This could be a lot more though and it can get really hard to not visit the site every 5 or 10 minutes to check what is happening. I have had to take a number of measures to try and keep my usage to a reasonable limit. Maybe the surprising part is that i really only make use of three things in my twitter use.

1. The Twitter Website (www.twitter.com) – While many people do make use of a seemingly endless range of tools to send tweets, track tweets and otherwise manage twitter, i have personally found that the Twitter website is actually the most straight forward. I have tried programs such as Tweetdeck, however find that due to the limits of the API and such it can be difficult to truly arrange everything to see everything you want to.

2. Tweetburner (www.tweetburner.com) – Due to the potential length that links can get to on occasion i have found that using a link shortening service is quite beneficial. Tweetburner has been my choice primarily due to the tracking capability, to see how many people are clicking through on the links.

3. Tweet Later (www.socialoomph.com) – The time that can be spent in getting your links together and sharing your content, can take time. In fact if you do it on a one off basis every time you want to share something i imagine that it could easily take three or four times as long to get the same amount done.

Making use of automation tools like SocialOomph can greatly increase your effectiveness in using twitter. However it should also be used wisely. For example if you make use of the auto tweet feature and schedule the same tweet every 15 minutes, chances are good this will not provide much if any benefit. Where as if you use it more conservatively and schedule tweets that change from a post you have been to quotes and just comments,you will build more of a interest, and not be annoying people with the same link over and over again.

In reality i find that these are almost the only three sites i need to use for twitter. At least to use twitter the way that i am looking to use it. There are odd other tools that i use from time to time however almost all of these are purely one off tools i may use just once or twice.

When it comes to twitter, this comes to a whole new level sometimes. Even though i am writing this post, i have a good feeling the only people that will read it are the people that are already following it, the people that already know what is right and what is wrong. This does not really surprise me though. However the main reason i wanted to write this post was to try and help some of the new comers to see points that they may be able to avoid and get off to a much better start.

Really good etiquette should be something that is used in most all situations. It can help you to achieve much greater things, with much less resistance. This i believe can be just as true with Twitter as it can with anything else. Following just a few simple points can quickly and easily make you appear more friendly, interesting and above all a valuable person to follow. Ok so lets get in and look at some of the things you should consider when using Twitter.

Be aware of ratios – With twitter there are a few key numbers, being followers, following and tweets. While in natural course these will not always stay in balance, and it will entirely depend on why you use Twitter, how they stay in balance. Initially there is one or two specific ratios to consider. Getting followers almost always requires you to follow people, some people will follow you automatically, while others will consider if they want to follow you or not. The ratio between followers to following is one of these considerations. The other can be the number of tweets you have made, in comparison to how many people you have followed and that are following you.

It may sound complicated, but the simple idea to follow in regards to ratios is don’t expect people to follow you if you have 1 (one) tweet and you followed 1,000 people and have no one following you. Yes you will get a certain amount of followers, but few genuine followers will stick around. Especially if the one tweet is self promotional, or what could be seen as spam.

Don’t over do self promotion – Following on from the last point above, try and keep self promotion in check. While yes to some extent Twitter is about sharing what you are doing and what you are working on. However at the same time, you need to consider what people who are following you will want to see. While they have followed you to hear about what you are doing on your website, there is every chance that they do not want to see it 50 times a day.

To provide truly valuable experiences on twitter, you need to engage with your followers. Meaning that you need to join in conversations, and initiate conversation with your followers. Doing this and sharing about your own projects occasionally will keep people more engaged and interested when you do self promote.

Provide Valuable information – The information that you provide people, especially on the internet becomes the impression that is framed around you. If you continually share information that adds a lot of value, and is interesting and what people want to see then they are going to be hanging to see more information from you. However if on the other hand you are sharing information of now use, people will quickly disappear seeing that you are just wasting their time.

Join the conversation – The best thing about twitter is the number of people that are always there. Lots of people sharing what they are doing, what they want to know, as well as a very wide range of other information as well. Joining in and sharing valuable information is one way, sharing what others are talking about with your own followers is another (or retweeting), replying to questions, and in general being a participant in different conversations that are happening.

Follow people with similar interests – Finally and possibly one of the more important points, is to follow people who have a similar interest to you. If you want to be heard, and you are sharing what you have to say with people that do not have  a similar interest, then there is every chance that you are going to have many followers for a short time. This can be best displayed with a simple example. If you are interested primarily in cars, then you should work to find people with this similar interest to follow, because you may find that if you follow as many random people as possible that you will end up losing a lot of them quickly because they do not want to hear about cars.

What using Twitter really comes down to is using common sense. Being aware of what you are doing and saying and how it may be perceived by the people following you. Can you imagine walking down the street and telling everyone about your new car blog, some will show an interest and as for more information, while the vast majority will probably try and avoid you and walk faster or try to avoid you. This is just like building a big random following of all different people on twitter, and sharing one topic which they may not all be interested in.

So enjoy your time on Twitter and don’t make it a chore, by over doing things the wrong way.

Potentially more so though is the ability that is created by Twitter to create a live ongoing conversation between literally anyone. On any topic. It has been used as a tool by many to keep others up to date and by many to stay up to date on events that are immediately happenings. How though can you make use of it yourself, well in a few different ways.

• Keep in contact with exisiting customers
• Make it easy for new customers to contact you
• Share information about your product with everyone
• Connect with potential business partners
• Find friends
• Find the most up to date information on a topic shared by others
• Share your photo’s
• Share your Video’s
• Improve the accessibility of your business
• Get instant feedback
• Meet interesting people
• Create a global business from a single location

While there are many other ways to use twitter, you need to really find what best suits your own purpose and how this can be translated into 140 characters. It can be a very powerful tool, but it does really come down to using it right.

For my part i generally do not use them as often as i use to. There really are only three stats that matter to me, and they are all displayed every time i log into twitter. The first is how many people i follow. The second how many are following me. And the third is how many updates i have posted. In my opinion some of the other tools are possibly a little irrelevant, and possibly go to far towards over analyzing a system that is really quite simple.

There are really only three sites that i have used to view much if anything of stats on twitter. These sites can occasionally provide me with a little insight into how i am using twitter. But they far from guide anything much of how i use it on a daily basis.

1. Twitter counter (www.twittercounter.com) – A fairly straight forward site, which basically gives you a chart of how your follower count has changed over time. There are three settings, 7 days, 1 month and 3 months. The biggest thing that you can use this to track is how what you do affects the number of people following you.

2. Twitalyzer (www.twitalyzer.com) – The Twitalyzer website takes into account your activity over the past seven days, as well as using previous data, to create scores in 5 different categories and show trends on how you are using twitter, and how often others may connect with you. You can gain some insight into how often other Re-Tweet your tweets or how often you are referenced.

3. TweetStats (www.tweetstats.com) – This site is possibly the most useful stats though, it is a very simple layout giving just seven clear graphs that layout your twitter usage in seven ways. The first how many tweets you send each month, followed by a density chart of the most frequent times your tweet. Next charts of your tweets aggregated over both days of the week and hours of the day. Finally the last three charts are who you send @ replies to most often, the method you use for sending tweets and finally the total ReTweets you make and to who.

While i don’t see the point in checking your statistics multiple times per day or even on a daily basis, there are occasionally some good points that you can pick up from having a look every once in a while. I would say that all it takes is really a matter of 10-15 minutes a week to take a look at stats, you will quickly find which ones are important and focus on them. Any more often then a weekly basis and you are probably losing time you could be doing something else.

A business plan may deal with the specific’s of the business such as finances, products, the people involved and the overall view of the business. The marketing plan will deal with the overall view of  you guessed it the marketing of the business. What the strategic plan will deal with is your overall vision for the business, and how this is going to be achieved.

Creating a strategic plan is something that is always going to be an on going thing. This is the type of plan that should be reviewed and updated as often as you believe it is needed. This may be once a month, or maybe once a year. Relly whatever you believe is needed to keep yourself focused. This plan should deal with two main topics in relation to your business

• The first part of this plan should look to outline your goals. Not just the make X dollars per month or have a certain size customer base. These should be your driving goals, the ultimate where you want your business to go goals. A good example of the difference in these goals may be. In your business plan you might have a goal to provide 100 customers a month with your product at the end of the first year. Where as the same goal may be expressed in your strategic plan as to be the number 1 provider of your product to consumers within 10 years.

Often the goals that you are likely to set in the strategic plan are long term, driving and even visionary goals. They are things that you want to achieve however, are possibly bigger then what should really be part of your business plan.

• The second part of this plan will primarily deal with the how. How are you going to work towards these goals. While knowing the how or every step that you need to take is not essential by any means. Knowing to some extent what may be required to get from where you are now to where your goal places you, are important things. On the example of becoming the number one provider for your product, you may need to do the following. Expand the number of customer service representatives to allow for the growth. Add additional warehouse space to cope with additional stock requirements.

These may essentially be mini plans in themselves, however what they do is give you insight into your long term goals. These are also parts that you can line up as they may be required to include within your business plan.

So  what you are really doing is, creating a plan that outlines your long term goals, and how you plan to achieve them in milestones, rather then details. This plan does not have to be something that is big with every little detail. But it needs to clearly spell out what the goal is and at the beginning at least what some of the steps that may need to be taken to achieve the goal will be.

Being that many of the goals that you may look to include in this plan are long term, with steps that may take considerable time, is the primary reason why continual re-evaluation is needed. This re-evaluation is something that can easily be connected to doing the same with your business plan. The two plans should always be connected or related in some way. Preferably where the steps in your strategic plan, make up some of the focus of your business plan. If not then you are taking the risk of creating a goal that cannot be achieved.

All you need to do is just get started on creating a plan, be it a single page, with just a few details. Or maybe something a little longer, but just remember all you are really looking to do is to hone in on the goals and the overall path to reach them. The details of reaching them are not so much part of what this plan should be but more your business plan, when those milestones come into the scope of your business plan.

The background that i was using, was a very basic on that i put together just to cover until i had more time. The fact was that it actually didn’t take me to long to put together anyway, so i do not know why i put it off for so long. However i did have some help from two sources, which i want to share and acknowledge.

The first step i took was to work out the background, being the primary element it was an important step, and i had to take the time to find the right tutorial. What i found was a Tutorial named Signature Backgrounds at Visualdesigncore.com. It caught my eye straight away, and while i went through it a few times to get the idea down in my own mind, it is a very good tutorial and easy to follow.

The second step was getting the placement right. If you have tried to get a background done for twitter then you may be aware of the trying to work the elements to fit the screen and not get get covered. For this i got the Free PSD Twitter Background Template from Fuel Your Creativity. This template is great for fitting your background to the correct screen resolution, and is marked for the most common resolutions from 800px x 600px up to 2560px x 1600px.

Putting it all together was still slightly guesswork, not so much in laying it out, but in working to what may be the most common screen sizes. So since i have a laptop with wide screen, at 1280 x 800 and guess that this may be fairly common laptop screen resolution, i have gone with this. So for me it appears to be fitting perfectly on the screen, however i do expect that a few people may lose  little off the bottom of the screen if they have a lower resolution. (eg 1024px x 768px). The other thing i stuck to was fitting the sidebar into no more 200px from the left. This was suggested on the background template i used, and i think should work with most screen resolutions.

Anyway please do take a look http://www.twitter.com/no_fixed_office and comment with your thoughts, I do look forward to hearing them.

***UPDATE***

After putting the background online and asking for reactions i have made two small changes. Both at the suggestion of @leeward2009. The first was to make the profile standout more, on the left. What i did to fix this up was to darken the background from 55% transpancy to about 75%, it keeps the transparent effect but appears a little more solid. Secondly was to move it up. I had initally aligned it with the top of the main twitter feed, however did end up moving it up almost to the top of the page. Hopefully this eliminate any potential problems with small resolutions not seeing all the text.

I realized that this was an issue when i slowed down my usage of Twitter. With the way that things were going with work, and the different hours that i was doing, i did not have the time or motivation to jump on Twitter as much as i had. Over the last two months this saw a drop in traffic of about 16%. Which is no huge deal, it could even just be normal fluctuation.

So far this month things have been moving along nicely, with a week off work, I was looking at a fairly good come back on traffic. This was for me assuming that i maintained how i was traveling so far for the month for the remained. Well, that was where things were. Late yesterday my Twitter account was suspended, with no reason, no explanation (to date) and no recourse but to send a support ticket. Which i did.

Reading the rules, i know i have not blatantly done anything against them, and cannot see a single one that would have been an issue at the actual time of the suspension. Even checking the @spam account of twitter shows no reference to my account.  At this point it is going on close to 15 hours that i have not been able to perform any actions with my account, and the effect is showing, followers are down, and as i am sure you can guess no activity means nothing good usually.

Now at this point i do not know what sort of affect even a day will have on traffic, but i know that over the period of a month for me it will have a drastic effect. Unless i can replace it somehow. Which is not a task i envy looking at, right now. I mean yeah there are plenty of places to post links, to build networks and such. But pretty much every option i see a few months to develop it to the level that i was at with Twitter.

While i can understand a need to be vigilant, and to keep a close eye on people abusing the system, i see almost every day anything up to half a dozen if not more accounts that deserve to be suspended for major violations of the rules. As opposed to accounts being banned that it does not even appear to be something specific if anything more then an accident even. Of course if they can offer some valid reason why my account was banned, i will more then happily accept the consequences.

So anyone that relies on Twitter as their sole source for traffic, start now, look for something else to use for getting traffic to your site as well, so that you are not left open to a potential problem like this.

Following are just a few of the people i have connected with the most in the past month or so that have really helped me to think more, grow more, and are one of the reasons that i love to be on twitter.

@LilianeRausch – Liliane, is a really amazing person, she is from The Netherlands, and is the found and CEO of  The Ultimate Self/U! Virtual Coaching Center. Liliane is a Personal Coach, Strategic HR Consultant, Certified Psychologist, plus more, her website is U! Virtual Coaching Center. I am so grateful that i have connected with Liliane.

@AprilFilms – April, is another amazing person, doing fantastic things with video using a mobile phone to film many different events around Vancouver, Canada. You can find a lot of her work on the site for AHAMEDIA, and i definetly urge you to take a look. I so much appreciate connecting with April.

@tpr2 – Terry, is a really great guy. He has so many things on the go i do not know how he manages to get it all done. But he is definitely one of my role models now. One of the great projects he has is “My Hug Club“. Again i am so grateful that i have been able to meet Terry through twitter.

@DanHaneveer – Dan is from Tasmania, and shares not just my views on having no fixed office, but also of a Location Independent Lifestyle. He shares his experiences on his blog “DanHaneveer.com“. You should take a look. Again i appreciate being able to connect with Dan through Twitter.

While there are many others that i have had the pleasure of meeting via twitter, or connecting with, i really want to make it special for the people that i connect with the most, and show how much they are appreciated.

While it is a social network, and good for getting connected with people, it can be difficult to track the progress of a specific connection over the long term. For example maybe you are speaking to different people every day, but you find you also seem to have on going conversations with a few people. While it may be possible to just continue on and not really consider this long term conversations, they can almost be one of the most valuable parts of the use of twitter.

I think that there are at least two possible solutions.

The first option is to keep a small journal of people that you have had contact with on networks like twitter. Username, how you first connected, common interests, and just general topics you have discussed.

The second option is to build on the first and actually keep a record of your conversations. This can be a little more time consuming an not entirely feasible if you are looking at a large number of people that you interact with regularly. But being selective it can help you to build a more connected and useful relationship between both yourself and other users.

Just think of it like sales, if you do a lot of sales and have a few customers that you deal with over and over you would not put it to chance that you will remember the details that you need to. So why would you do it for twitter when it has the potential to be a very useful contact tool for you or your business.

chombo @no_fixed_office – do you have a hashtag I can use when I tweet all the places I work from? If not, can we make one?

As it stood this was something that i had never even thought about. I had tweeted where i was working from a number of times. But never thought to use or create if needed a hashtag that would be suitable for this. After about a total of two tweets we have it. A hashtag for where you are working at on any particular day. Places such as a coffee shop, beach, bar or anywhere but an office really.

The hashtag is #workingat, and i urge you to make use of it whenever you tweet where you are working on twitter. @chombo also suggested a image link could be added if you have a photo, so feel free to add this if you like as well.

Another suggestion also came along

pfrigerio @no_fixed_office You may also consider the #LIP hashtag – Location Independent Professional (I think you definitely fit the description ;o)

While i do like the #LIP hashtag, i think it really serves a different purpose, and the good content and such that people share on the #LIP hashtag, may get drowned out if to many people were to share where they are working on a given day.

So please feel free to share where you are working with #workingat, and i look forward to hearing where you are working today.

Please also take a look at @chombo‘s hosting at http://www.chombo.com.au/