virtual-assistant, web-social-media, social media, social media, owning pink,virtual assistants, i forgot why (my personal favorite), social media marketing pr, bay area, marincal, clover spreadshirt com (what?), random, imagineers, marketeers, travel, awesome people (I like this), pink sisters, marin sonoma, travelers, social media, bayarea, pinkies, ijfriends, travelers, to do bay area, oakland essentials, awesome tweets, san francisco, marin county sf bay area, virtual support, local friends foodies, business divas, va rock stars, sflocal, experts, writers, twitter crushes, good vibrations, our gang, mini cooper, local media, movers n shakers, san francisco bay area, marinareapeeps, gay marriage…
If you want to remove yourself from a list. I think this trick still works: Remove Yourself From a Twitter List
I’d love to hear some of the funny lists you are on.
Squeeky Clean Social Media
Posted by: | CommentsI was talking with Dusty, the owner of The Bath Nook (my favorite soap product in the world) and we were talking about fun things we could do with social media.
Dusty came up with the idea to do a combined contest on Facebook. She offered to give away some of her fantastic products to the Virtual Simplicity Facebook Fans. She’s giving away a bar of soap and a small bottle of lotion in my very favorite scent: Oatmeal!
The contest is open until 1/30/10 at 12noon PST. At that point, I will do a drawing using the randomizer and post the winner. Winner will have 3 days to get mailing address to me.
If you would like a chance to sample this amazing soap and lotion here is how to enter the contest.You only need to pick one option below to enter or you can enter more than once by doing each of the following. You must leave a separate comment for each entry. ***MAKE SURE TO LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW TO BE ENTERED IN CONTEST.***
1. Become a fan of the Virtual Simplicity Facebook Fan Page and then come back here, leave a comment and let me know you are a fan.
2. Become of a fan of The Bath Nook Facebook Fan Page and then come back here, leave a comment and let me know.
3. Tweet about this contest linking back to this post. Leave a comment here letting me know you tweeted about it. Here is a convenient tiny url you can use to tweet about the contest: http://bit.ly/6MGCC0
4. Link to this contest from your Facebook page and leave a comment here letting me know.
Thank you and I look forward to sharing this wonderful product with you.
Sally
PS. At this time we can only ship to US addresses. Sorry to my friends from all the other wonderful countries.
I don’t get Twitter
Posted by: | CommentsI hear the following statements a lot:
- I don’t get Twitter
- I don’t have time for Twitter
- Who cares what I am doing
- Twitter is a waste of time
- People on Twitter are so egotistical
- and the list goes on and on
For those of you that are still a little bit interested in what Twitter actually is and what the point of it is here is a video titled Twitter in Plain English.
Overwhelmed by Twitter
Posted by: | CommentsAre you feeling overwhelmed by Twitter? I hear comments like this all the time:
I don’t have time for Twitter.
I can’t keep up with Twitter.
I’m too busy for Twitter.
Are you amazed by the amount of updates in your Twitter stream? Did you know you do not have to read ALL of the updates of the people you follow?
Think of Twitter like the break room at a corporate office: when you enter the break room there are probably other people in the room having a conversation –> you walk in to the middle of the conversation –> participate while you are in there –> then go back to work even though there are probably still people carrying on a conversation in the break room after you’ve gone back to work.
Most likely you are not going to get a replay of all the conversations you missed (unless you work with one of those really gossipy types). And probably you are okay with that. So why do you feel the need to read every single tweet that comes through your stream?
Twitter is a lot like the break room – when you are signed in you participate in conversations, when you are gone life goes on without you and it is okay.
However, if you are a business like Starbucks and you want to know who is talking about you when you are not around you can always do a Twitter search.
Do you agree? Do you read every single update?
How do I know if someone is following me back on Twitter?
Posted by: | CommentsDo you ever wonder if the people you are following on Twitter are following you back?
Here is a quick way to find out who is not following you back on Twitter:
Go to FriendOrFollow.com, type in your Twitter user name and wait. After a few moments you will see a display of all the people you are following that are not following you back.
Now that you have this information you have a few choices:
- Ignore the info – who cares if they are following me back or not?
- Unfollow everyone who is not following you – this is SOCIAL networking right? (to paraphrase @pheadrick)
- Reach out to those Unfollowers and let them know you are there and you care about what they have to say. If you acknowledge them they might notice you. Generally, everyone likes to be acknowledged.
What do you do with all your unfollowers?
Remove Yourself from a Twitter List
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If you are active on Twitter you probably have noticed that you’ve been added to people’s “lists“. You might have also noticed people can call their lists whatever they want and you are suddenly associated with whatever that title is. For instance, I’m on a list titled I-follow-them-4-no-reason.
Being on this list got me to thinking. ..
What if someone puts you on a Twitter list you don’t want to be on? Can you just click “Remove From List”? No, not yet. Although I think a remove option would be a very nice idea for Twitter to add. Twitter is all about creating your own community and having control over what you put out there.
If you find yourself on a Twitter list that you do not want to be on, there is a way to remove yourself from a Twitter list!
Click on the list creators profile → block them → then unblock them → wahlah you are magically removed from their list.
It works, I just tried it! If you happen to be the person whose list I removed myself from please don’t take it personally, I was just testing the system.
I learned this nice little trick reading the Techie-Buzz blog.
PS. I’m still on the list titled I-follow-them-4-no-reason because I think it is funny and creative. 
PPS. Update the owner of the list changed the name I-follow-them-4-no-reason after reading my tweet about it. LOL New list I-forgot-why-I- was-following-this-person.
Something Good Came Out of the Dreamhost Outage (for me)
Posted by: | CommentsDreamhost is a hosting service for Websites and email. Many of us depend on Dreamhost to keep our Websites online, our emails flowing and our businesses running. Today, Dreamhost went down, not for long, maybe ½ an hour but enough to shake up many of their customers.
I understand things happen and something went wrong. I appreciate how fast they got it back up but I do think they missed the boat with client communication. There was practically a mass hysteria on Twitter about Dreamhost being down – because there was no communication coming from Dreamhost. Their site was down, their status update page was not updated, their Twitter account had not been updated for awhile. I’m guessing the Dreamhost staff was panicking and working as fast as they could to get our service back but if they would have at least tweeted an update from one employee’s cell phone saying “we know there is a problem, we are working on it” we might of all felt a little better during that stressful half an hour of outage time.
Anyway, one Twitter user @kingkool68 put things back in to perspective to me. He posted: I love Dreamhost for giving me time to go outside and play!
So, thanks to @kingkool68 instead of staring blankly at the Twitter search page for #Dreamhost I thought about what I could do to be productive while I waited for Dreamhost to get back up. I finished a client project that did not require email. I filed a pile of papers I’ve been procrastinating on filing for awhile and I made a new friend on Twitter. 
The Dreamhost outage was a great reminder to me to not sweat the small things. What did you do while Dreamhost was down?
Are Twitter & Facebook taking over your life?
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“Remember, every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else.”
What are you saying yes to? Think about it, every time you say yes to something it means you are saying no to something else. What are you saying no to? Are you tweeting when you are having a special dinner with your kid? Are you surfing the Web when you could be exercising? Are you playing on Facebook when you could be working? Scott Stratten (who is kind of a big deal on Twitter) from UnMarketing writes about his awakening to what’s important in life (hint: it’s not always Twitter). Click here and scroll down to read “Being a Big Deal on Twitter is not as Big as you think“.
If I’m not careful I sometimes end up spending my whole day on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. This is not really productive. It’s fun, but not productive. I believe for a business to run a good social networking campaign they can do it in under 15 minutes a day.
Are you an Online Addict?
People can become addicted to forums, chat rooms, emails, IM, online networking and volunteering. These people do not know when to say no. They think they have to do this to build their business. They feel guilty being away from their computer or afraid they might miss something, so they keep volunteering, chatting, posting – hoping it will turn into business. What it actually turns into is time being eaten away, no billable hours to show, resentful families, and quite possibly a feeling of isolation. We’re not saying making use of online networking and resources is bad, but there have to be limits… if someone is spending 8 or more hours a day doing this and seeing no income or getting behind on client work, feeling overworked and stressed and knows his or her family is resentful, that person may have a problem. -Managing Your Thriving Business For Success
In an online chat awhile back, the topic of balancing work and family came up. Someone said since she started working from home her house was messier, meals were not getting cooked, and she was spending less time with her family because she was always on the computer. She felt she has to do this to build her business. She said when she worked full time, in the corporate world, all that home stuff was getting done. Several other people commented they too were experiencing similar situations. This happens because we get lax on our routines when we start working from home. When we work outside of the home, we know “at home” time is limited, so we do what needs doing now,instead of thinking, “Oh, I can do that later.”
An idea to bring balance back into your life is to set up some routines which I will discuss in the next post.
Twitter – To Follow or Not
Posted by: | CommentsThere is much debate in the Twitter community whether to follow back everyone that is following you or not. I don’t think you need to follow EVERYone back but if you are having public conversations with me (ie. Using the @ sign in front of my name) it’s probably a good idea to follow me. I may want to send you a DM (a private message) and offer to promote your business but when I try to send you a DM and I can’t because you are not following me, I get frustrated. When I go to your page and see you have hundreds of followers and are only following 7 back, I get frustrated. This makes me feel unimportant and maybe not want to promote your business anymore because it makes me feel like maybe you don’t care about me. Twitter is all about feeling acknowledged. I think most people are on Twitter because they want to be heard and acknowledged. If someone sends me an @ (that is not spam) I will automatically follow them back, that person is trying to build a relationship. I want to acknowledge that.
Some argue that they can’t follow everyone because it just gets too crowded in their Twitter stream. I totally get this and that is why I use TweetDeck where I can separate who I am following in to columns. I have one column with everyone that I glance at throughout the day, I have another column with local tweeps and another with cool tweeps, these two columns are the ones I regularly watch and interact with the most. I still glance at the masses and occasionally interact with them but I don’t get overwhelmed. Of course, the @ column is the one I watch the most and always try to respond to. If someone has taken the time to mention me or talk to me directly I definitely want to acknowledge them and write back.
I’ve found some of the “big” Twitter users don’t respond to all their @ messages. I understand it can be challenging but I would hope they at least try to respond. One certain “big” Twitter user has never responded to any of my @ messages even though he talks a lot about building relationships. Other “big” Twitter users such as Mari Smith or Mack Collier respond to @ messages, they get it. I know how I feel when I’m ignored and it’s frustrating so I try my best to keep up with @ messages and follow most of my followers that interact with me. If you have tried to send me a DM and I’m not following you back, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to. Please @ me and tell me to follow you!
