Twitter News, Tips and Commentary — The Twitter Resource

Jalen Rose, a former NBA star and current ESPN analyst, recently wrote a post for Mashable discussing 5 reasons why every sports fan should be on social media. His first point in his article: social media gives every fan a voice. But how exactly does a sport fan go about finding his/her own voice in social media?

Here are a few ways that sports fans can find their own voice on Twitter.

1. Affiliate with a team, or go independent, through use of hashtags.

First, you need to determine if you are going to tweet your favorite teams or go independent. While most sports fans naturally gravitate towards tweeting their favorite teams, there is nothing wrong with going independent (and you can accomplish different things if you do, which will be explained later on).

Make sure that you tag your tweets with the team the tweet applies to. Try not to overdo it on hashtags—two should be enough to make sure your tweets are read. It’s important to tag your tweets with team hashtags so they can be easily found in search. While hashtags don’t necessarily designate fanhood, it makes it clear what team your tweet is referring to.

If you go independent and tweet a variety of teams, that is fine as well.

2. Consider providing value.

There are plenty of sports fans on Twitter that produce tweets that don’t necessarily benefit anyone. Tweets such as “Yeahhhhhhhhhhh #(teamname) are alright, if you’re watching the game. But realize that many people on Twitter are probably not watching your game, and they may not know what you are referring to.

There’s nothing wrong with live tweeting games, but at least make it clear what you’re referring to and provide some context within your updates.

3. Provide a resource.

If you’re an independent sports fan on Twitter, the opportunity is there to provide a resource for your followers. Are you obsessed with stats? Tweet a bunch of interesting stats about a variety of sports. What about breaking sports news or commentary? Tweet a wide variety of this material.

There are plenty of sports fans out there on Twitter, but good sports resources are rare. If you are interested in a specific sport or specific interesting content, share it with your followers!

4. Consider setting up a separate Twitter account for sports tweets.

The last thing you want to do is alienate your followers who may not be as excited about sports as you are. So take some time and set up a separate Twitter account for your sports tweets, if you plan on updating sports-wise in high volume. You’ll save your personal profile from being unfollowed in the event you tweet too much sports—especially if you’re a sports fan and tweet on behalf of a few teams, you definitely want to consider this option.

Do you tweet sports? Let me know your comments and any other tips in the comments section.

(Photo Credit: Gregory Elementary School)

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When you go through the list of your followers, you probably see a great deal of different tweeting styles.

Some followers may tweet all links. Some may talk about their life through a lifestream. And some could have all conversation using @ replies.

The @ reply is one of the most important parts of the Twitter experience. Without using them, a user misses out on the conversational, collaboration-focused part of Twitter, an important and often overlooked part.

Here are three reasons why you should use @ replies in your tweets.

• @ replies are attention grabbers.

Most users will be intrigued by you and your profile if you include @ replies in your stream. Think about it: if you had to choose between a stream of all links and a stream with mostly links but @ replies included, you’d probably be more intrigued by the second profile.

In third party applications like TweetDeck and Seesmic, @ replies come up in a separate stream. If you are trying to grab someone’s attention and engage with other tweeps, there is no better way to do this than through an @ reply. As long as the @ reply is not spam, conversation or a retweet would do the trick.

• @ replies build relationships.

Think about it: 140 characters is not necessarily enough to make a new friend. But through @ replies to a few select people, you can easily begin to build Twitter relationships and connections. People are introduced daily to one another through @ replies, as some Twitter users click through other peoples’ streams to find other interesting users to follow.

• @ replies encourage conversation and interactivity.

Twitter is like a 24-hour cocktail party. You can engage in conversation with anyone at anytime on the platform. So take advantage of it.

If you were at a real-life cocktail party, would you sit alone in the corner and not talk with anyone? Would you try to push your product on anyone you could get the message out to? Conversational and retweet @ replies are the best way to show others there is someone behind the username.

Do you use @ replies often in your tweets? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Continuing in a series of posts about creating your Twitter profile, today we’ll take a look at how you can use the “More Info URL” field of your profile in a creative way.

Twitter gives all users an opportunity to provide a website or link to expand on their profile. Outside of the “One Line Bio” field, this is probably the second most important part to your profile. Let’s face it: name and location just aren’t that exciting compared with a creative bio and outbound link.

Here are five ideas for links you can use in your “More Info URL” field to make your profile more interesting and creative.

• Link to another social media profile, preferably one that is open to the public.

This is one of the most common things I’ve seen with Twitter profiles. Linking to another social media site with mostly open data (read: no protected Facebook or MySpace pages) is a fine use of the “More Info URL” field. Granted, it may not be the most exciting or most groundbreaking idea, but if you link to a profile that is unprotected where people can learn more about you, you’ll be well off.

Instead of sticking with the traditional social networks—Facebook, LinkedIn being the most common—consider a wide range of social media profiles. Blip.fm would be a good choice if you like music. A GoodReads profile could be an interesting idea if you are into reading or tweet about books.

Shauna Causey uses a LinkedIn profile link in her "More Info URL".

• Link to your personal website’s home page.

A link to the personal web page cannot be beat, as it provides insight to who you are and possibly what you do as well. If you are a personal tweeter or a lifestreamer, a personal website could be a blog with personal thoughts on it. If you are part of a business or prefer to link to something work-oriented, you could do that as well.

Along with the social media profile, this is also extremely common. So let’s take a look at three other interesting kinds of links you can include in your “More Info URL”.

• Link to a Twitter-specific landing page.

This is an idea that is rapidly expanding by the day. I have seen many Twitter users create a specific landing page just for their Twitter accounts. You can host it on your personal website, or if you don’t have one, you can link it to another online source (an open Facebook note, etc.).

Information you can include on your landing page? More information about yourself, a follow-back policy, what you tweet about or links to external websites that provide more context into who you are. I highly recommend you create a Twitter-specific landing page and develop it, as it could ultimately lead to more followers as more people understand who you are.

Grant Griffiths (@GrantGriffiths) uses a Twitter landing page as his Twitter "More Info URL". (Picture taken from BlogForProfit.com)

• Link to an article about you from another source.

If you are lucky enough to have been interviewed by someone else for a blog or website, and a transcript or audio clip is available on the Internet, you can consider linking directly to that article. While not the most conventional use of the “Web” field on Twitter, an article about you written by someone else is essentially a biography that can lend more insight to who you are.

If you’re really into computers, you could link to an article about how you worked with computers, or a video/audio clip of you talking about computers. As long as the content is interesting, people will want to know and you will increase the chance of people taking notice of you. If the article/audio/video is very interesting, a Twitter user may end up Googling to find more information about you, so essentially this use acts as a “hook” for others.

• Link to a Testimonials or “Impact” page.

Now while this tactic may come off as spammy or arrogant, linking to a testimonials or impact page may not be such a bad idea. What do I mean by “Impact”? If you have a page listing your successes, community service activities or other impacts of goodwill, people will take notice—but there is no guarantee they will be intrigued by what you do.

If the testimonials or impact involve individuals with high social capital—power Twitter users or well-known celebrities, a landing page could do wonders for advancing your personal brand. Think about it: you would probably be open to following someone endorsed by Guy Kawasaki and Pete Cashmore, wouldn’t you?

If you use a testimonials or impact page, make sure that the page doesn’t come off as arrogant: people will quickly get turned off by this, and are not likely to take much interest in you or follow you back.

What do you use your “More Info URL” field for on Twitter?

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