Have you ever wished you could ask someone questions when you’re starting to coupon or trying to reduce your budget?  Are you trying to have a low-budget Christmas without sacrificing the quality of the gifts you give?  Join #thriftysisters Twitter Chat on Tuesday nights at 9pm Eastern to chat with a great group of bloggers on topics such as couponing, frugal living, budgeting and much more!

For our first chat, we’ll have a bit of a get to know one another session with a couple of great prizes, including a Target gift card!  The hosts for this Tuesday night will be Heather from BubbaMack and Misty from CEO of Me.

If you’re new to Twitter, check out this post from BubbaMack on the basics of Twitter and consider using Tweetdeck, Tweetgrid or Hootsuite, three sites that allow you to easily follow hashtags (such as #thriftysisters for our chat).

We can’t wait to see you on Tuesday night!

Follow all of the participating bloggers so you’ll never miss a Twitter Chat update!

BubbaMackTales

CouponCori

savingreenmom

JenBilly

mommymoe411

Deals4Dummies

MwestCoupCliper

ceoofmeinc

couponcrazyinky

shoppershaul

debtfreespendin

iamacouponer

CouponSamaritan

savvycentral

CClipinista

For over a  month now, bloggers who rely on Facebook for a large portion of their interaction and traffic have been freaking out about the changes that are supposed to be coming as of today to Facebook. Are there changes coming, yes. But are they going to be the type of changes everyone is anticipating, not necessarily!

The viral status message, that yes, I posted last night just in case, says that if you don’t like a status or comment you will no longer see this page after 10/31. So, let’s think about this.  Let’s say I’m just starting to grow my blog and I don’t have a lot of fans, and the ones I do pretty much just drive by my site when they see something.  Is Facebook going to banish me from their walls?

How does Facebook make money? From ads.  How do they get people to click on those ads?  By changing them up when you click from page to page.  And if you’re on a deal blogger’s page, you’re going to see different ads than if you were on a computer blogger’s page.  Why? Because Facebook pays people (I would assume) pretty good money to make sure it works like that so you’re seeing ads they think would entice you to click.

So, if you don’t see the page updates, you don’t click, you don’t see the new ads, you don’t click on them.  Not only that, but how boring would Facebook be if you weren’t seeing updates? Kind of takes the whole purpose of social networking away.

From what I’ve read, it seems that Facebook is getting sick and tired of being used as an automatic posting service where blogs and companies can feed information without having any clue whether their “fans” want to see it or not.  So, they’re making it so you benefit from being active and participating on your fan page.

Want to know why I’m not worried? Because I LIKE being active with my Facebook fans.  We’ve dubbed ourselves the flying ninja monkey crew, much like a pack of middle schoolers would come up with a cute name for themselves. We get together and talk in the evenings (sometimes during the day as well, but I seem to have a more active page at night) and have fun. We keep things real, we don’t censor ourselves. I know that I have one fan who won’t be able to go Black Friday shopping because she’s having a baby that morning.  I know another fan’s son got burned at a church function. I know another one has been dealing with a sick kid for a couple of weeks now and would really like to sleep.

The funny thing is, even if Facebook does change, I have developed relationships with many of these women, and since I started doing that everything has taken off.  We interact naturally, I don’t have to ask them to like a status or comment.  If you are a real person with your fans rather than just letting the blog posts automatically publish to your wall, your readers will want to interact with you and you’re not the type of fan page that Facebook is going to punish if there are the sweeping changes some are predicting.

Then again, I’m not a believer in the whole 2012 theory either…

I know it may seem like I’ve started to harp a little bit about the benefits of social networking when you’re trying to grow your blog, but it really is a key to success.  We live in a socially connected world, and you need to be ready to take the bull by the horns if you are choosing to be a part of that.  Today, I’m going to touch on some of the basics of Twitter.  Remember, I do not claim to be a social media expert or a blogger who has made their millions in the first month of blogging, but this is something I enjoy talking about and I have seen it working from almost day one of trying to grow my blog.

How do I tweet?

When you first start using Twitter, it can seem like you’ve entered a foreign country and you don’t speak the language.  Every time you look at the screen, you see more and more tweets coming out from other people, and many of the times you can’t understand what they’re saying.  Between hashtags, @ symbols, and shortened links, it may seem like a very complex way to get your message out.  But once you have a basic understanding, it’s possible to have a full conversation on Twitter, even a chat with multiple participants!

Hashtags

Many times, you will see #somethinghere after a tweet.  What does that mean and why should you do it?  Hashtags are a way to categorize your tweets so they will be easy to find if someone is looking for them.  #giveaway is a big one, it’s a way to share your giveaway with Twitter users who may have no clue that your blog exists! The trick is to use them sparingly.  If you start adding a ton of hashtags after every tweet, you will drive people away!  One or two is more than enough on a tweet!

@

When you type @bubbamacktales, I will see the message as a direct mention.  The same goes for @anyothertwitteruser.  This is a way to engage with other people on Twitter and start conversations.  This is crucial because Twitter wants to see that you aren’t just using their service as a tool for putting your posts on their site.  Likewise, if you have a friend who is getting close to a milestone, you can use @friendsnamehere to ask your followers to follow others.

RT

Whether you use the Twitter website or another service (more about that later), you can retweet any tweet you see come through your feed.  This is a good way to help other bloggers get their posts out to your followers, and hopefully, as you start engaging more, other bloggers will start to retweet for you!  When a post has been retweeted, you will see RT in the message.

Shortened Links

With Twitter, you are limited to 160 characters, so if you include your long link, you’re eating up valuable characters.  Enter URL shorteners.  If you’re using the Twitter website, you will need to use a service like bit.ly to shorten the URL.  But, if you use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, you can shorten the links while you compose your message!  While they may look strange, they are still fully functional and will bring readers to your site!

Making Tweeting Easy, Organized, and Fun!

There are a number of sites and services you can use to make Tweeting easier to follow and fun!  Personally, I am addicted to Tweetdeck. They have applications you can use for your Desktop, iPhone, Android, and Chrome.  The image below is my Tweetdeck from last night.  I use the Chrome plug-in and love it much more than the desktop version I used in the past!

I have it set up so my full feed is on the far left, then I have a column that is set up for a hashtag I like to follow, then my direct mentions, and finally, on the far right is a Facebook group that I’m in.  I love being able to set it up so I see my Facebook and Twitter all in one place.  You can also use Tweetdeck to post to Twitter and any Facebook pages or groups that you are a member of, making it easy to share things without running from page to page!