7 Deadly Sins of Twitter
by Guest Poster on October 23, 2009
in Beginner’s Guide

By Zoey Dowling. Follow her @zoeyspeak.

Twitter is a bright, shiny universe of new friends, new ideas, hilarious little snippets and occasionally even a spot of news. It’s a great way to promote your blog or your business. But if your primary purpose on twitter is promotion and not to connect with other people – abandon ship. Twitter is not for you. Ulterior motives don’t do well. They result in one action: UNFOLLOW. Mistakes are easy when you start out. After all, no-one is updating their status – they’re engaging with one another! And that’s confusing – is it private or can you join in? How do you make the most of it and have fun? Well for starters you could avoid the most irritating twitter behaviours. And before you start trawling through my twitter stream – yes I have committed most of them.

1. Gluttony (Over-Sharing)
Do not, I repeat do not over-share. Do you really want to know about someone else’s digestive problems? I didn’t think so. When you went into graphic detail about your gastric flu did you consider all the people reading your tweets while they were eating? Your followers should be wanting to know more about you, not less.

2. Pride (Over-Promotion)
People get pretty sick of you if all they here are continual, duplicated plugs for whatever it is that you’re promoting. The argument that some of your followers may have missed it because of the timing doesn’t hold water. It’s extremely irritating to see exactly the same tweet repeated. Get creative and find a way to send the same link in a different way. For example “my loyal follower has just commented at my blog, what do you think?” And yes over-promotion includes blathering about blog stats, follower numbers or fans.

3. Sloth (Automatic Anything)
Anything that is automated means that you don’t care enough to make it personal. This includes automated DM messages for new followers, an automatic tweet in response to keywords or an auto-follow in response to keywords. This puts you squarely into the spambot category. If you don’t want to spend the time on twitter to be personal, don’t bother at all.

4. Greed (Not Engaging)
Things get pretty boring pretty fast if all you do is update your status, post links, post pictures and promote your blog. In order for people to care about any of that, you need to engage with them. This involves replying when something sparks your interest, or you think you can be of help; re-tweeting where you can add value; and getting involved in the discussion.

5. Envy (Crashing the Party)
Work out the difference between joining the discussion and crashing someone’s private conversation. If a tweet starts with @user it generally means it’s not for public debate because if the author wanted everyone they follow to see it there would be another character in front of the @user to make it visible to everyone. But if you really want to participate in the discussion at the very least acknowledge that you’re crashing. It’s less douchey that way.

6. Wrath (Blasting)
I don’t care how passionate you are about your topic, there is no excuse for blasting. There is nothing wrong with how passionate you are and that passion will probably lead you to find many like-minded people on twitter. But (and it’s a big but), ramming your opinion down someone else’s throat when they don’t agree with you is no way to promote your cause or yourself – particularly if you haven’t taken the time to get to know the person at the end of your rant. I’m sorry activists but twitter isn’t really designed for you because you end up unleashing the bulk of your argument about a theory on one person. Not really fair is it?

7. Lust (Celebrity Stalking)
Everyone loves to follow a celebrity or two. Nothing wrong with that. Although fair warning if you follow @mrskutcher and @aplusk you will have to witness some pretty treacly interchanges. It’s not the celebrity part that is the problem it’s all of their followers. If you say anything at all that could be vaguely interpreted as negative, be prepared for all of their followers to be all over you like a rash. In part because celebrities are so idolised but mostly because deep down their followers are thinking that by attacking you, ‘the hater’, the celebrity will acknowledge them, and might actually follow them back. So avoid the lemmings, they’re not worth it.

TwiTip

By Todd Leopold
CNN

(CNN) — In 1967, the Mamas & the Papas had a hit with a song that detailed, with bittersweet harmonies, the checkered history of the band. The song, written by the group’s John Phillips and his wife, Michelle, was called “Creeque Alley.”

If the song were to be updated today, it might have to be retitled “Creep Alley.”

With the claims by John’s daughter, Mackenzie, that she had an incestuous relationship with her father, the story of Phillips and his group — in music, models of California dreams and California Dreamin’– takes on a darker hue.

The story was already tangled, a motley love- and drug-soaked tale of excess set to the group’s distinctive four-part harmonies.

Phillips left his first wife, Mackenzie’s mother, Susan Adams, for 18-year-old Michelle, whom he’d met in a San Francisco club while touring in the early ’60s, according to the band’s biography on Allmusic.com.

The band’s lead male singer, Denny Doherty, later had an affair with Michelle; she was forced out of the group for a time. The fourth member, Cass Elliot, had an unrequited crush on Doherty, the biography noted.

After the Mamas & the Papas’ success with such singles as “California Dreamin’ ” and the No. 1 hit “Monday, Monday,” the Phillipses bought a Bel Air mansion from which they ruled over the Los Angeles music scene. Read full article

CNN’s Peter Hamby and Kristi Keck contributed to this story.

(CNN) — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, just back from a secret trip to Argentina unknown to his staff or his wife, admitted Wednesday he has carried on an extramarital affair with a woman in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“I’ve been unfaithful to my wife,” Sanford told a news conference in Columbia, South Carolina. “I developed a relationship with what started as a dear, dear friend from Argentina.”

His voice choking at times, Sanford apologized to his wife and four sons, his staff and supporters, and said he would resign immediately as head of the Republican Governors Association.

The affair began in the last year and was discovered five months ago, Sanford said without elaborating. He added that he and his wife were trying to work through it. Read more…

If you are doing what everyone else is doing, chances are you are committing one or more of the 7 deadly sins of prospecting. This astonishingly frank audio training program is the other side of the story you are not getting about prospecting in network marketing. Read more…

The 7 Deadly Sins of Prospecting
by Leaders Club

Breaking News

Edwards admits to extramarital affair

Former U.S. senator and Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards admitted Friday to an extramarital affair. He denied being the father of the woman’s child, as had been alleged in tabloid reports. full story

It’s a threat even for the biggest Web companies, including Google Inc., whose “gadgets” — little programs like calendars or daily photo feeds that users can implant onto their personalized Google home pages — are increasingly juicy targets for hackers, two security researchers said Wednesday.

It’s not that Google is designing insecure programs.

The issue is that users building their own customized applications, and distributing them through Google, might have evil intentions and try to exploit those programs once they’re installed on users’ pages. Many users are inclined to inherently trust what they download from Google.

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July 24th At 8pm Eastern!

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U.S. health officials zero in on farms in Mexico, Florida as source of salmonella contamination

By Amanda Gardner and Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporters

FRIDAY, June 20 (HealthDay News) — The victim count in the tainted tomato outbreak leaped to 552 Friday even as U.S health officials announced that the salmonella contaminant did indeed come from farms in Florida and Mexico.

The huge increase in victims since the nationwide outbreak began on April 10 appeared largely a result of the state of Texas now reporting 265 illnesses, according to the latest count by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At least 53 people have been hospitalized, Ian Williams, chief of the CDC’s OutbreakNet Team, told reporters at a mid-afternoon teleconference.

“The FDA is sending teams to Florida and Mexico this weekend to begin inspection of these farms,” Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for food protection at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, added. “We are also working with the state of Texas to identify the cluster of illness there.”

The increase in people sickened by the singular strain of salmonella saintpaul was not unexpected. Last week, the count was below 200; two days ago, it jumped to more than 380. At least 32 states, plus the District of Columbia, have now reported cases.

On Thursday, health officials had warned that the end was not yet in sight. Read more….

Content by: Barry Hoffman,

FDA offers steps to help reduce your risk of salmonella poisoning

FRIDAY, June 13 (HealthDay News) — Next to wanting to know what’s causing salmonella bacteria to contaminate tomatoes across the United States, the biggest question consumers have had during the past week is, “Do I have to stop eating tomatoes to make sure I don’t get sick?”

Of course, the safest way to protect yourself from any food is to not eat it, but tomatoes and tomato products are so much a part of the American way of life that staying away from them completely may be extremely difficult.

And, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, some types of tomatoes have been found not to contain the Salmonella Saintpaul bacterium that has sickened 228 cases so far.

Safe tomatoes include ones you’ve grown at home, raw cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, and tomatoes with the vine still attached.

But protecting yourself against salmonella infection means more than choosing the correct type of tomato to eat.

The FDA has a number of suggestions in a question-and-answer format on its Web site: Read more…