I’ve been asked the question “What puts you off from following people on Twitter?” many times by friends who join Twitter and want to increase Twitter followers, but are weary of who they follow back, so I thought I would take the opportunity to let you know what puts me off from following people on Twitter.

So I’m going to start this list with just the basics on what really put me off following someone on Twitter.

• Default Twitter Logo
  Now this really does annoy me, if you are serious about using Twitter then before you even attempt to follow someone, add an Avatar, it just looks so much better.
• Complete Your Twitter Bio
  Another easy and simple thing to do, by adding a bio on your Twitter profile, people will know what you tweet about etc, this will give them an incentive to possibly follow you back. Make sure that your link for your website is to your website and not a short URL or back to your Twitter page, people want to know what you do on your website. Add your location, even if it’s just the county you live in.
• Upload A Custom Background
  There are so many Twitter Tool out there now that will allow you to design a custom background, doing this will not only make your Twitter page look more professional, but, you can also use this opportunity to add a little more info about yourself on the left hand side of your Twitter page.
• Watch Your Follow and Followers Counters
  Speaking from experience, if a fellow twitter sees that you are following a large amount and hardly anyone is following you back, then they are going to be a bit dubious about you, either try to keep a healthy follow ratio or have more following you, if you have a lot following you, it usually shows that you are interesting enough to follow
• IMPORTANT – Don’t Spam
  This is one thing that everyone hates, once someone is followed they usually don’t mind a DM saying thanks for following, but constant DMs saying “buy this”, “get on of these free” and “is this you” will get them to unfollow you in a heartbeat, so just don’t do it.
• Be Yourself
  This is one thing that people don’t seem to do these days, I don’t mean tweeting things like “in the kitchen”, “watching TV”, “took the dog out”, “just had a drink” but, if you are going to tweet thing like that then add a bit of information to them, like where you are etc. eg “In the kitchen making a brilliant recipe, I’ll blog it for you all later”, “Watching a brilliant new program on TV starring @Schofe”, “Just had a drink with my good mates at the new club in London” if you are taking the dogs out, tweet some interesting photos, TweetPhoto, TwitPic or even Flickr.

So there you go, just some of the things that I follow and if you are new to Twitter then following this may improve your tweeting and hopefully your followers admiration for what you tweet about

The other day I got an email, telling me about a new site that will allow Twitter users to tweet about music they like and rate it, so I thought I would take the plunge and check it out.

The site is called Musicvault.fm and it’s just so simple to use, you can use the search engine that they have on the site, or even just do a direct tweet which they will pick up, all you have to do is tweet in this format “Group/Album” XX% your comment @musicvaultfm i.e: “Muse/The Resistance” 90% Awesome record! @musicvaultfm

Then once Musicvault.fm catch your tweet they publish your opinion on their website, it’s really that easy, so I gave it a try and did one for one of my favourite albums by Royksopp, Melody A.M. and then searched for another album, this time I tried my own band, Remergence and it didn’t find anything, but, you can also search via Last.fm and this did produce the results I would have expected..

Now I’m not entirely sure how often I would use Musicvault.fm, but saying that, it is a handy little Twitter website that I think a lot of music fans out there will use to spread the word about albums that they enjoy, maybe I should start using it to promote some of those many artists out there that I personally know that would love the extra links back to their albums to help them show off their talents, hmm.

It’s all a bit of fun, something that you may or may not take seriously, but at least your Twitter followers will know what music you like

Greetings fellow bloggers and readers of my blog, I’m a bit rushed for time this weekend, its mothers day and I can’t really spend that much time on the blog as I would like to, that’s why there has been a slump is posts this weekend, sorry about that, but here is the weekly round-up for those of you that enjoy reading them, I’ve made a few changes this week, mainly due to time and I have added some Google Graphics for some of the stats, thanks to Dragon Blogger for the inspiration on that one

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Surfing around the internet the other day I came across a website called twiends.com a Twitter Tool that helps you increase your Twitter followers, but before I carry on, I must mention that this is not an automated program and you must take responsibility in following and unfollowing in a non aggressive way as you can be banned from Twiends and worse of all from Twitter.

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Now a lot of us on Twitter, including myself @Blazing_Minds, tweet with the FollowFriday hash tag to let our followers see who we recommend to follow on Twitter, but are you using the hashtag correctly.

I’ve seen many twitters tweeting with #ff this is all very well and good, but did you know that if you use the #FollowFriday hashtag you’ll get a little bit of extra linkage for your twitter, what you didn’t know, then let me know how.

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Blimey another weekly round up for readers of my humble blog, thanks to everyone who has been commenting over the last week, you guys rock and a big special thanks to my guest bloggers who have taken on the mantle of posting here on Blazing Minds

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Many of you who follow me on Twitter (Blazing_Minds) will of noticed that I ReTweet quite a few blog posts from time to time and you mat be wondering why I do this.

Well putting it simply, not only does re-tweeting fellow twitters benefit you on twitter by increasing your presence, but it also shows your appreciation to the twitter who has taken the time to produce a well written blog post that you have found interesting enough to tweet people about.

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