Hey, I'm Michael Lockyear

and this is my blog

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I made an accounting video...the Shortest Accounting Course Ever!

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My Top Twitter Tips

I have written many blog posts on how to grow your Twitter presence, many of them using my own account  as an example. I have aggregated them here so that they are easy to find.  

Bookmark this page, as I will update it whenever I post fresh Twitter tips.

Tips for beginners

When I got serious about using Twitter in early 2015 I did not have many followers.  In less than a year I gained over 10 000 followers.  I am not a celebrity or famous in any way, so I think that this is pretty cool.     If you are new to Twitter check out the following blog posts:

My starting Twitter tips and strategy

Twitter abbreviations INCYMI or did not RTFM  

Understanding Twitter links, replies and mentions

Daily Twitter hashtags

How to pin Tweets to the top of your profile

How to get attention on Twitter without being a spammer

A few things I have learnt about getting attention on Twitter and boosting my tweet impressions:

10 Lessons we can learn from Twitter spammers

Getting attention on Twitter

How I boosted my daily Twitter impressions

Tools for Twitter

There are many apps available for enhancing your Twitter experience. These are the tools I use, or have used:

Tools for scheduling your Tweets

Twitter analytics

Twitter comes with a rich analytics dashboard and also allows you to download the raw data relating to your tweet performance.  You can use this data to determine the best time of the week or day to tweet, or the optimal tweet length for your audience.  I did a series of blog posts demonstrating how someone with spreadsheeting skill can do this:

Analyzing Twitter stats with a spreadsheet

Twitter analytics: What is the optimal Tweet length?

Twitter analytics: When the is best time of the day to Tweet?

Twitter analytics: When is the best day of the week to Tweet?

Tweetable quotes

Quotes are very popular on Twitter and an easy way for non-celebrities and otherwise boring people to get likes and retweets.   I suggest that you use quotes that are relevant to your target audience, and occasionally try to ride a trending topic by tweeting trend-specific quotes.    

For my personal Twitter account, I focus on quotes dealing with learning and self improvement.  I try to keep things upbeat to counteract occasional sarcastic or negative tweets. Here are some of my favorite quotes for you to share:

13 Tweetable quotes for Accountants

12 Tweetable Einstein quotes 

10 Tweetable Starwars quotes

14 Tweetable Edison quotes

10 Tweetable Malcolm X quotes

Tweetable Mother’s day quotes 

Have I missed something? Bright idea to share? Or maybe I have made a typo? Tell me about it via the Dear Michael link at the top of my blog!  

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter! 

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Convert LaTeX math formula to SVG and PNG

Recently, I needed to convert LaTeX mathematical formulae to the SVG and PNG image formats.  I couldn’t find an easy way to do this, so I created a simple webapp to do it !

https://formula.lockyearlabs.com/ can:

Render mathematical equations beautifully using MathJax;

Convert the LaTeX equation to the SVG image format;

Convert the LaTeX equation to a 1200 pixel-wide PNG image (using Canvg);  and

Provide a shareable link for the formula!

All of this is done in the web-browser - so it is important that you use a modern browser like Chrome or Firefox.  Your mileage will vary with other browsers (i.e Internet Explorer won’t work).

Limitations:

Bad browsers: It won’t work in bad web browsers (but you’re probably used to that...).

Mobile: If you use a modern and capable browser, it should work.  If your device is under-powered it might not be able to do the rendering necessary...  

Shared formulae: the formula is url-encoded and added to the url as a hash fragment.  This can result in a very long URL.  If this is too long for your browser, or your online platform, the URL will be truncated and the formula will not render. An error message will be displayed.

Search: Search engines are not likely to be able to ‘see’ the formula.

Experimental: Use at own risk. There are probably bugs. Features may be added / removed without notice.  Don’t blame me if it eats your kitten.

Examples:

Present value formula

Einstein’s field equations

For the nerds:

The site is hosted using the static server type offered by NearlyFreespeech.net, sitting behind the CloudFlare CDN network. Your formulae are not uploaded, or stored, on the server in any way, this makes the app very quick (everything happens in your browser) and cheap to offer. 

If you spot a bug or have any suggestions, share them via the “Dear Michael” link.

VERSION 2 - 8 Sep 2015

Removed placeholder from textarea  to appease IE.

Viewing the SVG blob in Firefox does not work properly due to a bug in FF - downloads and opens fine in InkScape.

VERSION 3 - 8 Nov 2015

Content Security Policies enabled  - may break in obsolete browsers. Works find in Chrome and Firefox.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter! 

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Learn how the Accounting Equation works…in a GIF!

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter!

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Learn how debits and credits work...in a GIF!

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter!

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Twitter Analytics: When is the best time of the day to tweet

When is the best time to tweet?  The answer obviously depends on when your audience is paying attention to Twitter.  This is an important question because tweets typically only have a shelf life of a few minutes.

In this blog post I will show you how to answer this question for yourself, using your own Tweet data.

Step 1: Download your tweet data - see my blog post, Analyzing Twitter stats with a spreadsheet, where I explain how to do this.

Step 2: Insert column.

Step 3: Determine the hour of each tweet with this formula:

=HOUR(A1)  where A1 is the cell containing the date-time stamp (use the  ’time’ column).

Step 4: Sort by column E (impressions) to identify the tweets with the most impressions.  Sort by column H (retweets) to identify the tweets with the most retweets.

Step 5: Use a pivot-table to summarize the data and  your spreadsheet app’s charting functionality to make pretty pictures.

If you need help with pivot-tables, these links may be able to help:

Excel

LibreOffice / OpenOffice

Google Docs

These are the charts I made using my tweet data (17 May 2015):

My impressions are driven by retweets, so I expect some similarity when I determine my best time for getting retweets:

My audience seems to be most attentive between 8:00 and 9:00, which suggests that my followers like to check Twitter as soon as they get to work (or maybe during commute).  Mid-afternoon also seems to be a good time for me to tweet. Possible reasons - my audience check Twitter when they:

get back to work after lunch;

take a mid-afternoon break; or

get home after school.

I tweet 24/7, so these preliminary results will not change my tweet frequency. They do, however, suggest that I make sure that important tweets go out early in the morning and again after lunch.

What do your stats tell you?  Work it out and share via Twitter! @lockyear

30 DAY CHALLENGE

Day 30 of my 30 day blogging challenge done! At last!

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter!

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Twitter Analytics: When is the best day of the week to tweet?

Maybe weekends. Maybe weekdays. Who knows?

In this blog post I will show you how to find out for yourself, using your own Tweet data.

Step 1: Download your tweet data - see my blog post, Analyzing Twitter stats with a spreadsheet, where I explain how to do this.

Step 2: Insert column.

Step 3: Extract the day from datetime-stamp with this formula:

=WEEKDAY(D2)  where D2 is the cell containing the datetime stamp (Column D = ’time’ column). 

This will give you a number for every day of the week. 1 = Saturday, 2=Sunday, etc (Note: this may vary depending on how your spreadsheet appreciation is configured).

Step 4: Sort by column E (impressions) to identify the tweets with the most impressions.  Sort by column H (retweets) to identify the tweets with the most retweets.

Step 5: Use a pivot-table to summarize the data and  your spreadsheet app’s charting functionality to make pretty pictures.

If you need help with pivot-tables, these links may be able to help:

Excel

LibreOffice / OpenOffice

Google Docs

These are the charts I made using my tweet data (17 May 2015):

Interpretation: The day with the highest average number of impressions per tweet was Mondays.   I often do a follow frenzy on Friday evening and Sunday evening - that could affect my impressions on Fridays and Mondays.

Interpretation: The 2 days with the highest average number of retweets per tweet were Tuesdays and Saturdays. The two lowest days were Thursday and Sunday. 

What do your stats tell you?  Work it out and share via Twitter! @lockyear

30 DAY CHALLENGE

Day 29 of my 30 day blogging challenge done!

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter!

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Twitter Analytics: What is the optimal tweet length?

A number of studies have been undertaken in attempt to determine the optimal length of a tweet.  One study found it be a 100 characters, another 71-100 characters.   Mine are 130 to 140 characters long!

In this blog post I will show you how to find out for yourself using your own Tweet data.

Step 1: Download your tweet data - see my blog post, Analyzing Twitter stats with a spreadsheet, where I explain how to do this.

Step 2: Insert column.

Step 3: Determine the length of each tweet with this formula:

=LEN(A1) where A1 is the cell containing the tweet (use the ’tweet text’ column).

I rounded to the nearest ‘10′, with the formula:

=ROUND(A1,-1) where A1 is the cell containing the length calculated above.

Step 4: Sort by column E (impressions) to identify the tweets with the most impressions.  Sort by column H (retweets) to identify the tweets with the most retweets.

Step 5: Use a pivot-table to summarize the data and  your spreadsheet app’s charting functionality to make pretty pictures.

These are the charts I made for my tweet data (17 May 2015):

How long are my tweets?

Which length of tweet gets the most retweets?  Answer: The long ones. 

Which length of tweet gets the most  impressions?  Answer: The long ones (tweets 90 to 100 characters also long do quite well).

What do your stats tell you?  Work it out and share via Twitter! @lockyear 

30 DAY CHALLENGE

Day 28 of my 30 day blogging challenge done!  back on Saturday

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter!

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Analyzing Twitter stats with a spreadsheet

Twitter offers a rich analytics dashboard.  Surprisingly, however,  it does not come with the ability to sort tweets on the basis of performance (number of retweets, impressions, replies, etc).  

In this blog post I am going to show you how to download your tweet data, so that you can analyze it in a spreadsheet.

Step 1: Sign-in in to Twitter.

Step 2: Go to the Twitter Analytics page.

If you have not previously enabled Twitter Analytics, it will now be enabled. You will have to wait a few days for data to be collected.

Step 3: Click the “Tweets” tab - top left.  

Step 4: Select the time range by clicking the “Last 28 Days” button (or use the default Last 28 Days).    Data available is limited to the last 3 200 tweets.

Step 5: Click “Export data” button - this saves a CSV file to your computer.

CSV stands for Comma Separated Values.  CSV files can be imported into most spreadsheet applications, or viewed in a text editor.

Step 6: Import the CSV file into your favorite spreadsheet application.

Step 7: There are many columns - hide the ones you are not interested in.

Step 8: Analyze the data!

The easiest way to analyze the data is to simply sort by the appropriate column. For example: impressions, retweets, favorites, etc.

A pivot-table can be used to summarize the data.  If you do not know how to use a pivot-table learn how:

Excel

LibreOffice / OpenOffice

Google Docs

You can also chart / graph the data.

Possible tweet performance areas to consider (see the linked points for my stats and spreadsheet tips):

What are we trying to achieve (click-throughs, retweets, etc)

What is the optimal tweet length?

Do we have any hashtags which increase the likelihood of being retweeted?

What is the optimal number of hashtags?

When is the best day of the week to tweet?

When is the best time of the day to tweet?

How do plain tweets perform vs image tweets vs link tweets?

Correlation vs Causation

Watch out for lurking variables!  The performance data does not include the number of followers we had at the time of the tweet, nor does it take into account any actions on our part which might affect performance.

For example:

If we constantly increase our audience size, we would expect more impressions at the end of the week than at the beginning.

If we go on a massive follow frenzy every Saturday, we would expect more impressions every Saturday.

If our best tweets go out every Monday, we would expect more retweets, etc.

What do your stats tell you?  Work it out and share via Twitter! @lockyear 

30 DAY CHALLENGE

Day 27 of my 30 day blogging challenge done! 

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter!

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10 Tweetable Malcolm X quotes

Malcolm X was a controversial human rights activist born 90 years ago today (19 May 1925).  He was assassinated by three Nation of Islam members in February 1965.

I have collected 10 of my favorite Malcolm X quotes and created clickable Twitter links for you to share on Twitter.  Click the quote and it will open the tweet page at Twitter.  The tweets do not contain anything spammy.  Give me a shout-out (@lockyear) if you find this useful.  Enjoy! 

Early in life I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.- Malcolm X

Anytime you see someone more successful than you are, they are doing something you aren't.- Malcolm X

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.- Malcolm X

Stumbling is not falling.- Malcolm X

Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.- Malcolm X

Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world.- Malcolm X

Our objective is complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary.- Malcolm X

You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.- Malcolm X

When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom.

You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.- Malcolm X

If you found this post useful, please check out my other tweetable quotes:

12 Tweetable Einstein quotes

10 Tweetable Star Wars quotes

13 Tweetable quotes for Accountants

12 Tweetable Mother’s Day quotes

14 Tweetable Edison quotes

30 DAY CHALLENGE

Day 26 of my 30 day blogging challenge done!  back on Saturday

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter!

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14 Tweetable Edison quotes

Thomas Edison obtained 1 093 patents.  He invented the phonograph, the movie camera, and the electrographic vote recorder. He also made significant contributions to the fields of telephony and telegraphy.   

Thomas Edison is probably best remembered for his work developing a practical incandescent light bulb.

I have collated 14 of my favorite Thomas Edison quotes and created clickable Twitter links for your sharing pleasure.  Click the quote and it will open the tweet page at Twitter.  The tweets do not contain anything spammy.  Give me a shout-out (@lockyear) if you find this useful.  Enjoy!

Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. -Thomas A. Edison

I have gotten a lot of results! I have found several thousand things that won’t work. -Thomas A. Edison

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. -Thomas A. Edison  (Note: possibly a paraphrased version of the above)

Hell! There are no rules around here! We are trying to accomplish something! -Thomas A. Edison

I start where the last man left off. -Thomas A. Edison

The value of an idea lies in the using of it. -Thomas A. Edison

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -Thomas A. Edison

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are hard work, stick-to-itiveness, and common sense. -Thomas A. Edison

Being busy does not always mean real work...Seeming to do is not doing. -Thomas A. Edison

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -Thomas A. Edison

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves. -Thomas A. Edison

A genius is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework. -Thomas A. Edison

Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success. -Thomas A. Edison

I never did a day’s work in my life, it was all fun. -Thomas A. Edison

If you found this post useful, please check out my other tweetable quotes:

12 Tweetable Einstein quotes

10 Tweetable Star Wars quotes

13 Tweetable quotes for Accountants

12 Tweetable Mother’s Day quotes

30 DAY CHALLENGE

Day 25 of my 30 day blogging challenge all lit up! Back on Tuesday!

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter!

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Howto: Scheduling your Tweets

Automating (some) of your tweets allows you to maintain a tweeting schedule when you need to sleep, go to the beach, earn a living, or take a break from earning a living. 

Irrespective of your optimal posting frequency, being able to schedule tweets in advance can be a massive productivity boost.  In this blog post I will share with you 6 free(ish) ways to schedule your posts to Twitter.

Twando:

I schedule nearly all of my tweets using Twando.   Twando is an open-source self-hosted PHP / MySQL server app which offers tweet scheduling (and other functionality).

Pros:

Free;

Schedule unlimited text tweets;

Upload tweets in CSV format (this allows you to create a tweet file in you favorite spreadsheet app);

Runs on your own server (this allows you to tweak the PHP source code, or manipulate the data in the MySQL database); and

Not reliant on a third-party (you need to register the app with Twitter).

Cons:

You have to be able to manage your own server in a secure and reliable fashion!

Servers cost money...

It only supports text tweets - no image tweets.

Buffer:

I use the free version of Buffer to schedule image tweets. A web interface and mobile apps make it very easy to use from the desk or the road couch. 

Other options:

Use Twitter’s built in scheduling:  If you give Twitter your credit card details they will enable tweet scheduling, via their ad product. You do not actually have to spend anything. Tweets can be scheduled up to 1 year in advance.   

TweetDeck: Twitter’s highly configurable TweetDeck client offers tweet scheduling and is free - no credit card needed!  Scheduled tweets will send even if TweetDeck is not running at the time.   Image tweets are supported.   

Hootsuite: According to the Hootsuite website, free users get  “basic scheduling” which “lets you schedule one post at a time only.”  

Tumblr: Tumblr posts can be scheduled, and can be tweeted if you connect your Tumblr blog to your Twitter account. Totally free, but a cumbersome way to send tweets.

Have I missed something? Bright idea to share? Tell me about it via the Dear Michael link at the top of my blog! 

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, follow me on Twitter!

If you found this post useful, please check out my other Twitter-related posts:

Getting attention on Twitter

How to pin a tweet to your Twitter profile page

Twitter abbreviations INCYMI or did not RTFM

Twitter: Understanding links, mentions and replies

Daily Twitter hashtags

10 Lessons we can learn from Twitter spammers

30 DAY CHALLENGE

Day 24 of my 30 day blogging challenge posted on schedule!

Back on Friday Sunday!

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Stats update and bonus: how I boosted my Twitter impressions

This is day 23 of my 30-day blogging challenge and time for another Twitter stats update. 

Since my last update, just over 2 weeks ago, my Twitter audience has grown from approximately 600 followers to 1 000+  followers, representing a gain of over 67%.   

During the last 28 days my tweets have received 51 900+ impressions, which averages out to 1 900 impressions per day.   Over the same period I have had 4 367 profile visits.

Impressions: Times a user is served a Tweet in timeline or search results - per Twitter.

This month (May - 11 days to date) I have averaged 3 000 tweet impressions per day.

I have been fortunate in that I have come to the attention of a few retweet groups, which has massively increased my potential reach and tweet impressions (for 4 - 5 relevant tweets a day).

My tweets, which don’t get retweeted, are achieving an impression rate of 3% to 5%, which is is quite good, but translates to only 30 to 50 impressions per tweet.  Retweets make a big difference.

For the Mother’s Day weekend I set a target of 10 000 impressions and achieved this with:  

2 Mother’s Day blog posts;

12 Mother’s Day-specific tweets, over and above my normal 1 tweet per hour schedule; and

5 Image tweets, with 2 link backs to my blog.  (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

My most popular Mother’s Day tweet has been retweeted 11 times, ‘favorited’ 8 times and achieved 1 297 impressions -  not bad for a plain text tweet!

Increasing tweet impressions - what I have learnt so far:

Post often - per tweet impression rates of 3% - 5% add up quickly;

Increase your follower numbers;

Try to get ahead of trending topics and prepare a few tweets and tweetable images in advance;

Use appropriate hashtags;

Schedule your tweets with a tool like Buffer - great for scheduling image tweets;

Be consistent (content, hashtags, schedule, etc);

Get the attention of serious retweeters;

Don’t be spammy!; and

Monitor your stats to identify what works for you and your audience.

Have I missed something? Bright idea to share? Tell me about it via the Dear Michael link at the top of my blog!

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, follow me on Twitter! 

If you found this post useful, please check out my other Twitter-related posts:

Getting attention on Twitter

How to pin a tweet to your Twitter profile page

Twitter abbreviations INCYMI or did not RTFM

Twitter: Understanding links, mentions and replies

Daily Twitter hashtags

10 Lessons we can learn from Twitter spammers

30 DAY CHALLENGE

Day 23 of my 30 day blogging challenge done!

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Happy Mother’s Day 

For today’s blog post I have created Mother’s Day “quote cards”, optimized for Twitter - see my Twitter if you want to retweet! They will also be posted to my Tumblr individually making it easier to reblog.

I used the open source application, Inkscape to do the design, and borrowed vector clip-art from the public domain collection at Pixabay.com.

If you enjoyed this post, you might want to check out my other Mother’s Day post:

12 Tweetable Mother’s Day quotes

30 DAY CHALLENGE

Day 22 of my 30 day blogging challenge done!

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, reblog this post, click the like button, and follow me on Twitter!