My best explanations for Twitter are a global water cooler, business mixer or cocktail party. You are exchanging small bits of information – both personal and business/interest related – while coming in and out of multiple conversations.

For the basics, check out this video from one of my favorite sources, Common Craft, called Twitter in Plain English:

While Twitter really started out as a way of filling in the gap between email and blogs, it has become so much more! Twitter has become the ultimate networking tool (just ask Wendy at Sparkplugging about how Twitter landed her a spot on the Today Show), it has become another tool in a brand’s marketing toolkit, and it has become the place to make new contacts, find resources, and get connected in the social media arena.

So how do you even start to navigate Twitter, know who to follow and what to tweet?

Getting Started:

Sign up at Twitter. Use your real name, “handle” or company name and get started on your profile. Add your location (even if you define it in your broader metro area), add 1-2 lines about your company, interests and web site address (if you have one). You decide how much goes in your profile, but these are the minimums in my opinion.  Add a photo, image or logo to help you become identifiable on Twitter and you are ready to play.  If you want to get snazzy, add a custom background to your Twitter profile (examples and how to at Spoon Graphics).

Who Should You Follow?

Everyone has to be the new kid on the block at some point. Don’t let that keep you from getting started. Start by looking at some of your favorite blogs – are the authors on Twitter? If so, start by following them. Take a look at sites like Twellow.com and JustTweetIt.com to find people with similar interests to yours. You can also search Twitter (www.summize.com) for keywords, conversation topics and niche topics to find people you want to follow.

What Do I Tweet?

With Twitter you only have 140 characters to share what you have to say. Its amazing how good you get at writing in short, descriptive and meaningful thoughts. Ultimately there are no real rules, but to get you started things you may want to tweet about include:

• What you are doing.
• Ask a question related to your business niche, something you want to know more about or something even more general.
• Answer someone else’s question.
• Respond to a tweet made by others.
• Share your opinion on current events, shows, and topics of interest.
• Share your latest blog post automatically using TwitterFeed.
• You can share links to web pages you like but if the URL is too long you need to use a URL shortening service like TinyURL.com.

What Else Should I Know?

• Be courteous and don’t spam. Twitter is like any other social media tool – treat others as you wish to be treated. Be genuine and develop relationships.
• Tweet on a regular basis and make your Twitter experience a two way conversation.
• You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you, but try to keep the numbers somewhat balanced. Its hard to have a conversation when you follow 3 people and expect 300 to follow you.
• You can even block people from following you if you need to – especially if it looks like the follower is really a spammer.

More Twitter Resources:

• Twitip.com – an entire site of Twitter Tips from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger fame.
• MySocialButtons.com – let the world know you are on Twitter with the best bling for your blog (the twitter bird on this post is from My Social Buttons).
• My Twittonary is an exhaustive list of Twitter terms, shorthand and tools – color coded for your convenience.
• Add Twitter to your WordPress blog using this list of 15 Useful Twitter Hacks and Plugins from Smashing Magazine.
• Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals

Remember this was meant to be an introduction to Twitter in as simple terms as possible. Hopefully it will take the mystery out of Twitter! Feel free to share it with someone you know who is getting started on Twitter and of course, you are always welcome to Tweet, Stumble or Digg this, too!

Social media is hot and its here to stay! One of the biggest trends in web design right now is adding icons or buttons for all the various social media sites you use to your web site to make it one step easier for friends, customers and potential customers to connect with YOU. So where do the designers find all these cool icons? They are all over the web and many are free, but you have to go looking for them.

Fellow designer Randa Clay and I got tired of looking high and low for the best social media icons and decided to create a single hub where you can find the best, free social media icons, buttons and graphics to use at your site. We would like to introduce you to our new website, mysocialbuttons.com, a one-stop resource for all the coolest social networking buttons you can use to let the world know where and how to connect with you or your company online.

All of the buttons on the site at the moment are free. Yep, free. You can help yourself. We just ask that you save the buttons you want to your computer first before you add them to your site or your clients’ sites.

And, if you really want to show of your social prowess, check out some of the t-shirts, mugs, mousepads and other goodies we have created to go with the social movement. They make great gifts, awesome conference schwag, and they are perfect for use as doorprizes or ice breakers at corporate training sessions.

Anyhow, the site is still in beta, but we just can’t keep it to ourselves any longer! Please check it out, let us know what you think, bookmark it, share a link with your friends on Facebook, give it a Tweet, or love it anyway you see fit!!

DoshDosh put together a great guide for beginners, marketers and companies to using Twitter – complete with 17 ways to use it as inspiration.

Business Week talks about how companies are starting to use Twitter to bolster their brands.

I’m pretty sure I have linked to this before, but Peter Kim has put together a list of companies and what social media tools they are using.

The Boston Globe reports how businesses are using social media to identify and resolve customer complaints.

According to an Inc. study, its Inc. 500 companies are early adopters of social media use.

And Jeremiah Owyang gives tips and resources for monitoring your brand online.

The difference between Mixx and other social news/bookmarking sites is how users form communities based on topics and create a more personalized experience. The Washington Post recently featured a really nice article on Mixx and its founder, Chris McGill, who took the time to explain the differences between Mixx and its social rivals.

When you visit today’s CNN article on Web use at work and how it can be a good thing, you are presented with multiple opportunities to get social with the article. They have long had the email a friend and print options on their article pages, but now check out the upper right hand corner of a CNN page:

Mixx gets top billing! You can also submit the article to a variety of social bookmarking sites using the Share button, but it is Mixx that stands out from the crowd.

As you read further down the page, you are presented with the social options again:

I also think it is interesting that at this point in the article, the page looks an awful lot like any successful blog page! Notice the tags, the ads by google, the Most Popular tabbed navigation box, and of course the options to get social. Makes you wonder – did blog design emulate the news media or have the news media taken on the best features from the blogosphere? I’m sure it is a bit of both – and I’m sure that the traditional media outlets are consulting with some of the most successful bloggers for input.

So, if Mixx has CNN’s attention, which other social news and social bookmarking sites are worth investing time in? CNN seems to think these are and in this order:

• Mixx
• Digg
• Facebook
• Del.icio.us
• Reddit
• Stumble Upon
• My Space

Yahoo Buzz is getting quite a bit of attention lately and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them in the mix soon. Netscape’s Propeller is also hanging in there, but it hasn’t made too many waves as of late.

What are your favorite social news and bookmarking sites? Which ones do you think are here to stay and which ones will get drown out with all the other noise? I’d love to know what you think! And while you are at it, add this to the Mixx!

Funny enough, I came across the video via a tweet from Mike Sansone of Converstations on Twitter. If you are on Twitter, you can follow me, too.

PS – Have you heard about SOBCon08 yet? It is part conference, part business school for bloggers, and will be the blogging event of the year. Check out the list of speakers they have lined up already – you do not want to miss it! I am competing in the SOBCon contest to go to the event for free – click on any of the SOBCon links (or the cool banner on the right) and help me out. You don’t have to do anything fancy, just click.

I noticed the WordPress favicon in my browser tabs and started to look at the page much more closely.  Scrolling down the page, I saw many familiar WordPress elements like “posted time”, “filed under”, “permalink”, “add a comment”, “comment policy” and the ever familiar smiley face under the Powered by WordPress credit at the bottom of the page.

It is great to see traditional media outlets beginning to use our favorite blogging software!  And based on what I have observed from the political race so far, blogging, social media, and technology in general are all tools that will play a major role in the success and/or failure of more than one of the candidates!

From what I have been hearing, many of the top bloggers are no longer reading RSS feeds and are getting more out of Twitter. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net must feel like it is worth it – he has posted two excellent Twitter articles this week:

• 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers
• How to Use Twitter – Tips for Bloggers

What I want to know is, do you Twitter and have you found it to be beneficial to your overall networking?

Part of me is dying to try it and part of me feels like it will be one more distraction – so which part of me do I listen to?

UPDATE: I jumped into the Twitter pond! Tweet me.

Notice that not only StumbleUpon, but also Digg are being categorized as links from an Internet Search. Interesting.

From looking at the rest of the stats, it appears that the StumbleUpon and Digg traffic indicated in the Internet Search category is different from that coming from another category – Links from an External Page:

It appears that traffic coming from StumbleUpon and Digg in the Internet Search category are the results of people using those sites’ search functions and finding my pages, where as the traffic from the external page links are the result of people stumbling upon my pages or clicking on them directly within the Social Bookmarking sites.

Have social bookmarks “arrived”? Am I beginning to see the another benefit of using social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg? Or both? I’d love your take on it!

Related post:

• Essential Tools for Social Media

For my Essential Tools series today, let’s talk about essential tools for being social on the web!

Defining the different ways to be social

There are different types of social on the web and each category has a different focus (with some overlap in functionality):

• Social Networking is probably the most widely known Web 2.0 term. From MySpace to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other similar sites, the focus of social networking is to connect you with others – your friends, people with similar interests, potential employers, and then give you the opportunity to find more connections as your profile grows.
• Social Bookmarking (like del.icio.us, Furl, Ma.gnolia) sites allow you to organize your favorite sites, tag them for keywords, and keep them all in one place. Very handy. However, what makes these sites social, is the ability for you to share them with others.
• Social Recommendation sites combine the best of social networking and bookmarking to create user generated recommendation sites. Sites like Digg, Netscape and StumbleUpon encourage users to submit items they like and then give others the opportunity to vote on them. There are also a large crop of smaller niche sites like BizzBites, Sk*rt, Babblz, BUMPzee and such that are evolving to cater to the specific needs of certain audiences.
• Social Content sites include Flickr, YouTube, and wikis to name a few. These are sites where users create and manage the content from photos to videos, information on a topic, and everything in between.
• Other sites such as MyBlogLog, Technorati, and Blog Catalog give users the ability to network, bookmark and recommend all under one handy roof.

Obviously these are just the tip of the iceberg! Check out Go2Web20.net for an amazing visual directory of Web 2.0 sites!

Making the most of your social life

• Get a good avatar. It is much easier to remember a picture than words, which is why avatars are so popular with the social crowd. Avatars help you create your social identity. Recommended avatars include a clear photo of yourself, your site/company logo, image that is easily identified.
• Be consistent with your identity. While it may make sense to have one identity for your business site and another for a personal or niche site, you don’t want to have 5 different user names for 5 different sites. It just makes it too hard to define your personal brand and it makes it difficult for your friends at one site to find you at another.
• Don’t spread yourself too thin! The number of social media sites is growing daily and you just can’t be everywhere. Pick a few sites that provide you with value – sites where your peers are – and establish yourself.
• Be active! Once you have found the sites you want to use to build your social presence – work them! Make friends, vote for articles, share your links. Your site traffic will thank you for it!

Social media plugins

There are a host of plug-ins you can add to your sites to help others Stumble, Digg, favorite, and bookmark you. Here are just a few of the WordPress plug-ins that I use/have used or my friends recommend.

• Share This
• Sociable
• Add This
• Web Virtue – Share Your Post
  
• Feedflare
• Digg Button Plug-In

This post does not even begin to cover every aspect of social media, networking and bookmarking, but hopefully it gives those of you who are new to the social media arena a good starting point. For those of you who are using social media daily – share your tips, insights and tools with us!