Toluu

Blog by Jon Bishop

Social Media and Communication

Christmas Survival Guide for TwitterDecember 9 2009

So you would like to celebrate Christmas and the holidays on Twitter? Well so do I so I’m putting together this little post to gather my thoughts. Here are some things you can do to help get into the Christmas spirit with your Twitter account.

Decorate Your Twitter Photo

Turn your Twitter Photo into an elf or Santa and even add some snow with Twixenate or add a Santa hat with Twibbon.com ( Other Christmas twibbons).

Change Your Twitter Background

You can always decorate your current background with some snow in Photoshop or use one of these templates:

• Christmas Themes on Twitrounds
• Christmas Themes on Twitter-Backgrounds.net

Comparing Twitter Retweet Data ServicesDecember 9 2009

I mainly use BackTweets but am always looking for better solutions. I actually switched from TweetMeme to BackTweets once I learned about BackTweet’s advanced functionality and Google Analytics integration. But now I feel it’s time to take a look back and see where the world of Retweet counts, buttons and stats are really at.

Let’s start off with my current favorite. BackType is a conversational search engine that scans the web for comments about your posts not necessarily on your posts. Where their original intent was to connect blog comments from one blog to another, one can see why they eventually got into the Twitter game. Using their existing technology they expanded their offerings to a site called BackTweets which became one of

Get More ReTweets Out Of Your ReTweet ButtonNovember 3 2009

Most of the time when talking about RTs, we discuss the best times to post to Twitter and the number of characters you should be using and so on and so forth. But let’s step back a second and talk about how people RT from our blogs.

Do you know how many people are RTing your content from your blog vs on Twitter?

A lot of bloggers don’t even realize that they are potentially preventing their readers from RTing their content by not having functional RT buttons. I see a lot of buttons that do any one of the following:

• Post to Twitter with only an unshortened link (example)
• Post to Twitter with no link and only a title (example)

Both of which a lot of people might just abandon and you’ve lost out on a RT.

And then there are people who get very close but miss in the end by doing one of the f

Opening Links In A New WindowNovember 3 2009

Thesis & WordPress PluginsNovember 2 2009

As I submerse myself more and more into the world of Thesis from DIYthemes, I am gaining a huge appreciation for all of the enhancements it provides to the WordPress platform. Furthermore, I have developed a new found appreciation for developers who have taken the time to create WordPress plugins that integrate easily with the Thesis theme.

If you don’t know about Thesis yet, check out my post about why I am such a fan.

The following plugins all make use of the Thesis framework to make their installations extremely painless. Most make use of Thesis additional WordPress hooks to display content in places that were previously inaccessible. I’ve yet to find a solid list of Thesis ready plugins on the Internet so I took the time to put this list together for whoever is curious.

Thesis OpenHook

Thesis OpenHook takes the process of modifying Thesis and simplifies it! I couldn’t properly make a list of T