AJ Vaynerchuk

So when I first checked Twitter this morning I noticed that I was getting dangerously close to reaching the 1000 follower milestone. Thinking that this was something worth celebrating, I decided to give a prize to my 1000th follower. The winner of the contest was snDOTcom and his prize?

snDOTcom received a $10 gift card to Amazon.com, a penny for every follower I have. I know it isn’t the grandest of prizes, but I felt like it was a reasonable and worth while token of my appreciation. To all of my other followers and friends on Twitter, thanks for making the experience so awesome!

Introduction

A lot of times the only way you can communicate with an individual is via twitter. Sometimes when you want to communicate with this individual you don’t want to use an @reply so you choose to go with a direct message. Keeping up with this hypothetical situation, you only want to send this individual one direct message, rather than multiple DM’s that all revolved around the same topic. Here are some great tips for optimizing your 140 characters.

Kick the Habit of Adding a Space After Periods

Sure it’s bad grammar, but this is Twitter not college. If you rid yourself of the habit of spacing after sentences you will be able to pick up an additional character or two.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey quick question. What is your plan for tonight? I really want to do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey quick question.What is your plan for tonight?I really want to do something!”

Savings: 2 characters.

Use Contractions

Again, this isn’t what your college professor would want to see when you are handing in a research paper, but contractions can save you some valuable characters.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey quick question.What is your plan for tonight?I really want to do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey quick question.What’s your plan for tonight?I really want to do something!”

What we did there was turn “What is” to “What’s”

Savings in this example: 1 character.

Get rid of unnecessary adjectives

This is an important one! If you can rid yourself of unnecessary adjectives you can save a ton of characters.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey quick question.What’s your plan for tonight?I really want to do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan for tonight?I want to do something!”

What we did there was rid ourselves of the words “quick” and “really.” Interestingly enough, this is something a professor would probably like to see.

Savings in this example: 13 characters

Turn Your Words Into Numbers

I know this isn’t very nice on the eyes, but it sure is an effective way to save a character or two when you most need them.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan for tonight?I want to do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan 4 tonight?I want 2 do something!”

What we did there was change the word for to “4″ and the word to, to “2.”

Savings in this example: 3 characters

Get Rid of the Punctuation at the End

The message is capped at 140 characters, so it is safe to assume that the reader of your message will know when you are finished.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan 4 tonight?I want 2 do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan 4 tonight?I want 2 do something”

What we did there was rid ourselves of the exclamation point at the end of our message. Again, it is unnecessary for the nature of this direct message.

Savings in this example: 1 character

Conclusion

By using the methods above we were able to save 19 characters on our direct message. Sure, the example I used was trivial, but I think it illustrates the point. Hopefully these little tips and tricks will give you the ability to say what you want in one simple, clean message.

Bonus Tip for Linking: Use is.gd for URL Shortening

http://is.gd

Introduction

I remember how my mind worked before and after Twitter. I remember how I attended conferences before and after Twitter. I remember who I knew and who I didn’t know before and after Twitter. There is no way to avoid saying this, but Twitter has changed my life.

Twitter changed the way my mind works

Here is an example of how my mind has changed since becoming an active Twitter user (read: addict). Today I received a package from my good friends Kelly Sutton and Chris Lesinski from Hack College. Before using Twitter my mind would have worked like this:

Awesome a new hoody! How awesome of them, I’m going to text them real quick saying thanks.

This is what actually happened in my mind:

@KellySutton and @Lesinski thanks for the hoody guys! Check me out on flickr: http://snurl.com/68wefl4 #gift

Twitter changed the way I attend conferences

Before Twitter I would go to conferences without any idea of what I would do when I got there. I knew very few people and I didn’t always have these people’s phone numbers. I remember when I went to the Future of Online Advertising last July, I knew no one, and only met a few people. On top of that, once the conference was done, so was my interaction with fellow attendees.

Now, thanks to Twitter, when I go to a conference I am constantly in the know and have numerous people I can instantly and easily connect with. SXSW is the best example of this taking place. There was never a dull moment while at SXSW since there was always someone doing something fun and exciting. Also, the fun did not stop when the conference’s sessions ended for the day. Finding an after-party or a group of people to eat dinner with was a breeze thanks to Twitter.

Twitter has changed who I know and what I know

Twitter’s main purpose, at least in my mind, is to connect like-minded people. The amount of people I know and the type of relationship I have with these people has drastically changed due to Twitter. One could easily argue that Facebook provides a similar experience. Honestly, I am a huge proponent of Facebook, but the interaction between users on Facebook and Twitter is completely different. The interaction on Facebook feels detached and independent, while the interaction on Twitter feels integrated and instant.

Conclusion

It amazes that something as simple as Twitter could have changed my life the way it did. It seems ridiculous to say it, and admittedly I don’t like this fact, but Twitter has changed my life, and I think it is for the better.

Introduction

A few days ago I wrote a post about protecting your personal brand on Twitter. A lot of people read the post and the conversation around the topic was great. This morning I decided to show you what can happen if you fail to protect your personal brand.

Biz

Biz, co-founder of Twitter, regularly tweets on the account Biz. Obviously, Biz is an active user of Twitter and has quite a large following (8,678 as of this post). He is a member of the blue team, happens to enjoy the show LOST, and is trying to make an effort to visit his family more often in Boston. Check out a quick little snap shot of his Twitter account:

Biz Stone

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, just joined Twitter and currently tweets on the account Biz Stone. Biz Stone is also a member of the blue team, but unlike Biz, he is a HUGE fan of Pownce, Wordpress, John McCain, and AJ Vaynerchuk. Check out a little snap shot of Biz Stone’s Twitter account:

If I were a spammer

If I were a spammer I would immediately go out and start following thousands of Twitter users. The likelihood of these users following me back is pretty high - the users who truly know Twitter wouldn’t follow me, and the users who aren’t tech saavy wouldn’t follow me, but those in-betweeners would be a lock! Once I built a large following I would immediately start spamming out my spam links and probably hurt Biz’s brand. Even worse, after a few months I bet my Twitter account would rank real high in Google for the term “Biz Stone” and “Biz Stone Twitter,” something the real Biz would never want to see.

Obviously the real Biz Stone can delete this account

Obviously, in this situation, it isn’t a big deal for the real Biz Stone. He could simply delete my account and then freeze it. The point is not everyone has this kind of power, and not everyone would be able to realize the fraud until it was already a bit too late.

Disclaimer

I am not trying to do anything wrong by Biz or by Twitter. I am simply trying to drive home the point of protecting your personal brand. After a day or two I will delete all of the tweets and make a tweet directing users to Biz’s real account. I will never use the account to follow other users, or spam anyone. Thanks!

May now I can be productive