CWI Media, LLC

By Gary Cope

In part two of our series on “Connecting your cell phone to your social networking sites” we show you how to post pictures to your Twitter account using a third-party application called TwitPic. Now, with any third party application, you must trust the application before you use it. Why? Because to use TwitPic, you must provide your Twitter username and password. That being said, TwitPic has gained in popularity and appears to be run by a reputable developer. I have trusted TwitPic with my login info and so far, they have not abused that information. Even Shaquille O’Neal uses TwitPic.

Assuming you trust TwitPic with your info, go ahead and log in to TwitPic with your Twitter info, then click on the “Settings” link at the top right of the page. This page will display a custom e-mail address just for you that will look something like this: johndoe.1234@twitpic.com. All you have to do is save that e-mail to your phone’s contacts list and then when you take a picture with your camera phone, you can e-mail the photo to your TwitPic e-mail address and it will post the picture to your Twitter account, like so: The Hokie Bird at the Basketball Game.

You are not limited to sending photos from your cell phone, though. You can send the e-mail from your desktop, too. TwitPic also allows you to upload photos to its server and then gives you the option to post a Tweet on your Twitter account.

Pretty cool, right? Yes, it is. But, how can this help my business? I think the real question is how can it NOT help your business? Let’s take a real estate agent who just went to a house that is ready to go on the market. Usually the agent takes pictures, goes back and uploads them to their MLS listings along with the rest of the information. With TwitPic, the agent could easily snap some pictures with their camera phone and post them to their Twitter account via TwitPic and the listing will appear immediately on their Twitter account, which can also be linked to their blog. The possibilities and scenarios are seeminly endless.

And remember, social media and networking sites, while great business tools, require a certain degree of personality to be successful. If all you do is post links to your blog and sales pitches, you’ve relegated yourself to Twitter spam and you will lose credibility and people will stop following you. Engage your audience, talk with them, communicate and be personable. People want to work with other people, not spam bots.

If you have questions on how to use TwitPic for your business, e-mail me at gary@cwimedia.com.