The clever geeks in the Twitter laboratories have been hard at work calculating and tabulating the overall winners of the top 10 Trending Topics in the Top 7  Trending Topics Categories.

These are Twitter’s top Trending Topics across several categories—an interesting time capsule of what was happening as this decade came to a close.

News Events
1. #iranelection
2. Swine Flu
3. Gaza
4. Iran
5. Tehran
6. #swineflu
7. AIG
8. #uksnow
9. Earth Hour
10. #inaug09

People
1. Michael Jackson
2. Susan Boyle
3. Adam Lambert
4. Kobe (Bryant)
5. Chris Brown
6. Chuck Norris
7. Joe Wilson
8. Tiger Woods
9. Christian Bale
10. A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)

Movies
1. Harry Potter
2. New Moon
3. District 9
4. Paranormal Activity
5. Star Trek
6. True Blood
7. Transformers 2
8. Watchmen
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. G.I. Joe

TV Shows
1. American Idol
2. Glee
3. Teen Choice Awards
4. SNL (Saturday Night Live)
5. Dollhouse
6. Grey’s Anatomy
7. VMAS (Video Music Awards)
8. #bsg (Battlestar Galatica)
9. BET Awards
10. Lost

Sports (Teams, Events, Leagues)
1. Super Bowl
2. Lakers
3. Wimbledon
4. Cavs (Cleveland Cavaliers)
5. Superbowl
6. Chelsea
7. NFL
8. UFC 100
9. Yankees
10. Liverpool

Technology
1. Google Wave
2. Snow Leopard
3. Tweetdeck
4. Windows 7
5. CES
6. Palm Pre
7. Google Latitude
8. #E3
9. #amazonfail
10. Macworld

Hash Tags
1. #musicmonday
2. #iranelection
3. #sxsw
4. #swineflu
5. #nevertrust
6. #mm
7. #rememberwhen
8. #3drunkwords
9. #unacceptable
10. #iwish

View the official Twitter blog for more detials http://blog.twitter.com/2009/12/top-twitter-trends-of-2009.html

It was so wonderful meeting and interviewing Maritza Parra of matizaparra.com, socialmarketingblueprint.com and now the new onlinebizshow.com.Maritza is known as the product creation queen and has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on her techniques for community building through meetup.com.

This is a very open and honest look at a lady with determination and focus, who never thinks it can’t be done just how can I get it done. Maritza talks about how she uses ‘pain’ as her motivation … the pain of having a real job! But in seriousness Maritza provided us with some fabulous resources and insights for using Twitter, even revealing information from hers and Jeff Herrings Social Marketing Blueprint. I was told after our interview that the Social Marketing Blueprint will be opening up course places in the coming weeks so Twitter Business Women interested in learning how they can really use, attract, build and sell using social marketing tools can opt in to Martiza’a list and be amoungst the first people to have access to the new placements.

We also discussed how children are becoming interested in their parents and relatives internet based businesses and wanting to begin their own online ventures.

Listen to my interview with the very Tweetyliscious Maritza Parra

I like to ask my guests what their biggest Twitter Tip and Twitter Mistake is;

Top Twitter Mistake

Not making any offers, it is OK to make an offer, equally people who only make offers are making a big mistake.

Top Twitter Tip

Using Twitter for Market Research via SurveyMonkey.com is an awesome way to find out what your customers want. Also create a Tweetimonials page or rather Twitter Testimonials, by favouriting comments from people who have complimented your products, services and you.

Resources & Links

These are the resources and links mentioned during our Tweetcast with Lynn today;

Laurel Papworth Coming Soon

There has been a huge serge from main stream business marketing their businesses on Twitter, and no surprise! With any social media marketing for your business you want to have a professional online presence. Many social networks allow for the modification of their default theme, and Twitter is no exception. But you want to take it to the next level. You want your background to stand out and set you apart. Making use of a custom-designed background will create a substantial impact. What does your Twitter background say about your business?

Are you taking full advantage of free prime online advertising real estate?

Your Twitter background is increasingly a prime advertising space, and you only have a few seconds to capture visitors interest, so let’s take a look at how you can design your Twitter background.

Let’s first start with the information you wish to convey. You will want to include your business name, perhaps a logo, textual links to your business website or possibly other social network URLs. Other information you can include a short bio, contact information or a photo of yourself. Next you want to consider your palette, and color for the sidebar. All of these elements will display to the left hand side of the Twitter post area.

For a more professional and cleaner look (for those who want to use Twitter as a marketing tool), don’t include any tile on the image. You can use imaging software such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to create your background. You need to create a large image that can occupy the computer screen but without tiling.

It is suggested that you create a background image;

Image Size: 2040px x 1700px
Branding Area: 80px x 587px
Coordinates: X=2-, Y=14
Horizontal: 20px from left
Vertical: 20px from top
File Size: <800k
File Type: Gif, JPG, PNG

For your sidebar, you can line up your images or photos, business info, and website; this bar begins on the upper left-hand side of your image. It can also include your name, job title, blog URL, specialty, social network URL, and other important information.

Save you image as a jpeg or if you wish to have a faster loading image, save it as a gif. Once you have saved your image, login to your Twitter account. On the upper right, click on ‘Settings’. From there you will want to click on the ‘Design’ tab. Click on the link ‘change background image’. By clicking on ‘browse’, you can now find the image that you’ve previously created. Leave the tile check-box unchecked. Finally, click on ‘save changes’. After several seconds, you will have a custom Twitter background image.

Your background on Twitter tells a lot about your personality. If you plan to use Twitter for online marketing, make the background more professional as well as making sure that it suits your image and personality. There are many editing programs that you can use aside from Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro so choose the program you are familiar with and will aid you in creating the background you are looking for.

For a seriously professional look to your business Twitter page you can hire the services of a talented graphic designer that you would no doubt be able to find on Twitter they will ensure your image and branding represent your business. Most will even upload the files for you and manage other setup aspects on request.

If you are uncomfortable with creating your own image, there are a few resources on the web to help you accomplish your goal:

Twitter Gallery – Fun and interesting background designs, not able to modify, free and ready to use
Free Twitter Designer – Personalize your Twitter background that have the same look and feel as those done by professional graphic designers – free and easy to use

Twitter Business Women have been able to secure our readers a whopping 20% discount on a Twitter background design through Australian graphic designers Typengraphics. To claim your discount simple contact Typengraphics and quote the special codeword;

It was an extraordinary honour to interview Lynn Terry today. Lynn is a super affiliate marketer who has been in business for 13 years while 5 years of those have been as a full time blogger, and is well known for her blog at ClickNewz.com, where Lynn teaches people wanting to learn about internet marketing. Her simple outline style of writing is straight to the point and helps thousands of people learn internet marketing daily.

Lynn also owns Self Starters Weekly Tips, where I first met her, which incorporates a highly active public forum all about – you guessed it, internet and affiliate marketing. There is also the ‘private‘ forum which is a mastermind group of highly motivated and inspirational people who are all about helping each others businesses grow. The funny thing about both of these forums is the very welcoming and generous culture that has been cultivated.

My interview with Lynn was a personal look at a woman, mother, entrepreneur and a self starter! Lynn revealed her tips for finding focus, motivation, inspiration and balance while dealing with all that daily life presents. I even managed to secure some free reports for you!

If you are looking for easy to follow reports and information about improving your blog or home based internet business ClickNewz.com is packed with practical information that you can ‘actually’ apply to your business straight away. If you need more detailed information or even very specific advice and support then head over to the Self Starters Weekly Tips forums, Lynn doesn’t even mind if you are a lurker so long as you are learning and most importantly taking action … But I guarantee you won’t be lurking for long!

Listen to my interview with the very Tweetyliscious Lynn Terry

I like to ask my guests what their biggest Twitter Tip and Twitter Mistake is;

Top Twitter Mistake

Don’t auto tweet, it is so simple to type your own message rather than auto tweeting it,  make your messages personal and engaging. The other thing that is a mistake is lack of response or engagement with followers.

Top Twitter Tip

It wasn’t a surprise to learn that Lynn’s top Twitter tip is to build relationships in your reply or mentions columns of your chosen Twitter client, be sure to see our Twitter client review coming soon, “If you don’t have much happening in these columns then this is where you need to be focusing your attention,” said Lynn.

Resources & Links

These are the resources and links mentioned during our Tweetcast with Lynn today;

Whether you are a Twitterholic or completely curious about how to Twitter and how to use it, the ‘What is Twitter all about?‘ video really explains it in plain English.

Recently reported globally in the news was a report titled ‘In the World of Social Media, Women Rule’,  where statistics relating to the use of social networking by women. The report showed women dominate the social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and Ning, amongst many more.

It stands to reason that learning how to Twitter or ‘Tweet’ can be advantageous to your business bottom line but also provides a much needed element for solo/ work from home business women and that is interaction. Whether you use it to promote products and services or as a vital tool in your business collaboration endeavors, Twitter is an integral part of online business.

Warm regards
Leigh Kostiainen

The boom of Twitter in online and offline media has seen an enormous trend with women who are taking  it up world wide by using this micro blogging sphere to communicate, connect, collaborate and develop business connections. Recent reports show women being the majority users of Twitter along with almost all major social media services, see our review What is Twitter?

As a result, Twitter women promoting home grown businesses dominate the use of  Twitter and has produced collaboration and connections between some of the most amazing and successful business women in the world. Twitter Business Women is here to bring you their success stories and help you connect and grow your business with other awesome Twitter Business Women.

You are a Twitter Business Woman and this is your story.

You will find many ways to express your Twitter Business Woman pride with a free Twitter Name Directory; add your Twitter name in your industry category and help other awesome Twitter Business Women find and connect with you. Or maybe you want to nominate a fabulous Twitter Woman who you would like to hear an interview with, you can also list questions for your nominee. While you are here pick up a “I’m Tweeting This” T-shirt from our geeky friends at ThinkGeek.com, all the geeky girls are wearing them these days

And why not link to us and really show your Twitter Business Woman pride with a button or banner on your site and help spread the #tBWrocks word. Well that leads me to tell you about our #hashtag which will help all of the Twitter Business Women community follow the conversation … let’s face it, there is bound to be a lot to say with this particular demographic

These awesome and beautiful Twitter Business Women interviews will be coming soon.

November 2009

Lynn Terry - Out Now
@lynnterry
www.ClickNewz.com
www.selfstartersweeklytips.com

Sarah Prout
@sarahprout
www.sproutpublishing.com
www.sarahprout.tv

Rebecca Varidel
@frombecca
www.insidecuisine.com

Loretta Oliver
@retta719
www.lorettaoliver.com

Laurel Papworth
@silkcharm
www.laurelpapworth.com

Social media and marketing methods have become an important part of business success. Business owners are finding that services like Twitter can help to get the message out about their companies, connect them to their customers and clients and bolster their bottom lines with a higher ROI.

With Twitter’s increasing popularity come hundreds of tools and applications to help manage one’s tweets. If you are using Twitter for business, there are many applications that can be used as effective marketing tools. Twitter applications allow you to track the links you share, schedule tweets, welcome new followers, organize and monitor your followers, offer coupons, the list goes on and on.

We’ve sorted through the seemingly unending list of Twitter apps to bring you eighteen of the most popular Twitter tools;

TweetLater – Schedule tweets, track keywords, welcome new followers
TwitterContd – Gives you more than 140 characters, upload photos, shorten URLs
Tweepler – Organize your followers
Monitter – Monitor keywords on Twitter
TwitterMass – Enables you to connect and communicate with your target audience
TwitterToolbar – Giving you access to a variety of tools & resources
TwitThis – Add a TwitThis button to your website or blog so visitors can easily tweet about your company
TweetBurner – Track links you share
Trendistic – See the trending topics on Twitter
CoTweet – Platform that aids companies in reaching customers, multiple accounts and users
Twitoria – Reduce Twitter’s clutter by revealing friends that haven’t posted in a while or track down spammers
Twiggit – Updates your Twitter status with your latest Diggs
BubbleTweet – Add a video welcome to your Twitter page
Twitter Gallery – Free Twitter backgrounds and themes
TwitPic – Share photos on Twitter
twtQpon – Enhance your marketing by offering coupons to your followers
TwitterHawk – Targeted marketing that will find people tweeting about a chosen topic and location
TweetBeep – Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, and your company

There just has to be a tool there to solve just about any Twitter business and marketing problem.

Cheers

Leigh Kostiainen

PS: Sign up for our news & stay in touch by connecting with fabulous Twitter Business Women success stories.

Making the most our of Twitter is part of the key to success. Simply having an account doesn’t guarantee you and your business will begin to see followers becoming clients. Like any tools you need to learn how to use them effectively.

How to use Twitter Search is a great video to show the key benefits of using Twitter search and how to do so. Start playing with this feature to learn how to grow you followers with targeted search results, learn who is talking about you and your business or stay in tune with what is happening in your industry.

Cheers
Leigh Kostiainen