Practical Wisdom from the Entrepreneurs Creative Edge by William Reed

Since the service started in 2006, Twitter has taken the Internet by storm. It is changing the way we communicate online, fitting and feeding short attention spans, and creating a giant beehive in social media.

What can you say in 140 characters? It turns out a lot, thanks to some cool tools that have been developed that enhance the interface, and enable you to pack a lot more into that short message than you might imagine possible. The best part is that these tools are free, and all have apps for smart phones. These are the keys to making Twitter work for you.

Say more with less

Don’t try to say it all in 140 characters. Use your short message as a lead or title to create curiosity. Include a short URL through which you can link to your website, blog, or anything of interest online. Two popular services for this are http://budurl.com and http://bit.ly, which also give you real-time analytics on your posts.

Find your way around the Twitter universe

There are many applications available for navigating Twitter, and new ones coming out constantly. Here are three that I recommend.

http://hootsuite.com gives you a Social Media Dashboard on which to manage your tweets, track results, share your messages on Facebook, Linkedin, and other popular Social Media sites, and even do team collaborations.

http://www.twellow.com is the Twitter Yellow Pages, and helps you find people or refine your search in dozens of categories.

http://www.99tribes.com helps you find and discover people that share your interests, and makes the process manageable.

Share photos, files, and advice

Micro-blogging has rapidly evolved into platforms for micro-podcasting, micro-videocasting, and micro-presentations. You have as much media leverage as you like, and so does everyone else. You still need to create quality content if you want to be heard above the massive chatter in the rapidly rising population online.

http://www.twitpic.com is a great way to share photos on Twitter, and can be conveniently uploaded from your phone.

http://www.chirbit.com lets you easily upload and record audio files in various formats from your computer or phone, and share them on Twitter.

http://filesocial.com enables you to share files on Twitter, uploading any file type from pictures to videos, PDFs to PowerPoint.

http://tweetbook.in enables you share your tweets in a PDF e-book format, best if you are in the habit of making meaningful tweets.

http://www.happyabout.com/thinkaha publishes compilations of tweets by experts in various fields, tweets that turned into books! Customize your own pages

These tools make Twitter more fun to work with, and richer in content. There are also a number of sites on which you can customize a page specifically to your interests, sharing online media as well as text.

If you want to share music around a theme, Blip.fm allows you to create your own Internet radio page, featuring playlists of your favorite music or videos from YouTube, along with your comments. I created a page featuring my favorite Tap artists at http://blip.fm/willreed

Screenr.com is a site which lets you create and post screencasts right from your computer screen, with nothing to download. Add narration if you like, and send the link right to Twitter. Click right on the screen thumbnail to see the screencast, or record a screencast of your own. I’ve just started a page on with this site at http://screenr.com/user/William_Reed

If you have a website or a blog, be sure to put an icon prominently on the top page which links to your Twitter and other Social Media accounts. All roads lead of course to Twitter.com, and this is where you can find and follow me at http://twitter.com/William_Reed

William Reed

WEBSITE: http://www.williamreed.jp

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BLOG: http://www.EntrepreneursCreativeEdge.com