Twitter has seen a huge surge in popularity, and the more followers you have, the more you are looked up to and seen as an authority. However there are other factors that are at play when trying to get more twitter followers. Do not just assume that because you have 2,000 followers on Twitter that your business will boom. You need to get the right followers and do the right things to get more Twitter followers that will actually be a benefit to you. Do not get fooled into just adding bunches of random people and hoping for the best.

7 Ways To Get More Twitter Followers Easily

1. Do not Be A Selfish Tweeter. Even though you most likely signed up to Twitter to help grow your business or network of collections, do not just toot your own horn in every post. None of the largest stars on Twitter do this. Sure you can plug your own services and products from time to time- but do not talk about yourself in every tweet. Without you are Brad Pitt, people do not really want to hear constant stories about your life and it will not get more Twitter followers for you.

2. Mention Other Users Directly. When you send out a random Tweet, nobody takes as much notice as if the Tweet was directed at them personally. When you fire out your next Tweet, do not think about how you can get more twitter followers, mention somebody else in your message with the @ function and thank them or recommend their product, or just tell them something. This is a great way to get more Twitter followers. This also has two benefits – first is that it shows your followers you communicate with others and are friends with people more "Twitter fabulous" than you, second, it gets you some good connections which is what Twitter is really good for.

3. Do not Cry Online . Without you are in the cast of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, nobody really wants to really read emotional or dramatic posts. The business world is one where only people who are positive and optimistic can survive, and if people see that you are a negative impact even in the slightest, they will cut you off. On the other hand, do not be one of those people always proclaiming love and happiness from the deity of choice and over the top with spirituality – give people something useful or thought provoking to read. Focus on contributing to the world and you will typically get more Twitter followers.

4. Be A Walking Billboard For Others. When you find something that really interests you, share it on Twitter and name the author or source. Share cool things that other people have made, not just things you have made. Just learned a new fact? Great – some other people might love to know it. This is what stars and big companies always do for each other, though at the start you have to do it for free to get more Twitter followers. Sure when you have got 500k followers you might be asked to endorse products, but at the start you have to do it for free.

5. Do not Be A Faker. There are so many of the same people on Twitter. Change it up a bit – if you are secretly incredibly lazy and love pizza, do not pretent to be some super productive health junkie. This will not get you more Twitter followers because people can spot fakes a mile off! Just be who you are and if nobody seems to get you, then sometimes you need to make some changes in your approach!

6. Do not Pump and Dump. Some strategies for getting a whole lot of followers revolve around a method of following a lot of people in the hope that they will follow you, then unfollowing them all. (I actually just read about this and thought it was crazy!), Supposedly, this gives the appearance that you hold guru like status and are highly revered. This is short term however, and a cheeky way to get an apparently God like status. It can give you the appearance that you get more Twitter followers than people who follow you, but do this at your own risk, there may be some repercussions.

7. Be An Expert. Sure Paris Hilton is not an expert at anything that we can see, (oops, did I say that ?!) though she is hot & famous, which is more than enough to get more Twitter followers than your average Twit, lol. If you are just on Twitter to showcase your day with your friends and you want to get more followers, unless you are ridiculously good looking or super funny, you need to have something to offer. Whether you are just really good at programming, know how to get 8 pack ab muscles or build origami homes – you need to have something great to offer. Drop random knowledge bombs and hacks for people to help them and you will get people thanking you and indicating you – all of this helps to get more Twitter followers.

When it's all said and done, Twitter is nothing more than just becoming friends with people. Strangely enough, not many people try to get a whole lot of Twitter friends in the same way that they do on Facebook. Just remember, if you buy a whole lot of Twitter fans who sit there and do nothing, it is not going to do you any favors. What do you do if you want to make more friends in real life? You would not go and buy them. Twitter is real life, it is just on a cyber platform – the people are real, remember this and you will get more Twitter followers.

Twitter Is The Real World … kinda

If you are a great person, funny and interesting, people with common interests will naturally want to interact with you. Do not be annoying or nag people, just be like how you would be with your friends and family. If you struggle to get more Twitter followers, start friend more people and being of service to them. Will Smith can get away with talking about who he is having lunch with because it is probably someone awesome – I mean it's Will Smith, who does not want to hear what he is up to!

However when you Tweet, realize that you are not famous and nobody cares about you personally yet – you have to do something, say something or show something cool, interesting or funny as well as provide value.

This is just how the world works, and Twitter is no exception. If you bring nothing to the table, why would somebody want to have friends with you? Even your friends are with you for some reason – what is that reason? Are you hilarious when you go shopping or something like that? Ask your friends what characteristics they like about you and then work on bringing these out on your Tweets to get more Twitter followers.

Thousands of people now use Twitter as a way to communicate with people who want to follow them and to hear what they have to say. Now though, internet marketers are also sitting up and taking notice of the fact that Twitter can also be an amazing way to get your marketing message out there and to build a huge list of subscribers very quickly.

Therefore, knowing how to get more Twitter followers quickly and easily is hugely important if you want to stay ahead of your competition.

For a long time, I was a complete Twitter sceptic, to be honest. Until, that is, I realised that like many things nowadays the time consuming task of getting followers on Twitter can be completely automated. Having realised this very recently and having seen some of my fellow online marketers using Twitter to build massive lists of subscribers, I decided to investigate further.

As a result, I now have over 1,100 new Twitter followers in a little over 2 weeks and I haven’t done anything to get them except take just 3 minutes to set up a simple tool that gets me new Twitter followers automatically.

Isn’t automation great?

I can directly attribute new subscribers and more sales already to using this tool along with Twitter. The results speak for themselves as far as I’m concerned and I expect to have over 2,000 new followers in the first month alone.

Can’t argue with that.

Knowing how to get more Twitter followers like this is something you should seriously find out about. It will open your eyes.

And if you’ve recently had your Pay per Click advertising account shut down, or if you are spending a lot of money on Pay per Click advertising (like thousands of affiliate marketers out there), then you should definitely find out about using Twitter to get traffic instead.

Why let yourself be controlled by the Pay per Click services and why spend fortunes on advertising when you can get thousands of people following you automatically? Doesn’t make sense not to investigate this really does it?

As for myself, I am kicking myself for not doing this sooner.

Well worth you looking at this method if you want 2010 to be the year that you start generating tons of followers of your own, not to mention tons of traffic and sales!

With so much excitement and hype surrounding Twitter, I decided to look for concrete examples of social media success in book publishing. I interviewed two different publishers to get their take on how engaging on Twitter has benefited them.

Twitter requires an investment of time and resources, so the first and most obvious question is, does it work? Does it sell books? I asked Michael Taeckens, Publicity Director of Algonquin Books, and he answered emphatically, "Yes, absolutely." I agree as well. At FSB, we are running tests to judge the impact of Twitter chatter on sales and the picture is undeniable: Twitter is leading to sales (more on that next month).

Algonquin Books (@algonquinbooks) was featured in Huffington Post's latest article on the 12 Best Publishers on Twitter . Another publisher on the list was Alfred A. Knopf, and I asked Mary Buckley and Pamela Cortland if they feel their efforts managing Twitter feeds sell books. They too said yes. The dynamic duo have been Tweeting for Knopf (@aaknopf) for just over a year. Although they were not hired for this role, they seem to be naturals at it. First they took over the Facebook page and later the Twitter feed. "April 2009, we decided to create a more active presence. Mary and I split the tweeting responsibilities because we were both interested in Twitter's potential for engagement with readers," said Cortland.

The growth in the number of followers for both Algonquin and Knopf has been substantive. In 2009 Knopf had 1,581 followers and today they have over 32,000. I asked them what the secret to their success is and if the growth was steady, "Our growth goes in spurts where some days we'll increase by fifty followers and the next by two-hundred. On average we get about one-hundred followers a day. We see a big surge when our authors with huge followings (eg Anne Rice, Nicholas Kristof) retweet posts of interest to them. In addition, we find that our tweets about general literary news such as book festivals across the country or discussions of the book world today has appeared to a broad audience. " Algonquin also has a hefty following of over 26,000.

The trick to their success may lie in the community building which is so crucial to Twitter. Taeckens explains his three point plan for engagement: "First, be pro-active about interacting with other people; you have to engage in conversations, not merely post as if you're reporting to a captive public. ; use wit, humor, creativity, and have fun. Third, post and comment on topics you know and care about – not just literature and publishing, but all topics in the cultural dialogue. "

Creating communities and loyal followers is a time consuming endeavor, especially since none of the Twitter feeds are run by dedicated community managers. Taeckens has the demanding job of being the Publicity Director and this fall will move into his new position of Online and Paperback Marketing Director, while Mary Buckley is Assistant Manager of Advertising and Promotions and Pamela Cortland is Assistant Marketing Manager. How do they manage to run such successful Twitter feeds? "From the outset, we created a system of alternating" tweeting days, "so we would not get burnt out on the effort of finding interesting things to say. time in the morning. We're always listening about interesting book news – on blogs, on industry sites, in the paper, on Twitter itself – so it's never been too difficult to gather up material to tweet. colleges are more aware of Twitter's potential to reach a wider audience of readers, booksellers, and media contacts, they've been wonderful about feeding us with great reviews and author events, "said Buckley.

For Taeckens, Twitter looks like a natural extension of his job: "It depends on how good you are at multitasking. to hone, because Twitter and other social media forms are growing exponentially important. If one is not particularly adept at multi-tasking, one could always set aside certain time periods throughout the day to check in and engage in Twitter. "

To a simple question, both companies provided inspiring answers. What do you think is the largest benefit of Twitter for authors and publishers? "It's an honest-to-goodness thrill for our company to interact directly with readers, authors, and booksellers. aware of what people want from us, from our authors, and from literature, "explained Cortand and Buckley. Taeckens eloquently added, "The opportunity to convey your personal, unique sense of identity in real time."

In both cases, the Twitter managers found a place to express their passion for their books, authors, and industry. They did not set out to build a large number of followers. They set out, almost as an experiment, to engage with a community and found it to be extremely gratifying and successful.

In today’s online world, trademark and brand ownership are valuable assets to companies. Many trademark owners are surprised to learn that their valuable trademarks can be registered and used by third parties on Twitter and other social media sites with seemingly little the owner can do about it.

Twitter’s Trademark Policy

A relevant portion of Twitter’s official trademark policy on trademark violations is quoted below:

What Is not a Trademark Policy Violation?

Using another’s trademark in a way that has nothing to do with the product or service for which the trademark was granted is not a violation of Twitter’s trademark policy.

Twitter usernames are provided on a first-come, first-served basis and may not be reserved. For information on why you may not be able to select a certain username, please see our Why Can’t I Register Certain Usernames help page.

Search and interest keywords advertisers choose are subject to applicable trademark law. Although Twitter may review reports of confusing keywords, we may not disable keywords in every case…

Trademark Issues Raised by the Policy

One obvious observation is that this policy allows for third parties to register as usernames and use another’s trademarks, even federally registered trademarks, so long as the use “has nothing to do with the product or service for which the trademark was granted.” That’s akin to Twitter stating that is not going to police trademark infringement unless it finds similarity between username/trademark and the product or service. This puts the onus on the trademark/brand owner to satisfy Twitter that the similarity is too close.

This policy also raises several other questions. What about trademarks that are so universal they are considered famous and widely recognized? By allowing third-party registration of these marks as user names, isn’t Twitter preventing the owner of a famous mark from stopping others from making use of the marks that dilute the brand, particularly where the usage is somewhat dissimilar to the registration? Similarly, what if the use of the trademark in the Twitter handle confuses the public into believing that the Tweets are associated with the trademark owner? Is this allowed as well? What if a disgruntled employee maliciously registers a company’s trademark as a username to retaliate against the company and deny it use of its name as a Twitter handle? Finally, what if the username and associate Tweets tarnish or dilute the distinctive reputation and goodwill associated with a famous mark?

Navigating the Trademark Policy

While these questions are best answered on a case-by-case basis, it is clear that trademark and brand owners should be proactive in registering their marks and brands as usernames to prevent third parties from registering them. Being able to point to a registration is likely helpful in getting Twitter to take down a username. Twitter’s policy suggests that a trademark owner is likely to have a greater chance of success enforcing trademark rights if the company has registered its trademarks. This is another reason why trademark registration is so important in today’s Internet dominated world.

Likewise, owners should police and monitor third-party trademark use on Twitter and other social media sites to prevent this from happening.

Finally, where the trademark in question is considered famous under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. Section 1525(c), legal action may be necessary to prevent dilution of the mark if adopted on Twitter or other social media sites. Twitter’s trademark policy on its face suggests that a difference in the goods/service covered by the registered mark and the third-party usage is sufficient to deny a cancelation/transfer request.

For more information regarding trademark protection and trademark infringement online, please see our website.

If you are engaged in a social media effort using Twitter, you know how littered the tweet landscape is. The problem of garbage collection on Twitter mainly deals with surrounding space junk and debris of spam marketing agencies and similar automatic tweet feeds.

For various reasons unbeknown to me, search engine optimization and search engine marketing companies believe that if you automatically generate a Twitter following, combined with an aggregate of retweets and RSS or news feeds, that one will somehow reach a social media utopia. However, that is far from the truth.

However, let us go back to the basics of social media. By employing social media, you are effectively telling a client that you will put effort into a social atmosphere. In that atmosphere, you are also making the commitment to maintain a certain presence online.

Moreover, you have to reach a targeted audience. For example, if you are engaging with a social media effort dealing with a client who sells freshly baked bread. You obviously would need to engage similar chefs, bakers and bread industries on Twitter, would you not?

Nevertheless, here is the problem with that. Aside from the efforts of Twitter, to improve the experience of their users, many so-called social media campaigns employ the use of automatic follow-back tactics. There are innumerable auto-follow lists out there, of say 500 or more Twitter users or ‘tweeples’ who will automatically follow you back, once you have followed them.

What is the problem with that you say? Well, social media is about respect and real information, at least at the core of it. If I generate a follower count of 50,000 users, using an auto-follow list, how many of those said tweeples are going to engage in what is said on my tweets–the answer? A handful or none at all.

There is a real dilemma with Twitter followings. Auto-followers are being paid back in full, when the tweeple that they follow end up defollowing them, several days after the fact. What does this do? Well, it is a sneaky social media tactic meant to raise the count of followers of the user who defollowed you, while slyly reducing your following. Why does this tactic work? The use of auto-following of course. If you are going to employ auto-following tactics, you are effectively setting yourself up for this defollow tactic.

Auto-follow on Twitter can be effectively used. Once you have built a reasonable set of followers, auto-follow can prove to be valuable. If you believe that people who are interested in what you have to say on Twitter, such as the bakery example above, then you can effectively use auto-follow. Think of your Twitter account, having built a reasonable follower count, like a well-oiled machine. Once people catch on to you, then you will start getting followers who can relate to your industry, topic and conversation. With auto-follow enabled, you will be able to follow them back, quickly and easily. This is the right way to use it.

It is obvious that anyone can be defollowed on Twitter – it is in the functionality. Yet, if you have created an active and real Twitter following, you will not have to deal with sneaky defollow tactics. If someone defollows your handcrafted and built-up follower list, you will most likely know who it was and possibly why he or she did it.

The fundamentals to gaining respect on Twitter and actively engaging are as follows:

• Start by following active friends that are interested in your company.
• Reach out more: Follow industry relations, and businesses that you know. Make sure that they are actively engaged on Twitter.
• Increase your Twitter following by actively engaging, promoting and keeping up with current trends and news of your industry.
• Stay away from employing auto-follow tactics, RSS/news aggregates that link to Twitter, etc.
• Keep information real, and provide short status updates: “We just did this…” or “Employee x thinks that…”
• Never let go of your following. Twitter is about consistency, so keep it that way, if you can.

It is important to keep the efforts going with a social media campaign. While some social media experts may think that Twitter is a numbers game, it is not. While popularity is important, at least to any sales-driven business, it must be developed with an overarching goal in mind. And that is to provide a real source of information about your product, and business. Therefore, Twitter, much like other social media sites, can be employed to build a brand. With actual followers who listen to your tweets, you will be able to get a message out quickly, effectively and to a large and interested audience. That is the goal.

You must have heard about it by now! It is a social media tool where you chat about anything you want to, you can be sociable or tweet about specialisms, totally down to you what you wish to chat about. You are limited to 140 characters so you have to choose your chats or ‘tweets’ carefully to get your point across.

I just love to tweet about stuff! It could be from my thoughts in a particular moment, catching up between friends, giving tips, motivational quotes, advice and so much more.

When setting up a twitter account think about your user name, what is it that you will use your twitter account for. If you are branding yourself or products for your business, it is best to use your own name, or the ‘brand or website’ you wish to promote to people on the web. Now listen up, by ‘branding’ I do not mean your products, you always should be looking at branding YOU first and foremost. If you market yourself correctly the products will sell. People want to know the real you, not the SALES you.

Your audience on twitter can be as varied or specific as you want it to be, totally down to you who you accept as a ‘follower’ or not. You can follow people who are of interest to you, and likewise you are able to see who wants to follow you. There can be some unsavoury characters on twitter, but there is the functionality to ‘block’ a user and report them as ‘spammers’.

It is best to try to connect with other ‘tweeple’ socially and interact where possibly rather than try to ‘sell’ them stuff – this can be considered as spamming and is not acceptable on twitter.

If you are a student and you are stuck with an essay or dissertation, throw out the question to Twitterland and as for opinions – you will soon get floods of replies. Similarly if you wish to seek advise or engage with other ‘tweeple’ throw out a question or phrase or statement and see what comes back.

If you want to show appreciation to what others have ‘tweeted’ about you can share or otherwise known as re-tweet or RT the information, to your own list. This will include a sending the information to other users possibly not in your following group.

Hash marks are used to ‘group together’ a topic of interest, for instance #selfmotivation you can use these in your tweets as a form of ‘key word’ search. Users can search on hash tags which will group the topics together and show all relevant tweets that are in the #selfmotivation range for instance.

You can add photos and URL links to tweets, but in some instances it is best to shorten the links as this uses up the valuable 140 characters. There are sites that can shorten links for you so research this online through any search engine.

Try and give value in the messages you are sending out on twitter people love useful information NOT Business SPAM! I hope you have found this information useful. Please let me know by leaving me a comment below.

Being a small or medium sized business if you are promoting your brand on Twitter, then ensure that you are not doing any of the following mistakes and if you have done already, then try to make it correct as soon as possible.

• Leaving your bio unfilled:

How will anyone know about you or your business if you do not fill your bio? You must put some basic information about your business to attract the followers. Alongside the bio, ensure that you have a good profile image, background, and a cover image. These small things are responsible for changing the complete look of your Twitter profile. Just be careful and crisp while writing your bio as filling your bio does not mean writing a complete essay.

• Not following back:

If you are not a very big brand or a celebrity, then ensure you follow back some of your crucible followers. Often when you do not follow some of your essential followers, then you come across as an individual who does not follow back and is very elite. This can affect the image of your company or brand.

• Pushing FB updates in Twitter feed directly:

Have you synced your FB page with your Twitter profile? However, always keep in mind that your FB audience is very much different than your Twitter followers. Some posts which work brilliantly on FB, they do not generate a good response on Twitter and that is why the people 'mindset on both the platforms is not the same. Design your content in a different way for the different audience. Additionally, your complete posts are not viewable and there is no assurance that your follower will click on the link for reading more when you sync your FB page to Twitter.

• Retweeting too much:

Retweeting every tweet which you go through is not at all a good idea; it makes your followers bored, makes your profile cluttered and then your followers decide to unfollow you. Often you retweet things only as you do not have anything new for posting. However, that must not be the case. Retweet the things only which you think to impact your business in some better way.

• Ignoring Hashtags:

Hashtags help the companies for tracking their own performance. If you are having a new item or a contest, then you can make some rare hashtag for it so that you can track its response and retweet or reply the tweets accordingly. Additionally, via hashtags you can keep yourself updated with the trending news and can make some plan around it possibly.

• Not tracking results:

If one is not tracking the results of his / her Twitter campaigns, then he / she is making the major mistake. The only method for knowing whether your effort has paid off or not is by tracking your campaigns' response. You should always know that growth rate and engagement level in the number of your followers, click on your tweets and more. Utilize Google Analytics for tracking the results and for measuring traffic on your site via Twitter. Additionally, you can go through your Twitter functionality by utilizing Twitter Analytics as well.

The world of freelance writing is changing fast; Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, is a great way to keep up to date with the changes. But beware: if you're using Twitter, tweet with a plan – otherwise Twitter can be a fun time-sink and much less useful for your career than it should be.

Here are four tips to help you build your writing success with Twitter.

1. Use Separate Accounts for Business and Personal Tweets

Did you know that you can have as many Twitter accounts as you wish? Make use of this facility. You need to separate purely personal tweets for your family and friends, from business tweets.

On your personal Twitter account, tweet away on your shopping, the music you're listening to, and the sandwich you just ate. On your business account, make useful contacts, network with other writers, and get writing jobs.

2. Set Goals and Achieve Them

Once you've separated business and purely personal, it's time to set a goal for what you want to achieve. You can set as many goals as you wish, but each goal should have a deadline, and once the deadline has taken, take a few minutes to write a short report on your success, or failure.

A word about "failures": I'm a big fan of failures, simply because with any goal worth achieving, you'll FAIL your way to success … there's no other way to achieve success than by shooting at a goal and missing .

You can set goals for anything, but let's say you've found a web site or magazine you love, and for which you think you could write. On your business account, tweet using hash tags to inquire about the company (more on hash tags below.)

Usually you'll get a tweet back within moments, often from someone in the company asking how they can help you. This is much more effective than writing a query email or letter.

3. Use Hash Tags to Attract Attention from Your Target Audience

Hash tags are a way to tag your tweets, so that your tweets can be indexed and found. Tagging is simple, just prefix your topic / tag with the hash sign: #.

Here are some examples:

You want to tag a tweet about Twitter: #Twitter
You want to tag a tweet about writing: #writing
You want to tag a freelance tweet: #freelance

4. Measure Your Success

It's easy to waste time on sites like Twitter, for minimal results.

For example, I've chatted with several writers who were thrilled that their follower count was increasing day by day. But when I asked: "How's that helping you?" they did not have an answer.

Building a big follower count can be useful if that's a goal which will serve a purpose for you. Often however, follower counts are only used as a measure because they're highly visible.

It's much more useful to measure your success by the goals you've achieved – you've found, sources who contacted you, writers with whatever you've formed a relationship, editors who've contacted you … Twitter can help you to achieve your writing goals, as long as you tweet with a plan.

It’s official. Our Twitter timelines have doubled in size. All tweets will now fit 280 characters, up from 140. The new limit rolled out to Twitter users in almost all 40 languages. This is a big move for Twitter and can be an even bigger move for your business. The increase in characters shifts the focus directly on content. With the new increase you can create lengthier tweets that spark more conversation and keeps your audience more engage. Of course this could have been achieved with the 140 character limit and likely already has for many, depending on your demographic. But, with 280 characters, you are now able make more concise tweets that offer more insight about your brand without the worry of limits or having to overstate the matter over a spread of two or more tweets.

People love to talk about what’s trending. People love to share. What better way to get your business thriving than by sharing more content with your target audience. Think of it this way, now you are able to discuss a lot more in greater detail about your products, services and current promotions. The better the quality of content shared in your tweet, the bigger boost you’ll see in the long-term as people learn to come to you for information.

The boost also places more emphasis on the use of hashtags which is very important when promoting your business on he Twitter platform. Hashtags increase visibility in search engine rankings and is very effective when used to promote an event for business purposes. This not only allows small business owners and bloggers to expand their new customer base but it also generates more leads without you having to pay for them. How’s that for an Aha! moment?

Twitter has about 330 million monthly active users around the world. The more you post, the more likely others are to engage with you. The primary focus is to drive interaction between you and your followers by re-tweets, replies, mentions and favorites. The 280 character increase will help you to further your brand’s message by getting the word out and giving your followers what they want more of.

A Few Useful Marketing Tips To Help Utilize the 280 Character Increase

• Start adding more detail about your brand in your posted tweets. Discuss what’s going on with your business.
• Use the right hashtags and increase them. The more hashtags, the more visible your brand.
• Provide more commentary with your shared images. This encourages conversation with your base.
• Interact with people by responding to their tweets and the tweets of others. Ask questions. Be descriptive. Give clarity.

Social media marketing helps a business to build its brand. Nothing expresses your brand on Twitter more than added content. Marketing your brand on Twitter is essential for spreading your business information and taking your business to the next level. Being able to share more content without the character limitations Twitter once had on its user platform is an added benefit to utilizing your marketing strategy and cementing the growth of your business.

Recently I read that Google Inc is employing thousands of people to call local businesses. This means that they want to boost their revenue by targeting local businesses to sell advertising. You can promote your business using Google AdWords, Google Maps and Google Places. The last 2 are free services. If you want to stay ahead of your competition you need use multiple marketing tools to generate traffic. One of the most popular social marketing tools is Twitter.

What is Twitter?

It's free software that allows you to send messages of 140 characters (Tweets) to any one with a Twitter account. Twitters users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, or use various applications such as Smart Phones, iPads, etc.

7 ways to market your local business with Twitter

1. Place a Twitter graphic on your blog

To build a list of Twitter followers invite website visitors to Tweet your blog posts by including a Twitter icon at the end of your content. You may also want to include a Twitter icon in all outgoing emails.

2. Tweet your articles

EzineArticles has an application that will automatically Tweet your article after it has been published. Once this has been set up you can forget about it.

3. Tweet your videos

Not all people consume content in the same way. Some prefer to watch and listen rather than read. YouTube enables you to automatically Tweet your videos.

4. Search for people in your niche

Twitter makes it easy to find people to interact with in your niche. Simply type your main keyword into the Twitter search box then push the Tweet button. You should receive a list of potential partners to communicate with.

5. Follow people who follow you

If a person has expressed interest in following you follow them back. This rapidly increases the number of followers and if you regularly provide valuable tips they'll help drive traffic to your website and purchase products you recommend.

6. Tweet frequently and consistently

Make a plan how often you'll send out new Tweets to your followers. For instance send a new Tweet each morning and evening. It can be as simple as including the headline and link of a recent article you wrote or a sentence on the latest news in your niche.

7. Response to direct messages

You will not build a community of followers if you do not interact with them. Make sure you respond to people who send direct messages.

Constantly invite your followers to join your email autoresponder list so you have control over your marketing messages and can follow-up on them.