There can be real benefit in monitoring key accounts to know immediately when they are tweeting:

1. In an emergency situation, receiving updates from key emergency service accounts;
2. If you are reporting on a breaking news situation, receiving updates from key accounts live-tweeting the situation;
3. If you are trying to get the attention of someone, know immediately when they are sending tweets so you can tweet them at a time your tweet may be seen (you’ll still have to figure out if their tweets are scheduled or live, however);
4. If you’re trying to assist someone over a specific time period, such as by being a super advocate for them, it’s often beneficial to keep up with their Twitter activity so you can respond quickly where appropriate;
5. Etc.

Additionally, if you choose to monitor account(s) by receiving their tweets via email, you get a searchable record or all tweets that you can access easily from any computer, since most email services have an easy-to-access webmail interface.

While there are several approaches to doing this, I’m going to avoid the ones that rely on Twitter search results. That would typically be where you would use an app an enter a search for “from:username” (without the quotes) where “username” is the name of their account. For example, to see our tweets, you would search for “from:tweetsmarter” (without the quotes). However, Twitter search is unreliable, so I don’t recommend methods that rely on it.

Start Monitoring Key Accounts in Three Simple Steps

There is a much simpler approach that will allow you to receive the tweets of your target account(s) via SMS or email. Click the links in the steps below for more information.

If you want to do your monitoring by SMS (text messages sent to your mobile phone), simply follow the steps below. If you want to receive the tweets from the account(s) you’ll be monitoring by email, you’ll need to have your SMS messages delivered via email. A simple way to do this is to set up a Google Voice account (if you don’t already have one) and have the SMS messages sent to it by enabling Google Voice Text Messaging to email.

1. Follow Them!

The first step is to follow the account(s) that you want to monitor, either from your own account, or from a new Twitter account you’ve created specifically to monitor them. To create a new account, simply log out at Twitter.com, and click the links and fill out fields to create a new account. (Caution: Do not create more than 1-2 accounts every few days. Twitter will suspend accounts if you create too many to quickly, although there is no absolute limit to how many you can have. So if you have to create other accounts for some purpose, be sure to create no more than a few per week.)

2. Enable SMS Notifications

Set up your account to receive Tweets via SMS from people you follow.

3. Set To ONLY Receive Tweets From Key Account(s)

Next, turn OFF receiving updates by sending only the word “OFF” to your Twitter shortcode, which will turn all updates off. Finally, turn updates on ONLY for the accounts you want to monitor by sending “ON username” to your Twitter code for each username you want to monitor and receive tweets for.

Use Your Own Account, Or Start A New One? SMS or Email Notifications?

In most cases you can simply use your own account and monitor by receiving text messages of all tweets from the accounts you are monitoring.

As previously mentioned, receiving via email has the advantage of providing you a searchable record or all tweets that you can access easily from any computer.

Other than not wanting the accounts to know you are following them (for whatever reason you feel you need to be stealthy), using a second account really just provides you more flexibility. It means you can use your main account for SMS notifications, and the second account for email notifications, for example.

Since Twitter regularly increases and decreases the number of tweets you can see on Twitter.com to help limit network traffic, sometimes you’ll only be able to see a very limited number of tweets, sometimes even only one page’s worth. Try this tip to see more:

We experimented saving pages of tweet results in some tests over several weeks, and saw that this tip was VERY consistent:

Twitter.com will usually show you more pages if you HOLD DOWN the page down key on your keyboard CONTINUOUSLY until the page stops scrolling. For some reason, holding it down almost always shows you more pages than scrolling down, or than by pressing page down once, pausing, pressing again, etc.

Just a personal note before we begin: I think most animated avatars are not a good idea. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

How to do it

Officially, Twitter does NOT support animated avatars. If you try to upload one it may or may not succeed. Some people are successful only after many attempts on different days.

But it’s easy to do: simply find or create an animated GIF and then upload the image file as your avatar. Remember to clear cache afterwards (see http://bit.ly/QuickTwitterFix ) to make sure you can see if it worked.

Once you have an animated GIF, you can also use it for your background. If you use a very large animation, or if you set your background to tile, you may want to make your sidebar transparent (here’s how) so the animation shows through.

Options for making an animation

If you’d like to use an online service to make your own animation, try some of these websites.

If you’d like to search the web for an existing animation, try adding keywords to this search for animated GIFs.

If you’d like to create one yourself from a video using Photoshop CS5, try this technique:

To use Twitter or any social media site well, you need to do two things: engage with people and keep learning.

Did you ever realize that one simple tip can achieve both goals for you?

Here it is:

Ask your questions about social media ON social media. Why not learn and engage at the same time?

Click image to enlarge • Source/Lemon.ly

Source

Click to enlarge — source

The two tweets I sent out about @DarrenRovell‘s “100 Twitter Rules To Live By” I felt didn’t reach enough people, so I’ve highlighted what I feel are two dozen of his most tweetable tips (and I’ve edited some slightly to make them shorter or more easily tweetable). If you like these, I suggest you read his whole list.

1. Tweet your gratitude when anyone goes above & beyond for you. If you are impressed, let your followers know. (Tips for tweeting thank-yous.)
2. Instead of complaining about “free iPad” spam, take 3 seconds and report them as spam. Help solve the problem.
3. Twitter isn’t a megaphone, it’s a telephone.
4. Twitter Search may be the most valuable search engine on the Internet. Use it. (Twitter search tips.)
5. When mentioning a person or brand, look up and use their Twitter handle if they have one.
6. Follow and tweet out strangers sometimes. There are smart people outside of your circle of friends.
7. When someone visits your account, your most recent tweets are your resume. Tweet a mixture of things.
8. Don’t obsess about missing something in your timeline. Obsess about furthering the dialogue.
9. Don’t announce when you’ve unfollowed someone. Egos run rampant enough on Twitter…move on.
10. #FollowFriday tweets are a waste of time if you don’t say why they deserve a follow. (#FollowFriday tips.)
11. Add your touch to a retweet sometimes—even if it’s just a word or two.
12. Ask your followers for good accounts to follow.
13. Have 3 good tweets that aren’t time sensitive? Schedule them at different times so each gets attention. (Tweet scheduling tips.)
14. Proofread your tweets. The amount of typos in 140 characters is mind blowing.
15. Short tweets stand out. Try saying something poignant in 50 characters. It has a great chance of getting RT’d.
16. Comment before the RT. Commenting after makes it difficult to distinguish your comment from the original. (About Retweets: Glossary, Syntax and Punctuation.)
17. If you experience Twitter writer’s block, just take a break. You don’t have a daily quota to meet.
18. Put up an avatar. Nobody wants to follow a colored egg. It only means your future on Twitter is “cooked.”
19. Never RT a list of #FollowFriday’s someone included you in. At most Favorite it…and spare your followers.
20. Lists come in handy when you want a specific group’s most recent tweets. Make some and follow some. (Tips for using lists to find good people to connect with.)
21. Don’t tweet during important life occasions. Savor the moment; Twitter will be there for you when it’s all done.
22. Get people who surround you on a daily basis on Twitter. Believe me, it’s a marriage tip too.
23. Know when something reaches critical mass. If your entire timeline has tweeted the same quote, hold back.
24. Spend time with people you know in real life…or who are you going to talk to when Twitter is over capacity?

When looking at a list of ideas someone has written on Twitter best practices (Top 5 Ways to…” etc.) :

1. Pick something you’re already doing and try think of ways to do it better.
2. Pick something you don’t think you can do, and try to find a way to do it.
3. Try to find a benefit in the thing you least agree with.
4. Try to think of the most important idea not on the list.
5. If you’re a blogger, write a post about what you’ve learned from one or more of these exercises.

Note that are a ton of free tools you can use to find influential Twitter users (vs. some of the paid services shown in the slides).

A tweet from @javiergodoy led me to @jasoncormier‘s article at searchenginewatch.com which included this slide presentation by Brandon Whalen and team for capturetheconversation.com which is embedded below from Slideshare. Best viewed full screen.