Twitter has taken off like gangbusters in 2008. At the end of 2008 the numbers were telling us that 70% of all twitter users had joined in 2008. Some folks prefer to have a few close friends that follow them. Those folks can pretty much do as they please. But if you are interested in building a brand and using Twitter to promote it, here are some observations and best practices. Just keep in mind that old saying from grade school: “What if everyone did that?”

Rules for tweeting:

• Don’t tweet more than about 4 or 5 times a day.
• Tweet interesting things.
• Share pictures and links with services like twitpic
• Don’t blather on about what you are eating unless you intend to share the recipe
• Don’t put private communications the public twitterstream
• Do NOT publicly welcome all your new followers. Imagine reading pages of that.
• It is OK to tweet your blog posts, but it turns people off if that’s all you do.
• Do not join a “monetize your tweets” service such as Magpie, as it will make people dump you.
• Do not brag about how many followers you have.  Everyone can already see that.
• Do not ask for more followers. Boring!
• Retweet others frequently when they have tweeted something good.
• Reply to individuals in public if you think others would be interested.
• Do not tweet things like “Gaaaaaaah”. We need context.
• Tweet at least every other day.
• Be happy and positive.
• Be human.

How to treat the people that follow you

• Do not send an auto-direct message thanking each new follower and sending them your pitch. Direct Messages are individual and personal.
• Thank new followers by following back if you haven’t yet.
• Do not direct message followers whom you are not following because they can’t direct message you back
• Recheck profiles of people you are not following from time to time.  Some twits just need a little while to get the hang of it.

How to treat the people you follow

• Do not follow people just to get them to follow you back and then unfollow them.
• Do not do mass follows, or you will be considered a spammer even if you never tweet.
• Follow the followers of people you really like.
• Do not exclusively follow “Rock stars.”  Follow a few interesting noobs.  They’ll love you for it. 
• Use a third party twitter client such as tweet deck to manage the twits that you follow into groups.  
• Don’t just read your direct messages and replies. Dip into the stream from time to time.
• Give them some time to follow you back.
• Try to follow about as many people as follow you.

We all want our websites to succeed. One of the easiest ways to do that is to leverage the power of social networking. And one of the most fun and easy social networks to use is Twitter. Leverage Twitter power and watch your site traffic soar. There are three quick and easy ways to use Twitter to boost your website’s visibility.

Tweet every time you add content to your site. Sounds simple, huh? It is. But there are some further tricks to tweeting your new content.

• Use #hashtags when tweeting to highlight your keywords. These often appear in searches and help associate that hashtagged keyword with you as a Twitter user, and, by association, with your website. Hashtags will also appear in a few places on Twitter, which will get your tweet more attention. And trending hashtags are featured on hashtags.org, which may also get you some attention and link love.
• Use Twitter’s link shortening service to shorten the URL that links to your new content. Twitter vets URLs using their own shortener to ensure they aren’t malicious urls, which gives your links more trust. It will also show your real URL when hovered.
• If your content or blogpost is about a person, see if that person is a Twitter user and identify them in your tweet by their Twitter username with the “@” symbol in front of it. Twitter offers a way to find people whose emails you have in your address book for the most popular free online email providers. When you include the “@” before a Twitter username it will link the username to the Twitter profile of the person in question, and may get you a response from that person in the form of a tweet or retweet, a blog comment, or some link love. If you don’t know the person’s email, check to see if they have a website and if they have their Twitter username there or a “follow me on Twitter!” button.

For those of you who use content management systems such as WordPress, TextPattern, Drupal, Joomla and others, most have plugins or add-ons that allow you to easily set up automatic tweeting every time you publish new content on your website.

Make it easy for your site’s visitors to tweet your content. You can do this on a static website by including the code for a Tweet button that is available to you through the Resources link on the bottom of your Twitter Settings page. If you use WordPress, TextPattern, Drupal or another content management system, check to see if there’s a plugin or add-on that allows you to add a tweet button automatically to your website.

Include a “Follow me on Twitter!” button on your website. The code to include a follow button is available through the resources link on the bottom of your Twitter settings page. Or, if you use WordPress, Drupal, Textpattern, Joomla or another content management system, see if there’s a plugin or add-on that will add this for you. The Twitter follow button makes it easy for people to follow you and posts your tweets of your new content on their Twitter home page. This makes your site more sticky and brings you back repeat visitors who are already interested in you and your website.

Follow other people on Twitter whose websites are about similar subjects as yours. Following someone on Twitter encourages them to follow you, and spreads the link love.

Leveraging Twitter in these four ways to bring you new and repeat visitors is a smart and easy way to boost your website’s visibility and traffic. There is a lot more you can do to increase your website’s effectiveness.

Twitter launched in July, 2006 and is fast becoming the most popular micro-blogging platform on the web…if it isn’t all ready. In February 2009 Twitter hit 8 billion users. Quantcast reports that demographically users are predominantly in the United States, Caucasian, between 18 to 49 years old, college graduates, with no children.

• 53% female
• 47% male
• 47% 18 – 34 yrs
• 31% 35 – 49 yrs
• 82% Caucasian
• 74% No Kids
• 46% College
• 17% Grad School

Twitter is a highly adaptable tool that can be utilized for a multitude of purposes. People send out status updates, also known as “tweets” for fun, business, information, news, and in emergencies. You would think that 140 characters limits what can be distributed, but users are still able to share articles, pictures, and videos through the use of shortened URL links.

Twitter not only helps you connect with millions of people but it is also a phenomenal research tool. Businesses and organizations collectively pay millions of dollars for case studies, reports, white papers, think tanks, and focus groups in the hopes of obtaining business building information on their industry and target market. Small businesses that cannot afford to use up their marketing budget on expensive reports have some alternatives, and Twitter is one of them.

Twitter is a free resource that can be utilized to supplement your existing research efforts. Where market research and case studies can take months and years to come to fruition Twitter is a real time source for data. Where think tanks and focus groups are limited by size, location, and time constraints Twitter is global and always on.

On top of using Twitter as a communication and information sharing utility it is a very useful and an highly effective research apparatus that can be applied to diverse areas of study with minimal cost. With just a few useful tools, there are hundreds of them, Twitter can be used to research geographically, targeted demographics, keywords, industries, brands or businesses.

Small Business Twitter Tools

Brand Management and Keyword Research

Search.twitter.com

TweetBeep.com

Geographical and Target Market Research

Twellow.com

NearbyTweets.com

Top Twitter Influencers

Twitter.Grader.com

TwitPwr.com

Twitter Management

Tweetdeck.com

Twhirl.org

If you are still wondering whether you should join Twitter or another social network, you might be considering what are the advantages and disadvantages of each platform. In this article, we will highlight what are the disadvantages of Twitter.

The main disadvantage of Twitter is it’s confusing interface, especially if you are not tech-savvy. In fact, Twitter is a micro-blogging site and therefore does not conform to the convention of traditional website or even other social networking platforms. The first time you sign up to Twitter, you might find yourself wondering what to do next, as if someone has dropped you in the middle of a war zone with no instructions but “What’s on your mind?”. Especially if your friend are not on Twitter, you will find the first days on Twitter particularly lonely. While Twitter advise you to follow celebrities to get started, you will often find that these celebrities do not have time to answer your tweet, so you might as well start mingling with ‘normal’ people.

Once you start socializing with people, you will soon realize that Twitter is ruled by what I called the ‘dictatorship of followers’. In fact Twitter users seem to compete with themselves (as humans often do in other contexts) regarding who has the most followers (and who is following the less), and therefore people are often hesitant in following you. One disadvantage of Twitter is that it relies a lot on appearances. It can be really frustrating when you are at the bottom of the ladder and you can’t seem to be able to get more followers: this causes a lot of Twitter users to quit the platform when they realize they will never get more than 30 followers.

Finally, the last disadvantage Twitter has is its stream, which can be highly confusing once you follow more than 100 people. Indeed, at this point you will not be able to keep track of the stream in a meaningful way, and while Twitter clients allow you to organize your stream I can not see how you could possibly monitor a 1000 people you are following. And as your Twitter account grows, you will soon notice the two biggest plague of Twitter, followers churn and spams. Follower churn is a technique used by so-called Twitter marketeers to grow their Twitter account by following and unfollowing people by the hundreds; and spams are all over Twitter, spreading affiliate links all over your Twitter stream. According to my most conservative estimate, there are at least 5% of fake accounts on Twitter (as I said, this is REALLY conservative).

To conclude, in my opinion Twitter has a lot of disadvantages. First of all, the user interface is really confusing, especially when you are not too tech-savvy. Secondly, everybody on Twitter is dying to get more followers, and this creates some kind of unhealthy competition between Twitterers. Finally, you will find that when your account grows, it becomes impossible to monitor your Twitter stream, due to the avalanche of tweets. All in all, it is up to you to decide whether there are enough advantages to justify you signing up to Twitter.

Increase Your Twitter Followers

The trick to quickly increasing your Twitter followers is to follow other people. It’s almost counter intuitive until you consider how Twitter works. Every time someone logs into Twitter, they see two numbers: The number of people they’re following, and the number of people following them.

The average Twitter user only has 126 followers. The idea that someone cares enough about what they’re tweeting is exciting. If you follow someone, it is very likely that they will follow you back almost immediately. If you’re in their niche, the probability that they’ll follow you back is nearly 100%.

Here are some of the steps that you can follow in order to get twitter followers:

Complete Your Profile:

Before you send your first tweet you need to make your Twitter account profile look like professional according to your business niche.

Upload a Photo of Yourself:

You can also use a photo of your business, product, or other image that is representative of what you do, but it will never be quite as successful as a photo of yourself.

People connect to other people. They respond emotionally to another human face. It doesn’t matter what you look like, as long as you are real.

Write a One Line Bio:

Are you a private detective? If so, say it. Do you sell pumpkin carving kits? Say it. Whatever you do, you’re automatically an “expert” in that niche in the eyes of the world, even before you open your mouth.

Include a Location:

Like a face and a bio, a location makes you into a real person and not just a troll living under a bridge or in a basement somewhere. If you’re uncomfortable giving exact directions to your home or office, be general. If you don’t want to say that you live in Southern London is good enough.

Change Your Background:

Switching from the default Twitter design for your profile page is an easy way to set yourself apart. Upload a new background image. I use my logo, and it appears on the top left of my page.

Try to Find People in Your Niche:

One way is to use Twitter Search. Enter a word or phrase that is relevant to your niche. If you blog about Internet Marketing, try “SEO Experts”. If you’re a selling a product related to Used Laptops, use “Laptops”.

This is the second article of a series in How To Increase not only your Sales, but Increasing your Network as well. The social media blitz has completely revolutionized many how many go about marketing their business, or their opportunity. Everyone from my sixty year old uncle all the way down to my nine year old nephew are using social networking sites. One would not be using wisdom, if they did not take advantage of such large networks to contact potential customers.

The first article contains some very basic principles on how to effectively and purposely use your profile picture, your Twitter name, and your Bio to reach people. If you have not had the chance to read this article, please go read my article How To Use Twitter to Increase Sales and Your Network.

In this article, I would like to go over the basics on How To Increase Your Followers anywhere from 500-1000 people per week. This process will only take you approximately twenty minutes per day, if followed correctly. With that said, you can visit some people’s sites and notice they have a large number of followers and to be honest it looks impressive. Friend, half of the people that are following them, are JUNK!!! Examples being: SexyGirl4U just took some new photos, must login to see. What I am trying to get at is that the majority of these people are using companies to auto add people on a daily basis, but a majority of the adds will not benefit you in anyway.

If you want to get the type of followers you desire than take the time to add them yourself. Not only do you avoid, people trying to push their porn on your Twitter Home Page, but you are also going after the people in your niche. (Marketing 101-Target the people who are looking for what you offer) You can search for people by keywords in FIND PEOPLE option on the menu bar of your Home Page.

Here are some specific steps that I take on a daily basis to add anywhere from 100-200 people daily:

• First, I will click on my Direct Messages (D.M.) There I will look for someone who has sent me an auto-response, preferably someone in my niche. You want to go after people who are looking for whatever you are offering (Marketing 101).
• I’ll click on their page and start “following” person by person. I will usually skim what they write and follow. I prefer to add people with pictures of themselves instead of the $$$ guy. I’m not saying I wont add them, but prefer pictures.
• I will go through about 5-10 pages on this person’s FOLLOWERS list and add them. You want people who will follow you back, this will increase your chance, so stick with the FOLLOWERS. After about 5-10 pages depending on the quality of the followers, I go back to my D.M. and chose someone else, and repeat the process.
• If you are starting out, you do not want to add more than 200 people per day. This will avoid Twitter freezing your account. So keep in mind the number of the people you are following before you start the process.

Twibbons, or “Twitter ribbons” in support of a cause, event, sport, country, or anything else, add an extra touch of fun and personality to your social media avatars. You will likely have seen them around Christmas when people add Santa hats to their avatars; around November when people add poppies; or during the Ashes or any sporting World Cup when people pin their national colours to their avatars, to name a few popular examples.

As the whole point of Twitter and Facebook is fun and personality, I very much encourage you to have a play with twibbons – though the standard rules of common sense apply if you’re using social media to promote your business and choose something particularly political to support! You know best if it fits with your brand, but I’d recommend you keep it light, especially if you’re just starting out in social media.

However, if you’d like to join in the fun, it’s very easy to do.

I. Adding a twibbon to your avatar

1. Go to the Twibbon website (link provided in step II.)
2. Log in using either your existing Facebook or Twitter login (depending on which one you’d like to add the twibbon to).
3. Search or browse for the twibbon you’re after (ie, “Santa hat”).
4. Once you’ve selected the one you want, click “Support this” next to the image.

And you’re done! Some of them, like the santa hats, will give you the opportunity to resize it or reposition it in relation to your mug, so there will be an extra step here, but that’s basically all there is to it.

The tricky thing for many people is how to get rid of the twibbon once you’ve got it there.

II. Removing a twibbon from your avatar

1. Go to http://twibbon.com.
2. Log in using either your Facebook or Twitter login.
3. In the very top right corner of the screen you will see your Facebook or Twitter name, and then “(My Profile)”. Click it.
4. In the middle of the screen you will see your current avatar, complete with twibbon. Just above that you will see two tabs: one says “Profile”, and this is the tab you’re currently on. The second says, “History”. Click it.
5. Choose the old, original avatar you want to go back to and click “Revert” underneath it.
6. On the next screen, confirm your choice by clicking “Make this my profile image”.

And that’s all there is to it! Have fun with your twibboning!

SocialOomph is a tool that the busy internet marketer can use to automate his/her tweets on the amazingly popular social networking site Twitter.

Formerly known as TweetLater, this is an online programme that gives the user a large amount of tools to manage their Twitter marketing efforts. Using SocialOomph for Twitter has plenty of benefits, but also contains a few drawbacks.

The Benefits of using SocialOomph for Twitter

Twitter, just like any other Social Networking site, is largely used by people from across the globe. The more people who follow your tweets, the greater your chances are of reaching potential customers. Your followers, however, are somewhat pre-qualified; if they are not interested in what they see in your tweets, they will quickly un-follow you.

So, the question is, how do you most effectively communicate with your audience? SocialOomph makes it easy by offering tools that automatically respond to your Twitter followers and schedule tweets for future dates or times. Along with those features, SocialOomph also includes;

• Twitter Keyword Tracking
• Set up what’s known as an auto-DM (When you get a new follower, SocialOomph automatically sends them a DM which you previously wrote)
• Automatically follows those who follow you, and un-follows anyone who un-follows you
• Finds you new followers while eliminating spammers in the results
• Includes an integrated console to manage more than one Twitter account

So, from the benefits, you would have thought that SocialOomph is the perfect tool to manage your Twitter network. But you haven’t finished the post yet!! Read the disadvantages and then decide!

The Disadvantages of using SocialOomph

Before you type socialoomph into your browser, there are a few things you should know first; for one, you do not get all of the features listed above unless you sign up for a professional account. When you first sign up, they will offer you a week’s free trial, which includes all of the professional features listed above, and then they will ask you for a subscription fee. If you do not pay the subscription fee, you can still use SocialOomph, but on the basic package they offer. The professional package is pretty pricey, but if you use Twitter for Marketing purposes, it could well be a worthwhile investment.

You should also be aware that SocialOomph recently changed their policy due to Twitter claiming that repeating tweets are a breach of the site’s Terms of Service. Duplicated content is considered spam, basically. This means that using the same URL in different tweets is considered spam.

All in all, SocialOomph is a very effective way to help save you time and maximise the effectiveness of your Twitter Marketing. It’s up to you to decide; go have a look.

Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo, HubPages, and Friendster are all very popular tools to use for social media marketing. These social media sites can help you promote a new business that you have started or a product that you are trying to sell.

The best part about social media marketing sites like Twitter is that you are able to reach a diverse network of people and it is completely free.

Use Twitter marketing to sell your products
It is a proven fact that Twitter marketing is one of the most effective ways of finding success using social media. There are a ton of Internet marketers that have proven that Twitter marketing is a great way to promote the launch of a new software program, E-book, or website.

Internet marketers like Zac Johnson and John Chow have welcomed in six figure incoming by applying well thought out social media marketing strategies. You can do the exact same thing. Build a twitter list of targeted followers that are in the same niche as you. This will give you a targeted list of buyers to blast your message out to when your product is available for sale.

Use Twitter to forward messages for other users
One of the best things about Twitter marketing is that you do not even need to have your own website or business to run a successful Twitter campaign. A smart Twitter user with a knack for social media marketing can make money by Tweeting messages for other people.

You can get paid for Twitter marketing. Websites like Sponsored Tweets will pay you money to promote the messages of other users to your Twitter followers. A software company may pay you to tweet about a new Word press plug-in or a website owner might want you to help promote a new article directory. Either way social media marketing is putting money in your pocket.

Twitter marketing as a means of affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing and Twitter marketing were made to go together. Affiliate marketing involves having someone promote a product or service for you. In turn for promoting your product, you will pay your affiliates a commission for each sale that is generated due to their promotional efforts.

Twitter marketing is a great way of connecting with these influencers. These are the people that can make your affiliate program a success. Any good affiliate manager knows that Twitter is one of the linchpins to a successful social media marketing campaign.

Use Twitter marketing to boost your blog ranking
Everyone knows that Twitter can bring more visitors to your blog. Sure you can promote specific blog posts and bring in some extra traffic but Twitter can be used for so much more than that. Here are a few ways that you can use Twitter to help your long term social media marketing goals.

– Have a conversation (learn the likes and dislikes of readers)
– Get post ideas (create content that will increase long term readership)
– Promote your content around the web (promote article submissions and links to your site)

There is a definite value in using Twitter marketing as part of your social media marketing campaign. It's a valuable online resource that can help you increase your presence online if used properly.

Want to know more about SEO Marketing with Twitter?

If you’ve joined Twitter and not done much, it may be because you aren’t getting the right messages out to your followers. You need to get your twitter status up! One of your goals is to get your audience to your website. Using the 4 “E’s can boost your visibility to gain a 25%+ increase in your unique web and blog visitors each month.

The right Twitter copy for your updates in those precious 140 character spaces includes copy to entice, encourage, entertain and educate your Twitter followers.

The Four E’s and Their Benefits

To entice?

Give a top benefit to your service or product followed by a link to teleseminar you give, or a link to an article you wrote. For example, “create twitter updates that sell you to your audience. Answers at teleseminar on July 30 at xxxx(live link).” Or, Explode your business with Twitter and Other Social Media-free report at xxxxx (live link).

To encourage?

From your files on positive sayings choose one for each day you tweet. From my file this month, I submitted this one to connect with my audience.For example, “There is more to life than just increasing its speed,” or “Remember, when you say yes to one thing, you’re saying no to another.”

To Entertain?

Put some humor in your tweets. For example, “Procrastination is the greatest laborsaving invention of all time.”

Or, “My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.”

To Educate?

Make your Twitter updates useful such as a tip. I submit 10 or so related tips for 10 days such as, “Book Tip 1: Write a short book. It can be a print, eBook or both!” At the 11th tip, I give a link to a free special report at my Web site.

Even in a low economy, you can expand your visibility and profits when you send the right messages and get your twitter status booming!