Twitter Applications you may not know about

You know how you find that incredible Twitter app, use it a couple of times and then can’t remember where it was? Me too.

So I pulled this quick list together as much as a bookmark list for my own use as to share some apps you might not have seen yet.

If I am missing an application that you use and love - make sure to add it in the comments section.

MyTweet16: When you want to step back into Twistory. View the first 16 tweets of any Twitter user.

TweetScan: Search messages and profiles on Twitter and set up email alerts so you don’t miss a thing. Download an archive of your Tweets as a CSV for posterity.

Twellow: A directory of people on Twitter sorted by business categories.

Tweetag: Monitor Twitter from your iGoogle or Netvibes page in a tagcloud of your favorite keywords.

Twitangle: Rate and tag your friends so you can filter by rating or tags to find thoseessential Twits.

Twalala: Lets you filter streams related to particular keywords or usernames permanently or just until the shouting stops.

Twitterless: Takes Qwitter one step further and tells you when people stop following you and graphs your follower history.

Twitree: Displays your followers in a tree structure, complete with their latest tweets.

Doesfollow: Enter two user names and find out if they are following each other.

FriendorFollow: Helps you see who’s following you but you aren’t following back and vice versa.

Tweetworks: Allows you to create groups and view threaded discussions.

Tweetparty: Create groups and send direct messages straight to your team simultaneously.

Tweetstats: Graph usage and trends for your own posts or friends.

Tweetcube: Share files up to 10mb via Twitter.

TwitterFeed: Feed your most recent blog posts title directly to Twitter with a link to the post.

MrTweet: Helps identify those followers you need to follow but haven’t yet and view the influencers in your network.

Twits Like Me: Finds people with like interests on Twitter based on your updates.

TwitterFriends: Quickly view your network by who’s active, who’s not and basic stats on activity.

LoudTwitter: Posts your Tweets to your blog.

Tweetlater: is a good way to tweet your blog posts when you can't do it personally

*posted by Janet Fouts - Social Media Coach

How to avoid Fraud & Chargebacks - Part II

Ok well, last month I ranted about the fact that I had a few charge backs in one week that got mighty expensive (Beware of Fraud - June 15, 2009). In the end, I did not get that money back. The credit card company sided with their customer and removed the funds from my account. Now I completely think that they did the right thing. Their customer should not have to pay for any purchases that are made with stolen credit cards. But shouldn't the responsibility be with the credit card company and not the merchant? It's not my fault that I could not catch the fact that it was a stolen card. I have all the security in place. No transactions are accepted unless they have all the information:

• Name on the card matched 100%
• Billing address matches 100%
• Expiration date matches
• the CVV number matches

And I cannot get my baskets back... so why is the responsibility on me? So I contacted the credit card companies to plead my case, and pretty much didn't get anywhere. I was transfered several times and no one would give me a straight answer.

This is 100% unacceptable to me. So I did some research and found a few things that I'm going to try and wanted to share. I haven't used them for very long so I can't comment on how "great" they are yet - I will make sure to do so after I have more information. In the meantime, I figured I would share with the class to see what you think.

The First thing I did was sign up for a membership at Merchant 911. It's Free and has some search tools to help you do research as well as a ask questions, share stories and more.

The next thing I did is buy fraud screening from PreCharge. It does the research for you from checking Real-Time IP Validation to network pattern recognition. It's only $0.10 a transaction. I'm going to try it for a few months to see if it helps prevent fraud. It has a money back guarantee so it's worth a shot.

Hopefully these tools will help with charge backs and I can live a stress free life.... yeah right! :)

Adding Facebook & Twitter Widgets

Today, Facebook added a new feature to Facebook pages: A Facebook Fan Box. This new feature will let you add a widget to any website or blog. (See mine on the right side bar).

To add this new feature:

• Go to your Facebook Page
• Click "edit page"
• Click the "add Fan box to your site" in the Promote your Page section on the right
  
• Copy the entire script
  
• Go to your blog or website and paste it where you would like to show it.

Advantage of having A Facebook Fan Box

The main advantage of having a Facebook fan box is that your visitors can become Fans immediately as long as they are already signed into Facebook. Before this it was a two step process where you had to take people to your Fan page and then convince them to click on the “become a fan” button

What I like about this is that readers can see immediately what content is being shared on your Fan page and who the other members are. This way people are more likely to come back to your blog, engage with your content and be able to quickly scan your fanpage stream without having to visit Facebook :)

Oh Yeah.... there's more...

You can do the same with Twitter (again, example on the right). To do this follow these steps:

• Go to the widget section on Twitter
• Click the image of the application you want to add the new widget to
• Click "Continue"
• Select the number of updates you want and a title
• Click the Icon to go to your application
• Follow the directions to add it to your blog or website
  

Do you offer live chat?

Some people wonder - "Why offer live chat? Why not just provide a phone number for customer's to call?"

I thought the same thing and then one day, I was shopping online from work and had a question. I could not call from my desk because we were having phone issues that day and of course, I forgot my cell phone at home :). They happened to have online chat which was perfect for what I needed. If they did not, chances are, I would have moved on and not bought anything from them. So I got to thinking, how many customers am I loosing because I don't offer online chat? What if a customer is at work and doesn't want their co-workers to know they are shopping? What if a customer is def or does not like to use the phone?

So I decided to do some research. There are several live chat software you can choose from. Some are free and others have either a monthly or yearly fee but they all offer FREE trials so you can figure out which one works best for you. These are the ones that were recommended to me while doing my research.

• ClickChatSold - Features - Prices
  
• PHPLive - Features - Prices
• LivePerson - Features
• ProvideSupport - Features - Prices
• Volusion - Features - Prices

I've been using live chat for a year now and have found it quite helpful. I love the fact that I can help several customers at once, whereas if I was on the phone, my customer would get voicemail and most likely hang up.

It's great for multi-taskers! :)

Send your Customers a special Thank You

So, most of you know that I was part of the local Chamber Expo last week. It was a HUGE success. I met some great people and was introduced to some amazing new businesses. One of which I wanted to talk about today.

In order to provide my customers with a 100% satisfaction guarantee, I send an email to each customer individually after the gift has been delivered. In this email, I let them know the time and date of delivery as well as offer them the chance to let me know if they were unsatisfied in anyway with the product, quality or service. I find this is a great way to rectify any issues my customers may have - as well as get some great testimonials :). I also add all my social networking links at the bottom of the email to let them know how to find us.

I always felt like I needed to do more to keep MyGiftBasketIdeas.com in their minds for their next gift basket needs but couldn't think of anything fun & unique.

Well.... during the Business Expo.... my prayers were answered...

Meet SendOutCards.com!

This is a remarkable service that will send personalized Thank You cards for you. They have hundreds of cards available, and depending on what package you buy, you can do everything from upload your logo, add images, even have the entire card in your very own hand writing!

I wanted to test out the service before blogging about it to make sure that it was as good as they promised. And it really is. I had a card sent to my house and it looked awesome. I am so happy that I found this service. I've already sent 10 cards this week!

If you would like to give it a try, you can contact rich@richcordle.com. He will walk you through the process and available packages.

Let me know what you think :)