Imagine the scene, a crisp chilly spring morning on 17th March 2009. The
banks have recently disclosed their nasty secrets and the country is
bleeding jobs like back in the 70’s. There is a feeling of doom, gloom
and total hesitation. A business limbo as I seem to remember.

I’d recently invested in new premises but I had to half my workforce,
which left my very faithful part-time administrator and me. Luckily, I
had treated my clients well over the last 10 years (Birthday No 3, April
19th 2000(another story)) and they, in turn, were being fantastic with
me. I continued in business through 2009, mainly from the temporary
market.

With ideas floating crazily around my mind and a little extra time on my
hands I stumbled across Twitter. I think it was Chris Moyles from
Radio One that said that Stephen Fry was tweeting about his journey
whilst in the Far East.. Sounded good to me!

I logged on. (Birthday No 2, 17th March 2009)

I picked the name @JobRich, I
wanted something that would sum me up quickly. My name is Richard and I
have a passion about jobs. That seemed to make sense.

Wow, what to do first? I think Stephen
Fry was the first person I followed. I remember asking him a
question and being a little disappointed that he never answered. LOL! I
followed a couple of local people as well as generally interesting
people and had some amazing in-depth conversations.

I had started networking! This was great! Never having been a
comfortable networker in the past I was now instigating conversations. I
was learning about things that I had never had access to in the past. I
had found an audience along with a true learning source and all things
were equal.
As I was here for business! I starting noticing the correlation of using
Twitter for business purposes and looked into web tools that others had
been Retweeted.

I used / use the following and have put my comments on also. They are
in no order.

· PowerTwitter http://powertwitter.me/
- Runs nicely with Firefox (they’re working on Chrome), user friendly,
shows pictures automatically, allows you to copy and paste a shortened
url to a weblink, Reweet button.
· Tweetspinner http://tweetspinner.com/
- Allows (to some level) the management of your account. Purge up to 40
people at a time that don’t follow back (we’ve all been there!)
Revolving Bio and url, great if you want to manage a few ideas at a
time)
· TwitterVision http://beta.twittervision.com/
- I could watch this for hours!
· TwitterCounter http://twittercounter.com/
- Graphs are easy to understand and make you feel good. Compare
followers and following, most popular Tweeters.
· TwitterFeed http://twitterfeed.com/
- My saviour! Having many RSS links that need to be uploaded, these
guys come highly recommended.
· TwitterGrader http://twitter.grader.com/
An excellent tool for finding people in your geographical location.
· WebsiteGrader http://WebsiteGrader.com
As a newbie on the block with regards to SEO and web business in
general, this has been a great source of information that is easy to
understand and gives you a tick list for important things to be looked
at on your web design.
· Twitt(url)s http://twitturls.com/
A great tool for some light-hearted fun on a Friday afternoon
· WhatsYourTweetWorth http://www.whatsyourtweetworth.com/
How sad! And always depressing.
· Twibbon http://twibbon.com/ -
Nice App for sharing causes, you can join one or create one, I did http://twibbon.com/join/Ba-Recruitment-10th-Bday


There are a few more but most of them are not superstars, they just seem
worthwhile to link with for some inane reason. Time will tell.
So as I’m being so honest with you, please let me know if you have other
tools that you find useful. Please use the comments box below. Thank
you.

Bringing you up to date with my Twitter progress, I have recently been
on a mass de-following project. I have looked through nearly 2,000
accounts and have parted company with people that either haven’t
tweeted; for 3 months plus, people that love and #ff people too much
(it’s all nice but I really don’t have time) people with job streams,
(however there are a few choice ones! LOL), automatic streams where you
can really tell that these people aren’t really saying those things.

I’ve started to look for quality.

I have lots to give (in my own way) and I have an awful lot to learn
still. I have truly thoroughly enjoyed my first year on Twitter and
would highly recommend people to enjoy it. But remember it’s not the
only tool we have.

Oh and Birthday No 1 was me arriving at a very mature and extremely fun
45.