Well Fast Company an award-winning monthly magazine, website, and digital distribution platform have started something called The Influence Project which aims to remove some of the mystery behind social connectivity.

What the Influence Project aims to do is remove some of the mystery behind the inherent passivity of social network numbers. This experiment will show what happens when an individual takes an audience at rest and applies an unbalanced force–through suggestion, advice or direction–that converts it into an army of action. That’s power that can be quantified and lead to an understanding that can be applied to both the largest and smallest of networks. No doubt it’s profound to address a million followers and get 100,000 of them to respond. But what does it mean when you have one hundred friends on Facebook and 97 of them click through to a site on your recommendation?

The clicks and networking and connectivity (out to six degrees!) collected in this experiment will provide a compass for where real influence lies on the Internet. It’s something I’m sure every business is curious to know more about. I also think it’s a powerful bit of awareness for anyone who wants to know who in their network is fully engaged with them.

Taken from Blog post by Mark Borden http://www.fastcompany.com/1666288/welcome-to-the-influence-project

I have joined this more out of curiosity than anything, I want to know when my social network is asked to do something like click on my influence here http://fcinf.com/v/bktm will you?

As at the time of writing this post my current rank is 2,659 out of 28,919 – it costs nothing just one click http://fcinf.com/v/bktm and I am looking forward to feeling your influence on me.

One of the main questions of concern i get is following people, who should i follow and why? and this i think boils down to a simple reason; that is when you follow probabaly more than a couple of dozen people your tweet feed can get full of useless chatter that makes the real message seemingly lost.

In my mind Twitter isnt about only following people who follow you — a blanket policy just wont work for those well know users, its pretty much unmanageable but I do think that it can be useful to know who follows your initial follow; To give an example, you may have followed a user back out of courtesy, but what they tweet is in your opinion low grade junk so if they have now unfollowed you, surely that gives you THE reason to unfollow them.

I use a great free tool called Twitter Karma and this shows your twitter contacts in a grid with a note beneath showing who is following whom, i use it to visually see who is doing what and within the site you can make some follow or unfollow action, you can also go more indepth if needed, try it for yourself its free.

At the lunch break i got to meet the legendary Chris Brogan and buy a signed copy of his book – Trust Agents.

Chris went onto sign a copy of his latest book for me;
‘the best part of getting to meet you is that we can start the relationship here. Good to meet you.’

I have spent the weekend reading a great book and can be summarised very well by a paragraph from the inside front cover;

‘learn to use the power of the Web and social networks for your business now. Trust Agents gives you all the tools and strategies you need to do it the right way – honestly, efficiently and profitably.’

Chris Brogan’s book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust and it truely is a great read.

Thanks to @katrinadegruchy for the photo.

So you have your Twitter account now what? Do not make these mistakes…..

You must create an Avatar
Don’t leave the Twitter standard Avatar in there, add a photo personal if possible, a default avatar means the user is either a spammer, an idiot or something else that you don’t want to be associated with so steer clear

You don’t list a location, website or biography
Come on people it’s in the settings tab and its really easy to fill in, so please use it and create your identity on Twitter you won’t regret it.

The website you list is a Facebook profile
When you add your web address, think carefully a Facebook or MySpace link just really isn’t getting it, you are better to leave this blank to be honest.

Your updates are just about you
Yes I know you are great but Twitter isn’t about that and we don’t all want to hear about you.

You don’t engage your audience
People that follow you are channels of communication, imagine you are at a dinner party or networking event would you really just stand up and talk about yourself all the time, no I dint think so you’d ask questions, you’d listen and you’d engage – so make sure you do this on Twitter.

See my example Poll below as to who is going to win X Factor 2009, Stacey, Joe, Olly or Danyl – to vote you just make your choice and hey presto the poll is updated – it really is that simple. – Final Results were
Stacey Solomon – [ 15% (8 votes) ] – runner up
Joe McElderry – [ 17% (9 votes) ] – eventual winner
Olly Murs – [ 50% (27 votes) ]
Danyl Johnson – [ 19% (10 votes) ]

So if you want to make use of your Twitter followers why not ask the question? get some feedback build a realtionship – you could always add something controversial, I bet if I added ‘i dont care‘ into my X Factor poll it would have got quite a few votes. Anyway you get the picture, another great app to use on Twitter.

Some of my favourite Twibbons

Devon Air Ambulance http://twibbon.com/join/Devon-Air-Ambulance-Trust
Breast Cancer Research http://twibbon.com/join/Breast-Cancer-Research
Kanye Interrupts http://twibbon.com/join/Kanye-Interrupts
Nokia Ovi Store http://twibbon.com/join/Ovi-by-Nokia

Why not have a look on Twibbon their are a multitude of different Twibbons’ you could choose, or you could have a go at creating your own.

This is a question i often get asked ‘what do i Tweet?’ are people really interested in me/my business, what should i Tweet etc etc?

And the truth is i can’t tell you what to Tweet, every business is different, has differing requirements and needs, and finally has quite often very different appreciation of how new communication works and how you can make the most from it.

I cover in these articles below how you can help your Twitter feeds and they do go into more detail, definately worth a read as well.

• Twitter can make your business money

• How can I be interesting on Twitter?

• Top Twitter Tips – part one

• Top Twitter Tips – part two

For the first few weeks i would suggest a simple policy simply to get the hang of what Twitter is, how it works stick – if you can to 5 Tweets a day as below;

1 – work, this is just stuff about what you do, for example a product offer, a sale maybe.

2 – personal, here add a bit of ‘you’ to the Tweet, have you got tickets for a concert maybe, a favourite restaurant or maybe a great walk

3 – RT, engage with another, get a copy of Tweet Deck and if any of your followers say anything you think your group would like then retweet it.

4 – conversation, talk to someone else, this is simply done by using software like Tweetdeck, read my Top Twitter tips part one to find out more.

5 – miscellaneous, this is for you to Tweet whatever you want, it could be any of the above or maybe Jenson winning another Grand Prix, use this as you want.

So there you go my top 5 tips, to get you started. Why not follow me now on Twitter @alpenwest.

Lets be honest their is a huge range of content that can be a tweet, maybe you have a great news story, a new product, maybe a cost saving or just a general conversation telling your followers what you’re doing or maybe thinking. This in its very nature is a one way flow, you are simply telling people what you are doing, its just information, maybe even a bit of entertainment.

Brawn Grand Prix

Westfield Shopping Centre

So hopefully you can see that ideally your Twitter feed should have a mixture of tweets, all to create a human feel as to who you are. Dont concentrate on just one aspect you dont want to seem all superior but at the same time you dont also want to seem like a one trick pony.

If you haven’t already read you need to see Top Twitter Tips – part one

NARROW BY DATE
I think this is very cool functionality as you can filter results by date simply by adding a date to the search. So for example if I wanted to see how many tweets referred to me since 1st June I use ‘since’ as : alpenwest since:2009-06-01

HOW TO FIND QUESTIONS TO ANSWER
You will be pleased to hear that Twitter’s search recognises the question mark, which is great if – like me– you’re in the business of helping people. For example, if you are a search wizard then you could try entering the following: “i need” help seo ?

If you can’t remember all of these keyboard shortcuts then there’s always Twitter’s advanced search form, but – just like Google’s ‘define:’ command – you can save time by learning a few of these to help you to quickly find what you need.