There is lots of info out there about how to get more followers for your Twitter account. And then there are all kinds of links offering to get you more followers the quick and easy way. DO NOT CLICK THERE.

Personally, I get much more out of quality people I follow, not quantity people following me. Sure, with my corporate accounts we want to reach lots of customers with our message. But even there, we want it to be the right people that we reach.

Geoff Livingston, Allison Fine, Beth Kanter and Kami Huyse started a smart meme on “Ways to Increase Your Twitter Following Ethically” – if you’re looking to build a Twitter presence, I highly recommend it.

They’ve invited us all to extend the conversation: I have a few tips of my own to add.

1. Have a goal. Know what you want to get out of people you reach as well as those you’re following. Why are you doing this Twitter thing anyway? Do I have to mention this? Well, yes, from what I’ve read on Twitter it seems I do. Even if your goal is just to communicate with your friends and get news faster. Know that this is your goal.
2. Focus. When someone asks you what you tweet about, can you answer them? Try narrowing tweets from your personal account to just a few topics important to you. I recommend that you focus on topics you know best. This way people find it easier to associate you with a topic or two. Your profile and any directory tags should reflect these topics.
3. Engage. When someone follows you, check out their profile and see what you have in common. Twitter is about making connections, and that’s a two-way street. Make a conscious decision whether to follow someone back or not. And don’t follow so many people that you can’t manage reading your incoming Tweets.
4. Use etiquette. Be positive. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything. Of course correcting false information and participating in healthy debate is appropriate. Give credit where it is due — label retweets as RT or /via.
5. Don’t overtweet. This does no one any favors. Taking over everyone’s Twitter stream is just rude, and unless you’re covering a specific event, you need to leave space between your Tweets to allow folks to consider what you’ve said.
6. Be patient. Your numbers will come in time. If you have built your audience slowly it will be a much more reliable audience than one that’s been built overnight.

Also read: Tips on being a corporate Tweeter, 10 tips to help you learn to fly on Twitter

I’m looking forward to embarking on a new adventure as a corporate tweeter. As such, I’ve taken a good deal of time accumulating best practices for corporate accounts. Many of these are the same as I would recommend for anyone operating a business Twitter account for themselves:

1. Have a mission/message in mind before you post your first tweet.
2. Your message should also consider your target audience.
3. Twitter directories are a good way to gain some followers initially, but there is no get followers quick solution.
4. Be selective in following. There is no need to follow everyone who follows you.
5. Be careful of your language. This is even more important for corporations than for individuals.
6. Your posts are 100% public. Remember that bad news travels faster than good news and anything your shareholders wouldn’t like will travel out of the Twitterverse and onto TV screens and into newspapers.
7. Corporations need to select a voice. It’s best if one person, or a couple of people, man the account, for consistency, and to be sure there’s no redundancy. Most corporations invoke the royal ‘we.’  Other more customer-service oriented Twitter accounts have used an individual speaking from the first person.
8. A regular stream of content is important to any Twitter feed to maintain followers. Appropriate corporate topics include:

• • respond to follower/customer inquiries
  • retweet satisfied customer tweets
  • link to updated/interesting information on corporate websites/blogs
  • retweet updates from affiliated Twitter accounts
  • Twitter contests
  • advance notice of corporate news
  • Twitter discount codes
  • stimulate Twitter discussions with product-related questions
  • product-related trivia
  • run online surveys
  • photos of corporate events

Have some other ideas? Please share in the comments!

Bird art by Triax Mills.

So, you’ve decided to join Twitter.

Welcome. Anyone can tailor their Twitter experience to something they enjoy. You can make friends, communicate with your family, get the latest news, see behind the scenes on movie sets, get out a marketing message, or look for creative inspiration. All of these objectives can be met with Twitter, if you know that’s what you want to do.

1. Twitter is not complicated. Each post can be up to 140 characters long. The site counts the characters for you.
2. Twitter addresses are represented with @ – so my Twitter address is @dcgrrl – that will take you to a Twitter profile page, where you can read someone’s tweets and opt to follow or un-follow anyone on Twitter.
3. To keep posts short and to the point, Twitter shortens web links and people sometimes use the same SMS text shorthand they use with their phones, like omg & thx alot.
4. You only have to read the folks you’ve decided to subscribe to, or follow.
5. Choose to follow people that will bring informative or entertaining value to your Twitter stream. Remember you don’t have to follow everyone that follows you. Beware of scam Twitter bots — those that are simply sending links to credit card or adult sites — they’re probably not real people, you should ignore them like spam e-mail.
6. Feel free to un-follow someone if they’ve gone off topic or are over-tweeting for your reading schedule. You know when you read your tweets, and how many tweets you’re interested in reading.
7. If you especially like someone’s post, or tweet, you can ReTweet it, signified by RT, and share it with your followers. Or save it as a Favorite for later reference. Posts go by in real time from all over the world. That immediacy is part of Twitter’s charm.
8. Be careful of your language. Use a word like ‘p0rn’ in one post and you’ll be surprised by the type of followers you’ll gain. On the other hand, try cupcake + baking and you’ll eventually have the entire recipe contingent on your tail. And depending on your motives, that could be a good thing. (There are a lot of good cooks tweeting!)
9. Topics that get lots of reference earn a hashtag # — such as #SOTU for State of the Union — as an indexing bookmark, so it’s easier to search everyone’s tweets for comments.
10. Your Twitter posts are 100% public and anyone can read them. You can change your privacy: There are options to PROTECT your posts from being seen (under Settings), except from the followers you approve — perfect for kids who want to tweet — and you can BLOCK unwanted followers on individual profile pages. Use these tools to keep the Twittersphere safe for you and your family.

Now for some valuable references…

• http://search.twitter.com/search: You can search for anything on Twitter without having an account.
• Twitter Grader: Here you can find the ‘Elite’ tweeters worldwide and in your area for ideas on whom to start following.
• Localtweeps: Looking for friends? Localtweeps helps you find other folks on Twitter near you geographically, that you can tweet-up with in real life.
• WeFollow: Search for people to follow based on topics you’re interested in.
• Mr. Tweet: Helps by providing personalized recommendations for you.
• Twittervision: It lets you see tweets pop up all over the world, just what’s happening on our planet via Twitter.
• Tagalus: Defines the Hashtags.
• Corporate Avatar: Like Facebook, Linked In and other places, you need an avatar at Twitter. If you’re representing a company, you may want to be a bit strategic about your avatar.
• tinyurl: Twitter automatically shortens many links that people put into their posts. But sometimes you need to shorten your link to make it fit under the 140-character limit. This service is very handy and free (and run by donation).
• SMS language: Another helper in keeping your messages short and to the point is the shorthand you may already be familiar with from text messages. This link will take you to a brief dictionary on Wikipedia in case you get confused.
• #followfriday: This happens every week. Tweeps share some of their favorites with their followers and tag their post #followfriday or #ff. There is also a Wednesday version of this, #women2follow, for the ladies.
• Twitter Guide Book: from Mashable – very comprehensive!

PS: Tweeps I follow, featured in the image above: comedian @MichaelIanBlack, media journalist @HowardKurtz, DC shadow representative @MikePanetta, and homemaker and creative powerhouse @thepioneerwoman. More folks I follow on Twitter on my Tweeps I like page.

UPDATE: You will by default get e-mails from Twitter that notify you when someone starts following you. This includes a link to that person’s Twitter profile. You can turn this notification off at your Twitter settings page under Notices. However, if you take a look at your new followers, you can quickly identify if these folks are obvious spam accounts, and if they are, you can block them. (Actually, you can block anyone.) That helps Twitter keep the Twittersphere clean, and it protects your privacy from these folks.

I hate to show my age. I REALLY hate to. But truth be told, I was on the Internet in 1993, dialing into my college system (which meant free service) so I could get onto the few social BBS and chat sites that existed at that time. Back then, if you wanted to know what someone looked like, they told you — by typing you their description. (NOT very reliable.) Almost everything I saw on the Internet was multiple choice. No photos or design, except for those folks who had that one new browser called Mosaic, which confused the hell out of me.

Things got better. We got mouses. Cell phones were invented. Dial-up Internet service went the way of the 8-track. Okay, enough of the war stories.

I’ve helped create a few websites since then. For myself, for companies, for clients, for family members and friends. And now just about anyone can go to a site like where I’m typing this — Blogger — or WordPress — and just click here, there, and over there and then you’ve got yourself a website.

Much like a recent video I saw featuring Louis CK, I am amazed at how wonderful things are these days.

But just because you can click yourself a site doesn’t mean you’re clicking yourself a wonderful site. To create a really OUTSTANDING website, you need to consider:

• Structure
• Design
• Usability
• Branding

If you’ve been following along, you can tell I’ve really been getting a lot out of my web design class, from my instructor and from my classmates who are all doing interesting things with their own sites. Here’s some more resources for those of you with your own website projects. If you’ve got some of your own resource links to share, please post them in the comments. It’s a tough world out there, and collaboration is the best way we can help each other improve!

Usability: useit.com
Design: webdesignerdepot.com
Structure/Planning: wordpress.org

P.S. All this means I’m another step closer to redesigning this site. Thanks again for your patience!

For more on this topic, check out:
dcgrrl | 8-sites-to-help-you-with-your-site

What’s interesting about logo tattoos, as reported in Newsweek, is not that silly people are putting someone else’s logo (the Ralph Lauren ‘Polo’ icon in this case) on their body. This has been happening for ages.

Hello out there? How many Harley Davidson tattoos are there on the planet? Jack Daniels? And then let’s start on bands and their logos. We could really rack up some numbers. Branding yourself with someone else’s logo is old hat.

What has changed is the lifestyle of people getting tattoos — it’s no longer just the heavy metal biker types and society’s outcasts, it’s the computer techies and preppies. So a heart with “Mom” in it might not be so ironic anymore.

Anyway, a word of advice to all tattoo hopefuls: it’s easier to get them on than to get them off. You want to be a walking billboard for the rest of your life? Be sure you really believe in the product you’re advertising.

I love this word — thanks to Springwise for pointing it out, re: one of the newest Snobmoddities, honey.

That’s right. Honey is now exclusive, Nuevo-chic. Do you prefer domestic or imported? Have you been to a honey bar, honey? They’re all the rage!
Read about it at Springwise…

After you’ve seen what honey is doing right now, be sure you understand the power of Snobmoddities. (See Trendwatching)

You’ve seen this in action before. Think about:
• Coffee
• Water
• Homemade dog biscuits

Snobmoddities are all about marketing, and they’re moneymakers. Can it work for you?

I’m catching up on my blog reading and ran across Seth Godin’s Banging down the doors post.

He’s got a point, it’s not always worth following the crowd. You may actually find out you are a lemming.

There is however, this little Italian restaurant in Adams Morgan (a great neighborhood here in DC) that always has a line outside the door before they even open. There are about a dozen restaurants within walking distance that are more stylish, more important to be seen at, not to mention pricier. But this place, with its fairly simple Italian menu always commands a wait list before the hostess arrives to write it down. That kind of queue is definitely a cue.

How to sort the queues out is the hard part…