Before using this plugin, you want to make sure you only feed your own Twitter account (or the ones you have the rights to) to this plugin. Tweet Import can import tweets under a specific author. You also control which categories they get imported under. Tags are supported too. What’s nice about this plugin is the fact that it can identify Twitter names and make them “clickable.” It turns hashtags to tags which is nice.

You have to be very careful when using plugins such as this one. Going overboard with them could damage your blog severely. But the plugin does its job pretty well.

Google+ gives people the chance to share all kinds of content with the world. But what you share online can come back to haunt you. Just because you are part of a community that lets you share almost anything with the world, it does not mean you should. You should always use your judgment before pushing crazy content onto your stream. Here are 5 types of content you want to think twice about before sharing on Google+:

• too graphic: Google+ does have some restrictions on the type of content you can share in that community. There is no reason for any professional to share graphic, violent, and other similar types of content.
• content damaging to your brand: this should go without saying. If you are on Google+ to promote your brand, you want to stay away from posting the types of content that will reflect poorly on it.
• irrelevant articles: the key to building a strong presence on Google+ is sharing relevant articles with the right people. That’s why you should use the power of circles to send your friends only the type of content they are interested in consuming.
• marketing scams: these times are tough and some people do crazy things to make quick cash online. That includes sharing affiliate and make money scams with their friends. That is the easiest way to kill your credibility on Google+.
• negative personal stories: Google+ does not replace therapy. It is one thing to tell stories about your hardships once in a while. But if you overshare, it could turn people off.
• anything you have not checked out: this has always been my rule: I never share content that I have not checked out personally on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. That is a good approach to avoid sharing embarrassing or terrible works with others.

Google+ is a very open community. But don’t assume you can get away with sharing crazy type of content with your friends. People do have a limit. Besides, what you share can come back to bite you where it hurts the most.

Twitter is a powerful community to be a part of, especially for those of you who are willing to participate, add value, and listen to what others have to say. Unfortunately, not everyone comes to Twitter to do those things. Some folks look at Twitter as a cash cow. They harass other members and try to push their paid offers down their throats. Some others don’t even know they are harassing others but end up turning people off with their content.

Losing your credibility on Twitter is a difficult predicament to bounce back from. Here are 6 ways to make sure you are not being annoying to your followers on Twitter:

• Stay focused: people do not follow you on Twitter to hear about everything under the sun. There is a good chance your content has caught their eye in the past. Staying focused on a limited number of topics in your stream goes a long way towards keeping people from unfollowing you.
• Don’t send too many retweets: some Twitter users retweet every story they can get their hands on. That is just not the right approach and can overwhelm your followers. Don’t forget that each retweet is a vote for a story. You want to be generous with your retweets but should not go overboard with them.
• Don’t bombard people with DMs: I don’t know about you but I hate automated DM messages. Unfortunately, some people find it fun to send others a ton of DM messages (automated or not). That’s one of the fastest ways to get unfollowed.
• Don’t take away from others’ discussions: Twitter is a great place to engage in discussions and learn new things. There are plenty of hashtags you can follow to keep up with topics that interest you. What you do not want to do is ruin the party by being obnoxious or distracting to other members. When you are getting involved in serious discussions, you should respect other members and avoid ruining the party for everyone by going out of bounds.
• Do not tweet Twitter lists constantly: we are all used to seeing #followfriday and other types of Twitter lists in our timelines. But some people take this concept to a whole new level by tweeting bunch of random Twitter names just to poke the folks behind them. That’s annoying and deserving of getting unfollowed for.
• Do not post too many affiliate offers: Twitter is not your affiliate website. It is not a place to keep harassing your followers with affiliate offers. Most people are more knowledgeable these days and can quickly identify affiliate links quickly. Besides, posting affiliate links without disclosure can get you in trouble with the FTC and your merchants. Do yourself a favor and keep your affiliate links on your blog or landing pages.

Losing credibility on Twitter is not that hard. Gaining back your lost reputation will take a lot of time though. If you are planning to be active on Twitter, don’t be selfish and keep others’ experiences in the community in mind.

Tweet Speaker is helpful when you want to listen to your tweets in your car or when you are running. Users can use this tool to listen to the latest news, sports developments, and updates from interesting people in the community. The sound is pretty clear and makes tweets feel like a podcast. Adding new sources to the app is easy. Tweet Speaker reads user name, content, and links in tweets to save you time.

Tweet Speaker has a beautiful interface and saves you time catching up with the latest Twitter news on your iPhone. It comes very handy for those of us who run or drive for a bit on a daily basis.

Smartr promises to clean up Twitter updates and give users the chance to consume high quality news without having to deal with low quality entries (duplicate content, check-ins, spammy articles). Smartr keeps the news entries clean on your phone. Users can share their favorite stories with the world on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Posterous.

I don’t know about you but I get most of my news from Twitter and G+ these days (with the help of Google Reader). Apps such as Smartr can make it a whole lot easier to read more and spend less time dealing with junk on Twitter.

Tweet Blender supports multiple authors, hash tags, and keywords. You can define the topic for the tweets you want displayed on your website and this plugin does the rest. Tweet Blender uses the tags you have used for your posts to find relevant tweets to include on your site.

Tweet Blender is a pretty cool tool to use to fully integrate Twitter content into your website. It can even include tweets from private accounts. You do want to pay close attention to this plugin’s performance. It should do fine if you are conservative when it comes to blending tweets. But if you think of super complex schemes, your server could take a performance hit.

Tweet Blender is quite versatile and saves you time bringing more Twitter content to your blog. Just try not to go overboard with it!

When I joined Twitter, I already had hundreds of blog posts written on my sites. Like most bloggers, I started sharing only my new posts. But some of my older posts deserved some attention too. Tweeting older posts can be tricky. You do not want to post an ancient article. But you may have articles on your website that are still relevant today. Tweet Old Post is a handy plugin that lets you share your top older posts with your Twitter followers.

All you have to do is provide this plugin with your Twitter username, hashtags, and your post frequency. The rest is taken care of by this script. In order to make sure only your top content is retweeted, you may want to create a special category for this plugin only. That way you can exclude older post from getting tweeted. You also want to make sure you define a reasonable number as the maximum allowed age for your tweetable posts.

Need to exclude specific posts from your “tweetable” posts? This plugin allows you to do just that. In order to avoid turning off your Twitter followers, you want to set a conservative limit on the number of posts you tweet from your blog each day.

Tweeting your older posts can breathe new life to your older content and help you gain more readers and followers. Thanks to Tweet Old Post, you can put this idea to the test.

Credit: panoramadi @ stock xchng

Twitter is a great community to be a part of, contribute to, and learn new things from. There are a ton of people who are worth following and learning from on Twitter. What you do not want to deal with is Twitter bots. Not all Twitter bots are annoying. But if you are on Twitter to build relationships, you do not want to do it with software programs. Thankfully, identifying Twitter bots is not that difficult these days. Here are 8 ways to do just that:

1. post type: by looking at what others are posting to Twitter, you can easily tell novice spammers. These folks use all kinds of tactics to game Twitter trends and annoy the heck out of other Twitter members. If someone is just posting nonsense links to Twitter or is overusing hashtags (multiple unrelated hashtags per post), you are probably dealing with a Twitter robot.
2. hashtag tracking: some Twitter bots are truly harmless. For instance, everytime I post a tweet about WordPress to my account, a few of my followers retweet my posts automatically. Over the past few years, I have come to know some of these folks. But there are a few robots in that list as well.
3. post frequency: if someone is posting tweets every 15 minutes, you know you are dealing with a robot (or someone who is doing bulk automation). I don’t care how perfect one can be. It is impossible to post every 10,15 or 20 minutes (on the dot) day in and day out.
4. 24/7 posting: some folks post content 24/7. I personally don’t mind that as long as those tweets are valuable. Nevertheless, most of these folks are using auto-tweet programs to get the job done. Services such as Hootsuite do allow people to import RSS feeds and post them to Twitter automatically. These types of tweets are not always annoying though.
5. unwanted DMs’ or replies: every time I talk about my web host or Windows on Twitter, I get a bunch of automated messages (replies and DMs). I usually block the source accounts as soon as I find them.
6. affiliate promotions: so many people are posting information on Donald Trump University or get rich schemes on Twitter. Most of these people are not even smart enough to hide their tracks, which is good news for the rest of us as we can find and block them fast.
7. spammy timeline: not sure if someone is a real person or robot on Twitter? Just check their timeline to see if you can find any repeating patterns. Twitter bots have become somewhat sophisticated in the past few months. But you can still identify them if you look hard enough.
8. cross posting across multiple accounts: if one message is always getting retweeted immediately by multiple accounts, there is a good chance you are dealing with copycat accounts. I know a few top Twitter users who have multiple Twitter accounts (one for each niche they are involved in). I would not remove these people from my Twitter lists. However, duplicate accounts that look spammy are a must block.

Did I miss anything? How would you go about identifying Twitter bots?

Twitfooter is very easy to use. All you have to do is connect your Twitter account to this service and grab the appropriate code to add to your e-mail signature. Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook are just a few services that are supported on Twitfooter.

Twitfooter not only takes your e-mail signatures to a whole new level, it keeps track of the number of clicks your tweets receive. The service gives you the option to show your latest tweet, random tweet, or nothing at all. Not sure how to add the code to your e-mails? Twitfooter offers you with step by step instructions:

Twitfooter does not require you to add Javascript code to your e-mails. Your tweets are shown in form of an image in your e-mails. All around a very exciting service…

Twitlonger: one of the most popular Twitter services around. All you have to do is write your message on this website. The rest is taken care of by these folks.

JumboTweet: I have seen some large tweets being posted on Twitter with this service. While that sort of defeats the whole purpose of tweeting, it is nice to have the option.

Tweetc: all you have to do is sign in to your account and use this service to post longer tweets to Twitter. It supports sending your messages by e-mail as well.

ezTweets: ezTweets allows you to send your messages to Twitter and Facebook without having to worry about character limits. It keeps track of the number of your characters and shows you how many tweets you would need to cover as many characters.

Long Tweets: has a pretty simple interface. It does require you to provide your Twitter credentials before getting started.

How would you go about posting 140+ character Twitter messages?