Twitter Icon Pillows

Whether you’re going for a modern look or really want to throw your guests off by placing these adorable Twitter icon pillows on your Victorian sofa, you can’t lose with these. Made of fleece and the recognizable light blue Twitter logo is front and center.

Hash Tag Necklace: Always Trending

This hash tag necklace takes trending to an entirely new level. Laser cut from mirrored acrylic and available with a chain or black cord, this is the perfect gift for the fashionable Twitter junkie.

Twittering Love Birds: For Your Wedding Cake

You know it’s going to happen someday – your crush is going to tweet you back. And in a flurry of thousands of messages in 140 characters or less, there will be wedding bells in your future. What better way to pay homage to your love story than these adorable twitter bird wedding toppers?

Tattoo Socks: All of the Shock Value of a Tattoo without the Regret

You’ve spent nights toying with the idea of permanently professing your love of all things twitter with a tattoo. Just in case future you will regret it, these socks can cure your urge. Great for a fun social media tweeps event or a silly night out with the girls.

A True Measure of Love: Twitter Greeting Cards

When you spend 140% of your time furiously tweeting every thought that crosses your mind, you may occasionally offend friends and family. Make it up to them with this sweet non-tweet. Because even though you don’t always act like it, we all know you love them more than Twitter…right?

We heart Twitter and if you do too, any of these products will tickle your fancy. Feel free to share any of your personal favorites in the comment area below. We look forward to seeing your ideas.

Guest article by Car Rentals, a cheap car hire service provider based in the Uk.

1. Manually – this method involves going to Twitter itself and or using a third party provider such as HootSuite.com and searching out users with whatever profile you seek. If your business blog is about Travel, then obviously you would be interested in followers who display “travel” in their Twitter BIO section, and or those who tweet about this topic on a regular basis. You would manually go in and type in the niche that corresponds with your business, in the Twitter search field. Just about every conceivable niche and or “interest” can be mined from the micro blogging social media network. This method takes time to get going, but can prove to be the most useful if done right.

2. Automated – this is when you sign up with a provider such as TweetAdder.com that searches the Twitter directory of users and tries to match you with related and or certain types of members. When it finds what it’s looking for, it adds the user to your account automatically. Many swear by this method and have grown their accounts two fold in a short amount of time, while others do not like the cold distant nature of the method. Should you try this idea? We say, why not – it’s worth a shot and if it doesn’t produce what you seek, move on to method number one above or idea number three below.

3. Buy – yes you can use a service such as BuyRealTwitterFollowers.com which will seek out followers on your behalf and do the dirty work for you. Submit payment and let them get to work for your site or blog, this is perhaps one of the easiest methods to get Twitter followers and grow your social media presence at the same time.

Whichever idea you decide to try or even if you try them all, the key is to be active and relevant. Be fun, informative, or educational but most importantly – share share and share. That’s what social media is all about, especially Twitter.

Find an article of interest to your customers? Share it.
A funny photo of a staff member? Share it.
Did a follower of yours just tweet something awesome? Share it.

Ok. You get the picture.

Your turn?
Which method will you try first? and Why?
Have you heard of Hoot Suite?
What is your follower count right now?
Let us know below in the comment area, chime in when ready.

Twitter is kind of like the cyberspace version of the smokin’ hot student body president football star (or for you men out there, the drop-dead gorgeous cheerleading homecoming queen) that you gushed over your sophmore year in high school.

There are a lot of great things about Twitter, but I have to admit one of my favorite features is being able to unfollow the people who annoy me with their tweeting the very instant they annoy me. So, if you’re new to Twitter, here are seven reasons I’m going to unfollow you.

Don’t You Ever Take a Break?

Try pausing in between tweets. I’d say 20-plus tweets an hour seems excessive. Don’t you ever need a break to take care of some “business”? And please, don’t take the phone in there with you. Get a life, because I really don’t want to know you just popped a huge zip or ate a Big Mac? Maybe some people do, but I don’t.

Tweeting While Intoxicated.

Okay, so I have to admit, one or two drunken tweets can be amusing. Here’s the problem, Tweeting is kind of like a can of Pringles. Once you pop, the fun don’t stop. And while you’re sending mass tweets with more misspelled words than Courtney Love, I’m eating a Kit Kat singing ‘Give me a break …’

Don’t $#%% Swear.

Just don’t. It’s offensive. If you absolutely have to swear in your tweet, use $#%@*#*! symbols instead. Foul language is one of the best ways to ensure people stop following you.

I’m So Glad You’re Following Me!

If I decide to follow you on Twitter, please (pretty, pretty please) don’t send me a message thanking me for the follow or tell me about how excited you are that we can get to know each other better and you are so excited to have another follower. Odds are you are never going to get to know me better because I probably unfollowed you the minute I got your message.

You Lazy Dog.

If you haven’t updated in more than six months … I’m probably going to unfollow you. Please don’t take this personally, but really … what’s the point?

Bible Quoters.

I love Jesus. So do you. I know the Bible. So do you. But, do you really need to use your Twitter account to profess your love of all things holy? All day long? Really?

Breakup Notes.

Let’s just pretend I break rule #6 and spend all day professing my love of the Bible and it annoys the $#%@*#*! (see, I kept rule #3) out of you. You can stop following me whenever you want. But please, there is no reason for you to send me a breakup note.  Don’t apologize for unfollowing me. Just leave quietly. Chances are I’ll never know you left. Sorry, but the truth hurts.

Nichole Nelson admits she’s a Twitter addict. When she’s not Twitter stalking, she enjoys learning graphic design, cooking and teaching her computer-illiterate husband about credit card processing.

1. Frequent content - you can skip the six ways below if you frequently update your site and by frequent I mean 3 plus times a day. This is hard and not for the faint of heart. Mostly the routine for gadget and tech sites, have a look at Gadgeteer, Mashable and Zedomax and you will see their aggressive content schedule. Many days they update 7 or more times. They’re constantly updating so Google is at their door day and night which is great for traffic, if you can update this many times a day, go for it and watch your traffic soar.

2. Press Releases - another good way to drive traffic to your site or blog is to create newsworthy events and then showcase them via a press release. My favorite is PR Log which is totally free and relatively easy to submit to, best part about this press release site is that they have analytics to accompany each release and over time you get to see how it’s doing in the search engines. As for how much traffic this method will bring depends on the news itself, if you deliver something viral – witness it take off like wildfire!

3. Email marketing – this method works if you build a list and in turn keep members regularly updated on what they signed up for. This could be anything from a weekly Q&A column, special offers, event notices, previous weeks blog articles and anything else members would be interested in receiving. As for how you build the list? That is another topic in and of itself, but one quick and easy way is to offer something of value for free in exchange for an email address. Or hold a giveaway which requires a newsletter subscription as part of entry to win the prize.

4. Article Marketing – preferred by many long term site owners, article marketing involves creating strategic articles that get placed on good article directories like Ezine Articles and link back to your site or blog. This creates two good things for your site, one is you get approval from another site which Google loves and two you get traffic from those who seek the information you have provided in the article. This is why it’s important to create articles that have information or entertainment people seek. How-to articles are fantastic for article marketing purposes, write many of these and over time you will be rewarded with targeted website traffic. The best kind!

5. SEO - search engine optimization is the practice of delivering traffic to your blog via Google, Yahoo or Bing. If you set up content that others are looking for via keyword and phrase rich terms, the search engine will display your page and in turn traffic. One of the best resources on SEO for site and blog owners comes from well known and established blow owner Darren Rowse. He goes into great detail on how to optimize articles for the search engines along with further resources on the topic. Give it a good read.

6. Twitter – the tweet is a force to be reckoned with. Imagine writing an article and @GuyKawasaki picks up on it. You better hold on for the avalanche of traffic this tweet will send to your site or blog. It happens all the time to unsuspecting site owners. The best thing about Twitter is the immediacy of it, it’s instant nature. You write an article, tweet it out and it’s instantly there for the whole world to see and retweet. Great source of traffic for site and blog owners if used properly.

7. Facebook - you can’t discount this social media gauntlet no matter what you think of it. Everyone and their mother is on Facebook, and not only are they on it, they spend a lot of time there. Talk about a captive audience. Best advice is to create a fan page or group for your site or blog and update regularly to keep fans coming back for more. It’s not easy, but if you succeed you will have found a great big pot of gold in the form of traffic to your site.

Keep in mind that if you’re a new site or blog owner, best practice is to pick one or two of the methods above and work it, till it yields result. You can then move on to a more advanced way such as email marketing. If you try all of them, you will burn out. I speak from experience. Article marketing via Ezine Articles is my recommended first choice for you if you just created a new site or blog, but this method takes time, anywhere from 3 to 6 months. The more articles you write, the less time it will take. So its up to you and your team.

QUESTIONS?

What questions do you have for me. I’ll do my best to answer or direct you to a good source.

1. Say Tweet Again T Shirt – one of my personal favorites as it sports the divine Samuel L Jackson from the movie Pulp Fiction where he mentions how he will put the lords wrath upon thee if you mention the word tweet again. Great social media tee for Twitter nuts!

2. I Like Wikipedia, Cause You Get To Make Stuff Up T Shirt – funny social media tee for anyone who spends an ungodly amount of time online WRITING like blog owners, freelance writers and net marketers. In other words, you! How many times a week do you frequent the granddaddy of online content? Ten, twenty, a bazillion times. Then you know that many, some, a few think a lot of the info contained in Wikipedia is bogus. If that’s you – wear it like you mean it.

3. Friends Don’t Let Friends Tweet and Drive – the merchant for this tee has the best description ever – so here it is. It’s totally safe to tweet and text message while driving.  I mean, all I gotta do is type a few letters at a time and then look up every once in a OH MY GOD LOOK OUUUT!!!!!!

4. I Know You From Facebook – great for when you need a slick one liner to woo that sexy SEO guy or gal you’ve had your eye on. Or maybe you need a conversation starter at your next tweet up. Hello! this is it

5. Chuck Norris Weather Forecast – this isn’t a social media tee, but I don’t have a site or blog to put this one in and I couldn’t resist. Anything with Chuck Norris and a quote from his Texas Walker Ranger TV show is hilarious. Sorry Norris! This one is no exception. How’s the weather in your neck of the woods?

Whether you’re into Twitter, Facebook or any compbination thereof there’s sure to be a tee shirt to express your fanship.

Hope you enjoyed our round up of cool social media tee shirts.

First, let me say Congrats! on getting yourself a piece of web history and joining an exciting field. Blogging, social media, online marketing, SEO, is alot of work but it’s also alot of fun.

If this is your very first niche blog site and are not sure where to begin, let’s go over a few basics now.

First, make sure you know your niche. Make sure you know which keywords you are after and or targeting through your new blog. See below for more on this.

Second, have a plan of action. What goals do you have for this blog site. Is it to capture leads? Is it Adsense clicks you’re after? Maybe you want to sell an ebook? Affiliate marketing with Amazon or eBay? Whatever it is, decide early on what you want your blog to do for you.

Now let’s move on and discuss easy traffic tips. Because regardless of the blog business model you’re after, traffic is key. Plus this article assumes you’re PAST THE BASICS.

1. Organic Search (a/k/a SEO) – This is perhaps my preferred method of gaining traffic to a new blog. It’s good, because “searchers” as I like to call them are looking for one of three things:

• to research
• to socialize
• to buy

That’s it. That’s why their online and it’s your job as a new blog owner, to figure out which of those three things YOU are going to give them. Once you have this decided, you will need the Google Keyword Tool to check on the (in demand keywords) in your niche, and don’t forget to check on your competition, use the SEO Quake From Firefox free add-on for this. Make sure your onsite SEO is strong and lastly but not definitely not least – add SEO rich content.

After you’ve got some initial ground, it’s VERY important that you focus on:

• content
• and getting good backlinks

You need both. You can’t let either flounder.

2. Twitter – This is my second preferred method of easy blog traffic. Each niche blog that I create comes with a Twitter page as part of the package. Why? Because its great for traffic. The “search” feature on Twitter can’t be beat, because it’s in “real time”. This means, that “as it happens”, it shows up on Twitter. As of last count, there are *18 millions users on the micro network and grows BIGGER by the day. It can’t be discounted. (*source)

Need help with Twitter? Let me know as I provide a low cost Twitter account set up service.

3. Facebook Fan Page – This is web 4.0 at it’s best. It’s gaining in popularity as we speak, because if done right, it works. On social networking site Facebook, you have the ability to create what is called a FAN PAGE. This page is basically for businesses to promote a service, product or brand. As a site owner, you can use it to promote your new blog. You can include quite a bit on a fan page such as the site URL, a logo, RSS feeds, fans, images, articles, tips, polls, videos, giveaways, and so much more. You can also set it up so that it automatically updates, when you update your blog. You don’t have to visit both at the same time. It’s a pretty cool new method to promote online, and it’s 100% free.

Need help? Let me know as I provide a low cost Facebook Fan Page set up service.

4. Forum Marketing – To be a blogger or online marketer you NEED a network. There’s no two ways about it. You can’t succeed on the web without one, plain and simple. You can’t. You won’t. Why do you think Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are so crazy insane HUGE? Because there’s demand and there’s a need. Look for the networks in YOUR NICHE, join up and become acquainted with the other members, provide value, learn, ask questions, etc. Become a community member, this will in turn help you in many many ways – down the line. Some of the better forums for bloggers, include Warrior Forum, Problogger.com, and Digital Point.

As a new blog owner, you will no doubt have questions and run into issues that you will need help with, that’s what your blogger friends are for. Seek them out, and in no time. You will be happily skipping about with glee and joy!

5. Viral Widgets – If you’re lucky enough to be a developer or know one, then a fancy widget such as a Facebook game, an iPhone app, etc would surely net you some sweet traffic. If you aren’t a developer or know one, you can (if within your budget) always outsource the creation. Places like the Warrior Forum and Digital Point have paid developers for hire. Think of something cool, get it done and promote it everywhere.

6. Contests/Giveaways – After you’ve done your quick research on your niche and have some good articles on the blog, have a sweet giveaway to get the word out. Think of something whether in (physical or digital form) that is low cost, but has high value to your readers. This could be a book, unique screen savers, silly bumper stickers, iPhone case, a funny t-shirt, etc. Think INTERESTING, FUNNY, WACKY, or COVETED. Set it for at least two weeks in advance and make sure to post about it in your social networks, the blog itself, and blog contest forums. Remember this could be digital, so get creative and again think of your market and what they would want to win.

Since on a new blog, you’re probably not gonna have too many readers, best bet to promote your contest/giveaway is via Twitter, Facebook, friends, FORUMS, other blogs, guest posts, a press release, and/ or your email list. (If you have one.)

7. Friends – What are friends for, if not to boost you up? Tell them you have a new web property and want them to come on by and visit. Ask for their feedback, or simply let them see what it’s all about. Be sure to tell them to pass it on to their friends as well.

8. Press Releases – Great for exposure in online circles, as many reporters, bloggers and other authors routinely use Google Alerts to scout out for stories, new products, etc. Make sure to at the very least write one good press release. Even if it’s simply announcing the grand opening of your fabulous new blog site, and what it offers. Then let it spread like wildfire. Oftentimes, bloggers think that a “press release” is meant for a product company or an offline company, but in fact press releases can be used by anyone for any newsworthy purpose. Don’t overlook this simple, quick and low cost idea.

9. Blog Carnivals – This is considered old school by many. But it works and its targeted. Blog Carnivals are like chains where bloggers sign up and share their content with one another. There’s an actual site named Blog Carnival. You sign up with them for free, look for blogs in your niche and submit your article to the carnival. Choose an article that you want a backlink to, as this is one of the primary benefits of joining a Blog Carnival. This method is not for gaining barrels of traffic, but it’s good for SEO. So that’s why, i’ve included it in the list.

10. You tell me! What easy traffic tips do YOU have for a new blogger? A tip that maybe is not that well known, but works like a charm. Please share below in the comment area.

BONUS TIP #11. Guest Posts – I had to add this easy traffic method to the list, because it’s all the rage now. I recently wrote about how and where to guest post. Be sure to take a quick look at my article.

Submitting a guest post is one of the BEST methods for good traffic to a blog, new or old.

Essentially the idea is that you can now nominate tweets (your own or that of others) and have them made into a t-shirt. On Threadless, each shirt featured is always voted on by members, because the only way to get a shirt on the site is through votes, Ala American Idol.

It’s real easy to nominate a tweet on Threadless. Simply follow the steps below:

• Go to the Threadless Twitter section
• Register a free account
• Submit a tweet – yours, your friends, or your favorites, through the included stream built-into the Threadless site (see screenshots below)

Then wait approval, as nominees need to approve your nomination. (for tweets that are not your own)

That’s it. If you’re approved your tweet nomination will appear on the score page, which others will then VOTE on. The most popular makes it to the front page and gets made into a…twitter tee. (Oh! and you earn $500 big ones)

P.S. Also check out the cool twitter t-shirt blog.

But what i want to know is – which twitter directory do you go to when you want to add followers? Is it Twellow, We Follow, a location based directory such as Local Tweeps, an interest (or category) based directory such as Twubble, a business directory such as Twibs, or do you simply use the trusty and up to the minute Twitter Search.

Please take a minute to let me know in the poll below. If you’re fave is not listed, vote other – and just mention it in the comments area.

Not on Twitter, yet? Grab a copy of my Twitter Guide, it includes a Q&A section and a list of super cool Twitter tools, apps, and resources.

If you’re one of the 11% and a blogger, let your blog visitors know by grabbing one of my custom-made twitter icons below, which come in different sizes and colors.

To use: right click on the image and save to your PC

Where To Place Within Your Blog

If you’re wondering where to place these, it’s best to add near the top of your blog or site and don’t forget to link your Twitter profile URL to the banner. This way when peeps come over and click it, they’ll be directed to your profile and can follow you right away.

Before you leave a comment …

Cut and paste the following and share on Twitter:
5 Cute Twitter Icons For Your Blog – http://twurl.nl/g72fcr

Hope you like my collection of cute twitter icons and let me know in the comment area, if you have any questions or need help.

P.S. Diana from U Stand Out also has a nice collection of Twitter Badges you might be interested in.

P.S.S. Want more? Go to TwitterFollowButton.com for a sweet collection of small Twitter follow me buttons and graphics. All 100% free and a very simple copy and paste job. Find one you like and add to your blog, website or other online profile.

This new service reminds me of the My Blog Log and Blog Catalog widgets that capture and display recent visitors.

Essentially this widget works the same way. Grab the HTML code from the Twitter Remote website and add to your blog, then as visitors come from Twitter they are captured and displayed on your blog.

I really like the idea, but they need to do some serious tweaking to the look and feel of the widget. There are only a few customization options including text color, number of rows, and width. That’s it. If they spruce it up, i will add it to my blogs. Until then, it’s a no go for me.

What do you think? Will you be using Twitter Remote.

P.S. Not on Twitter, yet? Grab a copy of my Awesome Twitter Guide…a beginners guide to Twitter. The guide covers everything you need to get started today – including how to use Twitter, how to find followers, and what to tweet about.