A few days ago, Golden Twist was pleased to crown Stephanie Beck as the winner of the Golden Twist $5,000 Sweepstakes.  Stephanie was sent $5,000 in one lump sum, and we trust that she will spend the cash on something fun. Check out Stephanie’s testimonial below: When a friend told me about the giveaway I went to the site and lost about an hour reading tweets and checking out some of the links in them.  My husband thought I was crazy sitting there laughing for no obvious good reason.   I loved the idea of  having a sponsored tweet but I couldn’t think of anything interesting to tweet about.  So I raided the school supply of 3×5 cards and mailed it in. One word can not describe how surprised I was when I received the email that said I won.  First I checked it for a virus then opened it hoping it wasn’t another International Lottery win (I’ve already won over 60 million+ including money from inheritance & helping displaced royalty).    In my wildest dreams I never thought that the sweetest treat would come from a GoldenTwist for the tweet that went unTwittered. Thank you @WillPao for having the giveaway and for giving me something to tweet about. –Stephanie Beck Thanks for entering, Stephanie. Go buy yourself something nice now, ya hear.  For those of you who entered and didn’t win, I have good news.  Another sweepstakes may be on the horizon soon.  So, don’t touch that dial.  Subscribe to GoldenTwist.net by clicking here so that you can be notified of any important...

My Twitter account, @WillPao, has over 15,000 followers, so I’ve decided to run a GIANT giveaway.  If you sponsor my stream by buying a sponsored tweet, you could be randomly chosen to win $5,000 in cash! That’s right.  I’m going to give away a whopping $5,000 to one person who buys a tweet! *  Crazy enough for you?! Then Go here to Buy a Tweet in my Stream Buying a $14 sponsored tweet is a great way to get the word out about your website or product. My Twitter followers are active and engaged.  They retweet my tweets often, as the screenshot below demonstrates. You can tweet anything you want.  Birthday wishes, engagement congratulations.  It’s up to you.  At only $14, advertising in my stream is truly a steal. * Now, you are not required to buy a tweet in order to enter. You can also enter by sending in a postcard via snail mail as discussed in the official sweepstakes rules. After the first 100 tweets are sold, the price will increase to $25 per tweet, so order now! FAQs: Can I enter the sweepstakes multiple times? Yes. Simple math dictates that the more times you enter, the greater your chances are of winning. So if you buy 3 tweets, you just increased your odds of winning by 3!  No purchase is necessary to enter though. You can also enter by sending in a postcard as discussed in the official rules, but you’ll probably find that the simplest way to enter is by buying a tweet.  Keep in mind also that if you enter via  postcard, you won’t have an opportunity to promote your website or message to the masses.  Limited to 50 entries per person. How will the winner be selected? The winner will be selected via a random drawing on the winner selection date, 9/15/2010. How will you track the entries? We have partnered with SponsoredTweets to track the entries into the giveaway.  If you win, you will be notified via email. Must I be a U.S. resident in order to win? Yes, the giveaway is only open to legal residents of the 50 United States (including the District of Columbia). Click here to Buy a...

Golden Twist is happy as a hamster to begin its “Golden Tweet of the Day” series.  When we see a tweet that strikes our fancy, we’ll republish it on the blog so that its brilliance can be spread far and wide.  Like you, we believe that every quality tweet should have its moment in the sun.  Our core philosophy is that tweets made of gold were built to glisten.  If you come across any tweets worthy of being featured, feel free to send us a tip.  Email us using the contact form on our contact...

A guest post by Jordan Cooper of Not A Pro Blog You’ve woken up for a new day, brushed your teeth, fed the cats and quietly taken your seat in front of the computer. As you sip the coffee from your favorite mug, you load up Google Reader and TweetDeck on your screen. Turning away for just one short moment to find your slippers, you look back at the monitor and see the horror that rears its ugly head. So frightened, your face is stuck in a perpetual state of shock, your body shivering uncontrollably. Unable to flee, unable to move, you take a short breath and with all your might, the words finally reach the end of your quivering lips… 384 unread posts and 1784 incoming tweets! How can you organize all this information without going crazy? Stop following everyone! There’s no law that says you must follow all those who follow you on Twitter. Trust me, I’ve checked the penal code. Cut down on the noise by simply cutting out users who you’re not gaining any benefit by following. People who you don’t engage with or aren’t relevant to your interests. Refollow is an excellent tool for this purpose to sort out your hundreds, if not thousands of follows on Twitter. Use the variables wisely – you’ll find plenty of ways to decrease the noise factor and keep your account manageable. Decide on a platform for blog feed reading! We naturally default to our favorite RSS reader, but information can easily get redundant if you follow the blog on Twitter also. Do you really need to be informed about new blog posts multiple times on different platforms? Choose one or the other – especially when the blogger’s Twitter account is only being used as a non-engaging stream of their blog’s content. This can significantly decrease the “echo chamber” effect. Lists, lists and more lists! If you’re keeping track of all those you follow in one stream, it’s a recipe for disaster for controlling the noise. Use Twitter’s list functionality to segment people into smaller groups. You can do this by subject matter, but also by your engagement level with the particular set of people. Divide them up accordingly and track the most important lists closer than you would others.You can even add users to a list without even actually following them! This surely cuts down on the unneeded tweets on your end. You don’t have to fear waking up in the morning. You don’t have to be afraid starting up your computer and wondering how you’re going to keep up with everything. Just grind things down into the simplest terms. Eliminate multiple streams and sources of information....

A guest post by Ali Hale of Aliventures. You’re probably being told by every social media guru that you need to connect with your customers and clients … on every single new start-up site on the net. Yet, frankly, you’ve got more important things to do than spend hours of your business day trying desperately to build up a following on Twitter, to painstakingly maintain your fan page on Facebook and to upload amusing videos of the company cat to YouTube. Rather than making social media into a big timesink, headache and effort for yourself, learn to love it and have fun. (Hint: you’ll see better results this way too.) Don’t Think “Marketing Tool” Guess what, the big clue about social media is in the name: it’s social. People are going to tune you out, ignore you or block you if you keep trying to push stuff at them. And why shouldn’t they? They aren’t there to shop, they’re hanging out with friends, killing a few minutes with some light entertainment, or looking for some new and interesting people to connect with. If you see social media as a great marketing tool or, worse, some sort of magic fix – it’s not going to work for you. Hang out, chill out, Tweet something amusing about your day, list your favourite bands on Facebook. Be yourself, rather than a blank business face. Start With Your Existing Network If you’re new to social media, or looking to dip your toes in a bit deeper, don’t get paralysed by the number of choices available. Look to your existing networks – friends or colleagues – and see what they’re into. I use Facebook because my college friends started on it years ago. I’m highly active on Twitter because all the bloggers I know (and love) use it. I have plenty of friends and followers because I started out with people I already interacted with – rather than signing up to a site where I knew no-one. Find Something You Love Social media is a catch-all name for a whole bunch of different sites and ways of interacting. Although you’ll want to listen to some expert advice, don’t feel that you’ve got to pour your time into a site which bores you. You might find that you love all the games, the detailed information and the fancy features of Facebook. Or you might really enjoy the conversations and the light-hearted banter on Twitter. You may find that you use Delicious or StumbleUpon all the time because they’re handy, or you’re a regular on Digg or Reddit because they let you know what the buzz is. Don’t Try to be Everywhere Once you’ve found a...

GoldenTwist.net is officially live today, and what better way to celebrate its birth than with a giant giveaway.  We’re giving away $5,000 to one lucky reader, and all you have to do to win is buy a tweet.*  Not much of an opportunity cost, is it.  Read our blog post about the sweepstakes. So, why did we create Golden Twist?  Well, we created it to help you consume as much information as you possibly can about social media and blogging so that you can go out into the online world and dominate with your new found knowledge.  To this end, we’ve assembled a diverse team of writers who will take great pleasure in dropping their knowledge on you. Spend enough time here, and you just might discover that Golden Twist is like a second home–if your home was filled with golden bars that is.  You see, as evidenced by our $5,000 sweepstakes, we picked the name “Golden Twist” to symbolize what this blog will inevitably bring you: gold, pure gold. *No purchase necessary to win. Read the official sweepstakes...