This weekly wrap-up post asks one crucial question for all you micro-bloggers — Is there a wrong way to use Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, and all the others? Can you actually alienate yourself from the masses? I have no hard and fast evidence. I know on Twitter there’s a collective of individuals I’m following who “would appreciate you going easy on the spam”. But there are others who quite frequently post links to their own blogs with the intro “Some spam:”.

Micro-blogging works great to network, find answers, build an online brand, and to keep in touch with many people at once. It doesn’t seem to work well when you don’t take the time to introduce yourself to those who follow you, or at least try to interact.

I must admit, I’m often times overwhelmed by Twitter. I’m following many of the top bloggers in the industry, from Mashable to Robert Scoble. These guys are all famous in their own right and quite successful. At times, I feel like what I have to contribute would be inane, so I shut up. Other times I try too hard.  I am who I am though, and my followers understand that. It’s not like they want to me to have all the answers, to be constantly funny, or anything. Most of them don’t even know me. Why not just be myself?

So the wrong way to use Twitter and other Micro-blogging services seems to be when we try to hard and overwhelm our followers. If I just be myself and try to interact with individuals, then 99% of the time I’ll experience a positive result. If I stay in the shadows and let the tweets fly by, then I’m only going to be a small pixelated square on someone’s friends list.

How Not To Start Micro-blogging

There is one other way to start out wrong. It’s poor form to simply start following a thousand people. I’ve seen at least two Twitter users add me this weekend who have less than ten followers, but they’re following over 500 people. That’s crazy! Stop it!

Twitter does have a follow limit of 2,000. Can you imagine 2,000 people in a room? I wouldn’t want to be holding a mic telling those 2,000 people about a great offer on dog food. Stay away from spam. Be yourself.

Other’s Explosions

This week I’ve read a lot of great articles on the web. It’s hard to keep track of everything, but I did want to push some link love to a few of my favorites.

Jamie at Blog2Life.net introduced a stat tracking service called Crazy Egg. The stats track clicks on your site and can show you how traffic responds to certain areas of your blog. I’m going to give the service a try to see where you’re all clicking. I’m watching!

It’s Write Now discussed how to create your own Wordpress template, which can be highly valuable to many bloggers out there. A good series with clear instructions.

Write to Done wrote a post entitled Why You Must Blow Your Trumpet. A great article on how we need to take credit and push our own limits of ourselves.

That’s all for this week. I’ll be writing new Micro-blogging Olympics over the next few days. Stay tuned as I go for gold!

Today is the first day of The AdSpace Contest and I’m excited to announce that I am one of 10 co-hosts.

The idea is simple and easy: Get as many entries as you can (very easy to do) over the next 30 days. The more entries you get, the better chance you have of winning! At the end of the 30 days, we’ll announce the winner.

The prize?

A 125×125 pixel ad spot (above the fold) on at least TEN DIFFERENT BLOGS that will run for one month. That’s at least a $100 value!

Who else is co-hosting?

• Geek Mom Mashup
• Vrtualme
• Jamaipanese
• Best of Stupid
• AxioBlog
• The Big Bald Blog
• Jason Boom
• Unconventional Marketing Blog
• Offended Blogger
• GorillaSushi

How do you enter to win?

1 Entry - Subscribe to any one of the blogs above via email.

10 Entries - Write a post about the contest (must include links to all 10 hosts OR use our suggested text)

25 Entries - Offer up an ad spot on your own blog for one month as part of the prize package (links will be listed above)

Simply put, you could subscribe to all 10 blogs, write a post and offer up your own ad spot for a grand total of 45 entries! Be sure to tell us in the comments below when and how you’ve entered to ensure that your entries get counted.

Good Luck!

I’m running the Micro-blogging Olympics, which is really just an experiment with three separate micro-blogging services. The Twitter service has the largest user base out of all three. I’ve been active in the Twitter community longer. You can update Twitter from your mobile phone, from their website, and from third party software applications. I’ve compiled a few applications that can help you stay connected to your followers and those you’re following.

Services

1. TwitterFeed - Ever wonder how bloggers always link to their site through Twitter? It’s probably an automated service like TwitterFeed pushing their content to your doorstep.
   
2. Ping.fm - Update Twitter along with many, many other social networking sites all from the same website. It includes Pownce and Plurk, so I’m signing up now. Update: beta code needed…argh.

Desktop Twitter Applications

1. Yakkle - Kind of like a cackle, but a yakkle. You getit, right? Download, integrate with Twitter and other IMs, roar on the scene.
2. Twhirl - Recently purchased by Seesmic, an Adobe Air app that allows you to update Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku. Hooray for multi-use software!
3. Twitterific - Own a mac? Get this lightweight desktop app for your Twittering needs.
4. gTwitter - Running Linux? Try this Twitter client.

Plugins for Firefox

1. TwitterFox - A plugin for Firefox which makes interacting on Twitter so much easier, if you’re on your browser all day long. You can customize how often it checks for updates, makes replying much easier, and doesn’t use up any screen space when not in use.
2. TwitterBar- No they don’t stock martinis in this TwitterBar, but you can add it to FF 2 or 3 for easy twitting action.

The NESW Sports site claims to be the best sports news anywhere. A very, very bold tagline. Their browser title says The Best Sports Videos, which is maybe a little more apt. I’m no ESPN jockey, but they do some fairly serious reporting. My first bit of advice for the owner would be to cut the hyperbole and get down to the nitty-gritty — what does the blog provide? (Sports Videos from Every Direction — just an idea.)

The NESW Sports site does provide sports videos with a bit of historic background. The current post (as of writing this) shows the Carl Lewis National Anthem from 1993. The bit of text leading into the video provides a clear idea of what you’re about to see. Each post has a relaxed and informative feel to it, which will help gain readers and with search engines ranking.

There’s no archive in the sidebar, but it appears, according to Alexa, the site’s been around since March of this year. Since that time the site has been posting sports videos, or videos related to the sports world on at least a daily basis, if not two or three times a day. This is no small achievement, and fans of the blog should high five the blogger. Keep it up.

Template and Layout Problems

I would say there are some problems with the appearance of the blog, mainly due to the header. The image in the header doesn’t look right. It should cover the whole of the page or at least be balanced with an RSS subscription callout or something to the right, and the main banner should not look like a scanned in photo. The Live banner below the header image appears to be the secondary title of the site. Not a good thing by any measure. There’s also some prime real estate on the right side of the blog being used by…white space.

You’ll also notice the post title scrunched up to the Join Now banner. It’s hardly noticeable with no margin. Pull the ad, or give it a margin, then people will see the post title much more clearly. The navigation does quite well on the right. There’s quick access to subscribe to the feed, recent posts, and categories. The only thing missing is the archive.

The RSS feed is supported by Feedburner and includes the option to sign up via email. It shows the videos perfectly inside the feed, so A+ in that respect.

Does All This Negative Talk Mean the Site Sucks?

Not at all. The site has really good content. If the header were to be cleaned up, some key advertising moved around, and a few navigation elements added, then the blog would be really, very nice. Could it use some professional design touches? Absolutely.

I would start with the header and work my way down. The majority of the design flaws on the site could be fixed in a matter of an hour or two. The more laborious things would be sorting out the main header with advertisements.

All in all I would say the site’s a good one, but could use some tweaking. The right changes and with the current content, the site will definitely pick up readers and continue to move forward.

Micro-blogging has its perks. You can meet cool people and chat all day long. The downside — you rarely get much done except for talking and reading different blogs. Well at least that’s how Sunday went. I interacted on both Twitter and Plurk most of the day, adding in a failed EC forum postings. All in all it was a good day. Then on Monday, I went to the office and got overwhelmed with Twitter. The deluge of messages really came when Gmail went kerplunk.

Back on Plurk, things were a little smoother. Plurk does have the Karma feature afterall.

Recently, everyone reached Plurk Nirvana. I had it with less than 20 Karma. It appears you should only receive it with over 80. No big deal. It’s not like it adds a whole lot to the experience. It’s just a number, right?

It has been fixed though, so no more free Nirvana spirituals.

The Karma Number

It is just a number. But the number ties into your profile and your specific activity so it can be a good indicator of your popularity to someone you don’t know. It’s tough to add random people, because you don’t really want to add just anybody. What if they have a terrible attitude? You need some degree of separation from them. Choose a friend whose judgment you trust and check out their friends.

When you’re new to a service like Plurk, it’s good to judge by numbers. On Twitter you would look at the followers compared to the number of those they’re following. On Plurk, you might also look at this, but you would check out the Karma points too. Those with Karma points above sixty definitely participate. It’s good to be in a community of those who participate because it reinforces our desire to be there. Without those individuals responding to our plurks, we’re simply talking down a long empty hallway.

Mama Always Said Be Picky When You’re Choosing Friends

I joined Plurk from an invite. I then decided to visit that friend’s friends. Ultimately I searched for a few people I knew would be using the site, added them, and then sat back to plurk. Others have added me since. As I’ve grown to use the service more frequently, I’ve found I make genuine connections with people. I could have gone through and added person after person, but people might have denied me and that would have hurt my Karma. It makes sense to add those you know then branch out slowly from there.

I looked through the interesting plurkers earlier and found one of the top plurkers to be TechCrunch’s Arrington. He had over 92 Karma. If I had his cred, I could just let the gravity of my presence feed my karma. Unfortunately I have to work hard at it, like most everyone else.

What’s the Point of All This Again?

The point is to bring in traffic and analyse how well each service helps with that. I suppose there’s lots of intangibles too. Do you have a personality people are drawn towards? Can you stay active enough to make an impression? So far with micro-blogging the newbie seems to go after well known bloggers or industry professionals first, then heads to the lesser known folks like myself. I’m trying to just get out there, get noticed, and help you all out in the process.

1. Follow me on Twitter
2. Join me on Plurk
3. Pownce on me