Shweiki Media has teamed up with Kevin Knebl—international speaker, author, trainer, coach and an authority on social media and marketing—to present a webinar on how to use Twellow to enhance one’s Twitter experience.
Knebl explains how to use Twellow, a tool many people are unfamiliar with, in terms of improving their overall Twitter experience. He has compared Twitter several times to a car engine, because it uses open source software. With open source software, people have the ability to create programs that integrate with Twitter. Therefore, there are many toolssuch as Hootsuite and Twellow that unlock different features in Twitter that Twitter itself does not offer.
Before moving forward, one should watch the other webinars Knebl has done in this series about understanding the basics of Twitter, setting up an account, establishing a 15 minute daily routine, and using a tool called Hootsuite which makes social media sites easier to use. The links are below.
Daily Habits that Lead to Twitter Success
How to Use Hootsuite to Maximize Your Twitter Success
After obtaining a basic understanding of how to use Twitter, one can start using more advanced tools to accelerate his or her success with it. Twellow is one such tool.
What is Twellow?
Twellow is basically Yellow Pages for Twitter. The Yellow Pages is a phone book full of phone numbers that are categorized based on geography or industry. Twellow operates in basically the same way. It allows anyone with a Twellow account to look up other people with Twellow accounts based on a specific industry or geography.
After one has a Twitter account set up and understands how to use it, he or she should go to Twellow and open up a free account. People can use the same login and password they use for Twitter, and the two accounts will sync. It’s rather self-explanatory:
- Go to twellow.com
- Open up a free Twellow account. It will ask for one’s Twitter login information.
- Sync the accounts
Twellow vs. Twitter
In terms of a profilen Twitter, users have a name, handle, 160 character bio, the town they live in, a link to one website, and the site displays when the user joined Twitter. It’s all about brevity. However, Twellow allows its users a lot more space to express themselves. Unlike Twitter, Twellow allows its users 2000 characters for their bio. Knebl suggests copying one’s 2000 character Linkedin summary and pasting it to the Twellow bio. Also, Twellow allows users to link to multiple websites, not just one. Therefore, users can link to their many social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.
Another unique feature offered is the ability to tag oneself. For example, Knebl would be placed in the professional speaker category, author category, social media category and a number of other categories related to what he does professionally or personally. Therefore, it would make sense for people to categorize themselves based on occupation and hobbies.
Twellow’s Unique Features
So why would somebody set up a Twellow account? To find others based on industry, hobbies, pastimes and interests. There are a couple of interesting ways one can use Twellow.
If someone wanted to do business in a particular role or industry, then he or she could use Twellow to find those people. For example, if one wanted to locate executives, he or she would type in “executives” in the search bar, and Twellow would suggest people he or she might be looking for. It would give a list of all the people who have categorized themselves as an “executive,” listing them in order of number of followers (high to low). Therefore, the more followers a person has, the closer he or she will be to the top of the list. One can follow people and look at their profiles via Twitter from this search list, making it very easy to pick and choose who he or she wants to follow from a single categorized list.
Twellow is a great tool to find people or organizations based on occupation, industry, etc. to do business with.
Another unique feature is Twellowhood, which is a map of the world. If one searches the United States, it will break it down by states. For example, if Knebl wanted to connect with people on Twellow from Colorado, he can click on the state and it shows him that there are 38,321 registered Twellow users in Colorado. Knebl can also look at specific cities–say Aspen, which has 227 users.
This feature is great for when people want to start doing business in specific places, because it gives them the opportunity to start building business relationships by finding connections and following people.
Review
Twellow is a great tool and it’s simple for one to set up a free account. Here is a quick review:
- Set up a free Twellow account at twellow.com.
- Sync account to Twitter account.
- Create Twellow profile.
- Place oneself in the appropriate categories.
- Find people one wants to follow by categories and follow them.
- Use Twellowhood, a geographic feature, to search city, state and country to find people based on geography.