Getting Started With Twitter

There's a new web application on the block that has everyone talking and it goes by the name of Twitter (twitter.com). Twitter is fast becoming one of the more popular methods for communicating online and has a large number of loyal followers who stick with it despite the growing pains and competitors. While this article won't cover everything possible with Twitter, it will give you a good starting point on how to start using it and how you can use it for your business.

What Is This Twitter You Speak Of?

So what is Twitter and how can it be of benefit to you or your business? Twitter is a free online micro-blogging application which gives you the ability to send out short messages (up to 140 characters) called "tweets" to people who are following you on Twitter. You can send tweets either through your computer or by using your cell phone via a text message. These tweets/messages can be about anything you want and they can include links, as well. Making Twitter even more useful is the ability to send a direct message to someone you are following (this is done by entering @username at the beginning of your message) or replying to someone's tweet with your own. You would be surprised how common it is to reply to someone's message then to have someone who is either following you or the person you sent the reply to reply to your initial message and so on.

People can follow you and your tweets by first signing-up for their own free Twitter account at the Twitter site then adding you to their list of people they are following. Once you have created your account, you can either check your Twitter page (your own personal page which appears after you sign-in at the Twitter home page) for any of your friend's new messages or you can send out your own. But it is much easier, in my opinion, to use one of the many online or desktop applications which give you the ability to do all of this and more.

Twitter As A Communication Tool

Twitter is a quick and easy way to communicate with family, friends, business associates, and also within a company setting. Being an online service, Twitter is available to anyone with online access. All you have to do is login to your account through any number of third-party applications developed for Twitter or through the Twitter site and you are ready to go. Within a company setting, employees could have a Twitter account created for them with the option to have their messages protected. This means only people they (or you or the person in charge of creating the Twitter accounts) approve will be able to send and receive messages from them. The same thing could be done using an instant message program but with Twitter, there would be no software to install and it would be accessible from anywhere with an online connection. Additionally, the person who is in charge of the Twitter accounts will have the power to control who is and who isn't part of this private Twitter network.

Even though there are tons of online communication applications available, Twitter can also be used as a way for people who are collaborating on a project to stay in touch with one another regardless of where they are. And depending on which third-party application they are using to Twitter with, these conversations can be saved for future reference. There are even some third-party apps which you can use to send files up to 10MB to anyone you are following as long as they are using the same application, that is. Still, a handy feature to have and one which may become a feature of Twitter if there's a big enough demand for it.

Marketing With Twitter

Here in lies the great thing about Twitter from a business perspective: the marketing potential it offers users. Sure, it is great to send messages and chat using Twitter, but it can also be a great marketing tool if used correctly. Have some breaking news you want to get out quickly? Send it out as a Tweet. Made an important update to your blog or web site? Let people know about it instantly with a Tweet. Want to promote your project, book, movie, whatever by giving away a free download or preview? Send out a Tweet with a URL to the free download. Only want to market something to certain individuals you are following? Simply enter their username preceded by the "@" and you are set.

Another simple marketing tool available with Twitter is the ability to befriend people who are following someone you already follow. While this practice could backfire on you if you begin to add everyone you find following someone you are following, be picky and just befriend those who either share similar tastes that you do or work in the same field as you or already follow many of the same people you do. Otherwise, you could come off as a spammer which will be a hard image to shake.

Twitter Now And Beyond

Twitter represents a fundamental change in the way people communicate online. There have always been instant messengers and they have their place and purpose but they don't offer the one thing which sets Twitter apart and that is the ability to instantly communicate with either a couple of people or potentially thousands without the need for proprietary software. No need to download this piece of software in order to communicate with this person or that organization.

Much like how blogging has become a staple of today's society, Twitter and "twittering" is on the same path to becoming ingrained in today's culture despite only being around for less than two years. So simple in its execution, powerful in the marketing opportunities it offers, and ease of use, Twitter will be one of the top web technologies to gain worldwide prominence in 2008.

The Geek Entrepreneur is Wesley Craig Green, an entrepreneur who is a publisher, owner of an online classified ads network of sites, two web sites focusing on independent and digital comics and graphic novels. You can learn more about me at my Geek Entrepreneur blog which is dedicated to entrepreneurship, blogging, inspiration, technology, and small business.

Geek Entrepreneur: http://www.geekentrepreneur.net

GE Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeekEntrepreneu

7 Essential Marketing Rules For Twitter

Rule #1: Planning Matters

One of the best metaphors for Twitter is that it's a bar. Unlike Facebook where you know interact with 'friends', on Twitter you can engage with almost anyone. There are millions of simultaneous conversations happening on thousands of topics. It can be overwhelming. It can also be enlightening.

The open nature of Twitter is what makes it so compelling as a potential tool for business. However, businesses that think they can create an account and start marketing on Twitter (or: spewing sales pitches) are in for a rude awakening. Not only will that strategy fail, the Twitter community could turn on the company and create a public relations nightmare for the business.

Marketing isn't about pushing products. It's about understanding market needs, analyzing competition, identifying the positioning 'sweet spot', building awareness and credibility, developing and supporting a community of loyal customers and more. Twitter can be used for any or all of these marketing objectives. In fact, one of Twitter's unique strengths is its 'discovery' capabilities.

What do you want to accomplish? What are your goals and how will you know that you're successful or going the right direction? You can start Rule #2 before having these fully completed, but you need to have your Twitter objectives nailed down before you start tweeting.

Rule #2: Listen First

Remember how we said Twitter is like a bar? How would people react if you walked into a bar (or coffee shop or other public place for socializing) and you started shouting about whatever was on your mind? Best case they'd ignore you. More likely, you'd be thrown out - and maybe never allowed back.

The same applies on Twitter. Don't spam. Relevance is essential. The Twitter community is judge and jury. It can be difficult to recover from a bad reputation so it's best not to get one in the first place.

If you're just getting started on Twitter, be sure to listen (read) for a while before you start posting or replying. There's nothing wrong with being a voyeur. Even if you're already on Twitter, take a step back and just listen once in a while. Do it on a fairly regular basis. Twitter is evolving quickly.

So what are you 'listening' for?

- What are the hot topics, most popular links from tweets, or most popular users?

- What are the types of tweets that get re-tweeted most?

- What are the users in your industry or target audience tweeting about?

Rule #3: Find Your Voice

When you were listening in the previous rule, you certainly noticed many different styles of tweets. If you didn't, you should go back and listen harder.

While there is no right or wrong answer for what your Twitter style or voice should be, there are definitely considerations to make before you start tweeting. You need to make sure that your voice is appropriate for the objectives that you are trying to achieve and the image that you want to portray. You should document the characteristics of your chosen voice and why they are important - this is especially useful if you will have more than one person tweeting for your organization or if you plan to hire ghost writers.

So what are the characteristics that you need to consider? One way to think about the characteristics of your Twitter voice is to map out several vectors with different extremes on each end then decide where your ideal position would be on each vector. For example, do you want your Twitter stream to be fully automated or fully manual? Professional or casual? It's unlikely that you'll be at either extreme, but the vector will allow you to easily visualize your voice.

Rule #4: Look Alive

Creating an account on Twitter and leaving the default profile photo and background is a sure-fire way to show Twitter users that you're not serious about Twitter or the Twitter community as a whole. There is no excuse for not investing in the small effort that it takes to create a rich profile page and profile photo.

Have a designer create something that integrates well with the Twitter profile page. The Whole Foods and Zappos examples below should give you some ideas. Look at your competitors and do something better! If you don't have the skills in-house, there are plenty of freelance designers that can create something totally custom without spending much. Of course you'll want to complete the profile information and include a URL - consider a specific landing page on your website.

There are several couple schools of thought on profile photos. For businesses, more and more logos are showing up. In our opinion, logos are not in the right spirit. Twitter provides a unique way for businesses to deliver a human touch. Our recommendation is to use a good quality, properly formatted photo if you can. There are many articles on the topic. Do a quick search to get more information and suggestions.

Now you're ready to promote your presence on Twitter. Promote your Twitter user name on your website, in email signatures, direct mail pieces, business cards, etc. If you are tweeting regularly, consider displaying them on your website or blog. There are plenty of tools that make it easy.

Rule #5: Grow Your Flock

Several strategies exist to help grow your flock on Twitter. Some are a bit controversial. We'll save those for later. Hopefully we don't need to explain the benefits of having a lot of followers. The real question is, "Are you attracting the followers you need to get to your goals?"

Rule #4 covered the first step. Letting your existing customers and partners know how to find you on Twitter will get you some followers. The second strategy is to follow companies and individuals within your industry and/or region. Some will follow you in return. But there are other benefits.

Many tools look at the relationships between users (who's following whom) and make recommendations based on that information. As a result, following users with certain characteristics can actually help you attract followers. Genuine engagement (Rule #6) is also key to gain followers and builds off of the users you follow. Another totally acceptable way to gain followers is to follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things related to your business, see who she follows, and follow her.

Auto-following users based on them following you or using third-party tools (some listed below) is where you start to get into a gray area. Tools are already starting to show up that look at the ratio of followers to friends for ranking and other purposes. It's probably not a good idea to get your ratio completely out of whack. "Follow many but don't auto-follow everyone" is probably the best approach.

Rule #6: Engage Genuinely

Look before you leap when it comes to Twitter. You are embarking on a journey. It can't be viewed as a one-time event. You have to nurture and support your efforts. If your initial level of activity begins to wane, your followers will notice and will feel a sense of abandonment. Start with a comfortable, sustainable level of engagement. Engagement on Twitter is like the inverse of product pricing - it's easy to drop prices and easy to increase Twitter engagement, but doing the reverse is exponentially more difficult.

To get started, use search.twitter.com or another Twitter search method to see who is talking about you, your brand or a keyword related to your industry. Read up and then engage when you have something informative to say. If you are looking for your user name you can only see your replies in Twitter if someone starts a tweet with '@(your twitter name)' but sometimes people will put @yourname in the middle of their tweet. By searching "to:yourname" it will find any tweets that included your user name.

Using common sense combined with Rules 1-5, you should be in pretty good shape. The more time you spend on Twitter, the more efficient and effective you'll get. Below are some tips gathered from various Twitter users around the web on how to optimize your Twitter time and avoid potential Twitter landmines:

- Clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter and make you more efficient.

- Understand and use direct messages (DM) (private), replies (public) and re-tweets (RT) correctly.

- You don't have to read every tweet or reply to every DM, but don't ignore them all either.

- Use URL shortening tools like TinyURL, tr.im and others for cleaner tweets and more characters for you.

- Comment on others' tweets and re-tweet what others have posted to build your place in the community.

Rule #7: Track Your Results

Once you have everything in motion, you'll want to keep an eye on things to track your progress and to determine whether it makes sense to spend more (or less) time on Twitter. You can easily go overboard with measurements. Here are our recommendations on the 'must haves' and the 'nice to haves'.

In Rule #1 you set your Twitter objectives. What do you need to measure to make sure you're headed in the right direction? These are your key performance indicators or KPIs. Once you know what your KPIs are, you'll be able to figure out what tools you need.

For example, if your goal is to get visitors to your website and to sell a product, you'll want to know how many visitors are coming to the site from Twitter, how many of those visitors buy your product and how your conversion rate compares to visitors from other sources. Web analytics tools from Yahoo, Google and others (see Resources below) can get this information for you. Obviously this is simplified. You'll likely have multiple goals and more KPIs for each goal, but it's important to understand what metrics you really need and why they are important - what do they tell you and how can you use that information? You'll need to track your KPIs on a regular basis and use them to make adjustments to your strategy as needed.

Conclusion

Twitter is changing the way people communicate and search for information and it hasn't even scratched the surface in terms of its potential reach and influence.

Twitter can be used for fast, effective and inexpensive research, customer support, public relations, lead generation and more - but your efforts will almost certainly backfire if you don't follow the explicit and unspoken policies in this vibrant and rapidly growing community.

Whether you are self-employed, a small business owner, a multi-national corporation or a government agency - a high-tech company, a manufacturer or a coffee shop, Twitter provides huge opportunities and risks.

Tweamr provides the research and tools to help maximize the opportunities and minimize the risks. An expanded version of this article is available as a free download from Tweamr.com. The expanded version includes additional examples, links to tools and checklists for each rule that businesses can use to quickly and effectively implement a Twitter marketing strategy.

Aaron is a senior technology manager in the Silicon Valley and, in his free time, manages a blog on Twitter marketing, Tweamr.com.

Founded by two senior Silicon Valley technology marketing and engineering managers, Tweamr's mission is to help organizations of any size harness the massive potential of Twitter to achieve their goals through research and by delivering information and tools.

We recognized the disruptive impact that Twitter was having on communications and we know that it will become a standard component of marketing plans for companies of any size in every industry, globally.

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Online Business

Today it seems like so many newscasts (radio or TV) encourage their viewers or listeners to communicate with them through Twitter. The visibility for Twitter has grown worldwide. At the end of 2008, it was estimated by Forester Research that approximately 5 million users were on Twitter. Some estimate that number has grown by another million in just the last 3 months. You may be surprised to know that Barack Obama tweets. In fact, at the end of last year, Israel's ministry of foreign affairs conducted a worldwide press conference via Twitter where they took questions from the public about the war against Hamas in Gaza. Because twitter is so spontaneous, it provides users with a means to find out about the latest industry news in a particular niche or activity within minutes of the actual event/occurrence. The purpose of this article is to discuss this new social marketing phenomena and how it can be used to promote your online and offline businesses.

Twitter is a "microblogging" service that continues to grow in popularity. Twitter posts, known as "tweets" can only be a maximum of 140 characters. Updates or Tweets are shown on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive these tweets. Getting subscribers or followers on Twitter is a goal of many who use the service. People who subscribe to your tweets, will get your whole tweet at once, instead of having to go to your website. Companies like Apple, Intel, Cisco and even the White House are all on Twitter.

In theory, if you gain more followers on Twitter, then you should be able to drive more visitors to your website and generate exposure for your businesses. This is because, if done right, Twitter can be a mechanism to send information to these potential customers and marketing your website. However, Twitter involves engaging other users. If you want to gain and keep a large percentage of your followers, don't use spam tactics. One such tactic is to simply "blast" anyone and everyone on twitter with a notification that you are following them. Many people will simply follow those that send them notification that they are being followed. However, these people that "blindly" follow others, usually don't actively engage many people. Following are some proven tips on how to grow your network on Twitter and how to use this service to gain exposure for your online business.

First you need to consider Why would people want to follow me? What can I provide them with that's of value? Considering that there's literally millions of twitter users, you need to determine what sets me apart from them? Market your strengths.

1) Build your profile

If you read through numerous expert blogs on Twitter and how to grow your network, they all start with the same/strong recommendation to provide a strong profile. Consider your profile as a breathing organism that should be continually built up. Treat your profile like your website or blog's about me page. Try to update your account with content that appears like it's written by a human. This means, include interesting comments/observations. You'll need more than a sentence or two that describes who you are and what you do. Unless you're a celebrity, you'll need a detailed and clear profile. In one of the steps below, outside promotion is discussed. Directing traffic to your profile page is an excellent way to gain followers. In fact, this strategy of continually building up your profile and regularly driving visitors to this page on Twitter is one of the most effective means to gain followers.

Since you're directing people to your Twitter profile, you should ensure your Twitter account's background, avatar and overall design are consistent with your website. Although directing traffic to your profile page is a subject for another article, a few ways include: a) using Twitter as a customer service or support tool, b) include links to your profile page on your forum, blog and other social media posts.

A great way to attract people who may be interested in the content on your website, is to use the same keywords in your profile that you do on your website. A few examples include:

"I am interested in fitness and working out. I share weight loss tips on my website " or "I'm a professional guitar player who loves to teach music, check out 5 tips to playing guitar on my website" or "I'm a successful financial adviser who can help you reduce your debt, sign up for my free newsletter when you visit my website." These are all nice short bios that tell visitors about yourself. Note that we give them a reason to visit our website. It's also a good idea to include some useful tips on your profile. This way potential followers will more strongly consider you. Always include a hyperlink to your website (include the "http" to ensure that it's clickable)

2) Sync your website with your twitter account

This ensures new posts or articles appear as updates in your twitter account. If you're driving traffic to your twitter account, people will see your numerous posts. This helps generate long term traffic, provided your content is of interest to your visitors. Use a twitter tool called TwitterFeed, to automatically post your latest blog posts titles.

3) Post questions as tweets

Examples of questions can be seeking information or recommendations. The result may be that your network could direct you to other twitter users with whom you may converse and ultimately gain as followers. Also consider questions where you're seeking feedback on your website(s) or seeking a course of action for a given scenario. Your goal with questions is to generate a conversation and engages your Twitter followers with the responses from your followers.

4) Manually "pick" your followers.

A great way, but admittedly a bit time consuming, is to search Twitter using keywords of interest. You can simply type in any words or phrases and attempt to connect with others who share that particular interest. You will have to sift through the search results and look at various profiles along with their related Tweets. Next you can add people you think you can engage in conversation. This can be a very effective way to connect with people that would be interested in your website. This brings us back to point 1), develop a solid profile. If you build a profile with strategically placed keywords, people who are searching twitter, may land on your profile and follow you.

5) Retweet often (but not too much)

You want to optimize your exposure on twitter. In addition to the above tactics, you want to re-Tweet (sometimes called @ reply). The reason why you gain followers when people re-tweet you is that your username is exposed to people who haven't heard of you. When you do this choose the right keywords or phrases. Other Twitter users enjoy engaging and thought provoking conversations. If you tweet and re-tweet with your followers, others notice. Your keyword rich (but not overdone) tweets can get picked up in twitter searches.

6) Understand How Twitter Works

Twitter should not be another marketing tool to be over manipulated. Although some will try, Twitter should be considered as a social marketing tool useful to those who are a part of the community. Don't spam and don't over-actively promote yourself.

Your goal should be to build a network within the community by replying to other tweets (retweeting), sharing observations, news and even direct your followers to a blog post, filled with useful information, and only then use that post to get followers to take action. Trying to take people out of Twitter right away and into a sales pitch will get you labeled as a scammer.

7) Review your followers and revise your strategy if necessary

If you're using twitter to grow your online business, it's a good idea to track the number of your followers. If you are losing many more followers than you're gaining, review the content of your tweets to ensure it isn't offending or "turning away" your followers. Consider having an unbiased third party take a look at your tweets to provide you with feedback.

8) Other ways to gain a twitter audience

To build your network above and beyond your initial contact list, you'll need to look both inside and outside Twitter.

Outside of Twitter, placing a link to "Follow me on Twitter" in your email or forum signature, website, blog posts, and any other way that you communicate with people (where appropriate, of course)

Inside of Twitter, it's all about following people. You can find other users that you admire, and see who is following them; you can also see who is following your friends. In order to do this use Twitter directories to find members who have similar likes. You can do this by using the search feature to find profiles of people you want to follow - and follow all of them. In most cases, they will, in turn, follow you.

There are more great strategies to grow your online business with Twitter. In addition to Twitter, you can easily grow your business with numerous other Social Networking sites. One way to find out about these strategies and more is through a Portal Feeder membership which includes training and the most powerful set of tools, resources and support to get you started making money online in 30 days.

Dan Lyne has numerous highly visited blogs and websites. He frequently contributes to numerous online resources. Click on the link to find out how you can grow your online business and how Portal Feeder can help you start your most successful year ever.

Is Twitter Ready For Prime Time With Small Business?

Calgary based Small Business IT Professional Stuart Crawford thinks so, part of his marketing strategy for 2009 includes leveraging Twitter to reach new markets, inform clients and work in the community.

Twitter is all the rage with those active in the online world. Sending out tweet after tweet, updating their twitter followers regularly on their status, where they are at, what they are doing, where they are going and who they are meeting. The big question that many marketing professionals are asking today is. Can Twitter will be effective as a prime time tool in mainstream marketing.

Twitter has an active role for all small business firms and must be part of their overall marketing strategy. Business has already started to pull away from traditional Yellow Page type advertising and other forms of traditional marketing for their business in return for a more direct and active online marketing campaign. Twitter is playing an active role in the online strategies for many business owners.

Are you still confused about Twitter? Twitter is a very easy to use online service which broadcasts your messages, status updates, web links and other forms of quick and snappy messages to those faithful followers. Twitter is a wonderful example of permission based marketing because those that wish to follow you simply do. Permission based marketing is now the de facto standard, replacing email marketing as spam rules begin to restrict what can and cannot be send by way of email.

If you can't figure it out for yourself there are many consulting and marketing agencies now offering Twitter services to their clients. "We encourage each of them (clients) to have Facebook and Twitter sites and we act as administrators to send "chest pounding" messages about the services/products they provide." states Pauline Harris from SPIN in Baltimore, MD. Her agency acts provides consulting services for business who simply need a firm to keep on top of Twitter.

Twitter broadcasts out a short 140 character message to your followers whenever you have something to say, announce or share. The wonderful thing about Twitter and a long time secret to those Internet Marketing experts who figured this out early, is Twitter is simply a conduit to other great services. Twitter can be used to pull information for your corporate, association or personal blogs, you can use your Smartphone to send Tweets (Tweets are what Twitter users call their messages) or you can type your tweet directly into Twitters online page.

Twitter then will send your message out to your followers and using services built into social networking applications, your message can also be sent out to their services. Twitter is a robust tool to reach thousands of people each day for the cost of your time to develop the content.

Are you still confused about the business benefits to Twitter? You need to look outside of the main Twitter application to see the real value and you also need to deflect the "get rich" type advertising that promises that you will build your followers to several thousand overnight. Many business owners are steering away from the spray and pray approach, electing to hand pick who they follow and in return who follows them.

Effective use of this powerful social networking tool takes careful planning and consideration before true mastery of this marketing tool occurs. Many business owners and entrepreneurs simply stop at the main Twitter website, see a tremendous amount of noise and dismiss it. Twitter is more than an online teleprompter for newsfeeds of those that you follow. If that is how you look at it, then Twitter may not be a tool for your business.

Here are three great tools that you need to have in your Twitter arsenal:

Twitterfeed - Twitterfeed.com is an online solution that provides a mechanism to take your blog posts or any other RSS service and broadcast it out to your Twitter followers and social networking websites including Facebook. If your business has a blog, writes articles or submits news stories to online services, then you must have this solution running to promote the work you are already doing to a bigger audience.

Tweetlater - This nifty application is a handy service for the busy business owner or entrepreneur. With Tweetlater you can leverage this online web solution to schedule your tweets. Simply do up a series of tweets and then have Tweetlater send them out. Tweetlater also allows you to set up policies that allow you to automatically follow those that follow you. It is a karma thing and karma goes a long way in the Twitter world.

TweetBeep - Don't have time to watch Twitter all day or how keeping on top of the people that you follow. With TweetBeep you now can monitor Twitter for keywords and when an item of interest is tweeted it appears in your Inbox. This service even works with shortened URLs. Watch your domain names. Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. Stay on top of industry trends and so much more.

There are many great online applications available to enhance your Twitter experience, find the one that meets your business needs. Twitter can become very noisy and you will need to find tools that will provide a filter to limit the noise and bring the messages that you want to the foreground.

Twitter when leveraged correctly can bring amazing new business results, connect you with the industry leaders and provide a conduit to share your experiences. Dawn Meade of Advanced Video Systems says "I sought out fellow Twitterers in my field by searching for AV and similar terms, followed several and discovered one to be a staff writer on two industry magazines. Through our Twitter 'friendship' I ended up being interviewed for an article and a sidebar feature on my company!"

Before you dismiss Twitter as just another social online service with no relevance to the business community, do your homework. Twitter can work to help promote your small business to the world or simply your local community. You could learn from the industry leaders.

Relationships are still important in business, either virtual or in person. Take that first step to develop deep and meaningful relationships with others in the business world and allow you to share your insight with the global community.

Stuart Crawford invests much of his time working for small businesses in Calgary and Red Deer, AB. His passion is to ensure that small business wins in their market with the right technology solution to meet their business goals. Stuart has been awarded the Top 40 under 40 (2007) in Calgary, is a recognized Business Leader of Tomorrow (Business in Calgary). His current role is the Vice President of Business Development with Bulletproof InfoTech. Bulletproof provides managed computer and network services to businesses in Alberta. Stuart's can be contacted through his blog at [http://blog.itsuccessmentor.com] or at 403.206.2233.

How to Gain More Twitter Followers and Keep Them

Introduction

Whenever I mention to people that Twitter is a great place to meet interesting people and to also meet potential leads and customers, they often agree with me about meeting interesting people, but think I'm kidding about meeting potential leads and customers. That is, until I explain to them what I do to meet customers on Twitter.

First of all, if you haven't done so already, you'll want to grab up your name on Twitter as well as your company's name (if you run a business). You can visit Twitter.com to create them both. In the end, you'll end up with something like twitter.com/accountnameyoupick and twitter.com/companynameyoupick.

How Twitter Works

In case you're new to Twitter or to the concept, let me explain how it works. First, you create an account, which let's you follow around other people that have accounts on Twitter. by simply browsing through the database, or going to Twitter.com/search, you can quickly find other people that have similar interest to you in any country on the face of this world. You can click on the FOLLOW button of any person you wish to follow. At that point, anytime they send a message to Twitter, the message appears in your home page (after you've logged in). You can also view anyone's page publicly without logging in yourself. You can also see the messages that pour in to that account from those that are being followed by this person. So, essentially, you could be witnessing strands of conversations going on via one person's account.

If you decide to view your own home page, you might only be seeing one side of the conversation, unless you travel over to the followee's page and view the whole conversation, since you'll be able to see the messages from those that the person is also following. You can also decide to follow the other people on the followee's page, so that you are able to view the entire conversation on your own home page in Twitter.

Twitter As A Networking Tool

In case, you are already lost, I'm about to enlighten you with an example. Twitter is like a social gathering room that continuously goes on forever. The doors never close, and the lights never go off. If you have ever attended a business card exchange, or a leads group meeting, those types of events take place on a particular date, at a particular time, and usually only last 1 or 2 hours at most.

With Twitter, the social gathering (whether conversing socially or about business) can go on forever with no time limits. Now imagine, that you've walked into the room. There are already tons of conversations going on. The key is to find a few that you can participate in, thereby making some small talk. In a real-life scenario, you'd do the same. You'd walk up to a few people, see what they're talking about, and tap into the conversations that you know something about. Eventually, the conversation may take a path towards what you do or sell, and you might have the opportunity to make a lead or a sale right there and then.

Twitter offers these same opportunities, except, as I said, the room never closes, and the lights never go out. Most of the time, most Twitter users post their messages (or as we like to call them, "tweets") using their computer. They log into their account and enter a post at the top input box and click update to send their message to not only their own home page, but to all of the followers, that are presently following them.

However, as a Twitter user, you are not limited to just using your computer to post tweets. You can elect to use your cell phone as well, by simply texting your message using SMS. I've setup a contact on my phone called Twitter that contains the number for me to send tweets. Thus, I can be standing in line at the supermarket, and still post things that come to mind while I'm standing there.

Finding People To Connect With On Twitter

The next question I'm often asked about Twitter, is how do you find people to follow? As I already said, you can perform a search at search.twitter.com or you can have another tool that I use to bring them to you.

That tool is actually a website named tweetlater.com. TweetLater has tons of features to help you with Twitter and becoming more social on it (too many to mention in one article, but in due time, I'll go over many of its features and talk about how I use them).

In this article, I want to concentrate on Keyword Tracking. You can read more about it at: tweetlater.com/alerts.

Essentially, it acts as your Twitter conversation locator and reports back as often as you tell it to. You tell it what keywords you're interested in, and it goes out and finds conversations currently discussing those keywords. Then, periodically, it sends you a digest of those conversations, along with direct links to the actual users currently discussing it. That's your opportunity to chime in and present yourself:

"Hi @mrtwitteruser, I noticed that you were asking for others to provide you with suggestions for the best hosting on the Internet...that's what we do best and I'd love for you to take a look at our website or perhaps allow me to call you with some information..."

So, now you see how you can gain leads from Twitter, and perhaps even turn them into followers. Remember, most of the time, if you follow someone, they will follow you back. Some even have their account on auto, which allows them to automatically follow you back. I'll discuss how to do that using auto-replies and all in a future article. But how do you keep them following you around?

Keep Your Followers Coming Back For More

The answer to this question is that you must continue to provide them with interesting things to discuss. They have to see that you always have interesting things to talk about. But how do you know what is interesting to them? How do you know that others will find anything that you have to say interesting? Truth is that it takes practice to become witty and funny and sociable on Twitter. Often though, if you want to use your account for business purposes and want to be seen as a professional in every aspect of your life, you have to watch what you say...especially online, where every word you say is sometimes taken literally, can get you into trouble, and is as good as writing it in stone.

I personally like to play it safe and keep my funny comments and wittiness to a minimum. However, I did promise you that I would provide you with something that you could always depend on to provide your followers with interesting things that would make them continue following you, so here it is. The answer lies in Digg.com. But before I show you how, let me back up a bit and explain why this works.

If you remember, I mentioned that you want to find people that discuss things that are interesting to you. This means that things that interest you, also interest them. Let's take an example. If you like to discuss politics, there are tons of other people on Twitter that discuss politics. In politics, there are things always happening, being discussed, being written about, and from all kinds of different perspectives. You don't always have to agree with what others are saying, but there's nothing to stop you from opening up things for discussion.

Digg.com is the perfect place to find out just about anything that is currently being discussed by others in the field of politics and to gain insight. Enough insight that you can share various articles with others that are presently following you. And since you followed them for the same reasons or interests, chances are that they are probably following you right back. Therefore, when you break a story to them about your shared interests, they'll appreciate it and in turn, continue to follow you and maybe even turn on other followers to you. It's like a chain reaction.

Making It Easy To Be Interesting

So, you're probably thinking, "darn, are you telling me that I should keep going back to Digg every few minutes to find out what story is breaking news in my area of interest?" The answer is NO...thankfully, Digg.com offers a tool that can be added to your browser, which brings the front page breaking news to you. As you may or may not know, the way Digg works is that someone, somewhere in the world, notices an interesting blog, news item, post of some kind, video, or photo. They then post the item on Digg by logging into their account, and posting it on Digg, along with a headline, a topic category, and description.

As other Digg users notice the post, or post it themselves, the post gains popularity. The more popular the post becomes, the more closer it gets to the home page of Digg. When it finally hits the home page, the browser add-on receives the alert and shows you an 5 second popup window that shows the headliner (for those categories that you have subscribed to). Thus, Digg brings the popular headlines to you, based on your interests, which by the way, happen to be the same items of interest as those that are following you around on Twitter. Now, you have something to talk about.

Tweet Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

Only one thing remains, how do you quickly add that story to Twitter so that you can keep working on whatever it was you were working on before you saw the headline? I use another tool called TwitThat, which is located at http://twitthat.com. This tool adds a shortcut to your browser so that you can quickly click on it, it popups with predefined text that allows you to tweet many different common messages, along with your link (already compressed using tinyurl, which is another web tool that shrinks long URLs down to manageable sizes that will fit into Twitter's maximum length).

If you do decide to get yourself a Twitter account, come on over to our business page on FaceBook (link is shown below) and add your Twitter ID to our Twitter discussion on that page. All of our fans will follow you around as well, giving you more followers. And while you're there, don't forget to become a fan of our business page.

Ken Ramirez is the founder of Axsys Technology Group, a website hosting, website design, and e-marketing company. Ken often lectures about social media marketing, hosting, website design, and many related technologies. Ken can be reached at ken (dot) ramirez (at) axsystechgroup (dot) com.

Thanks for reading our article and we hope you are following us on Twitter. Look for AxsysTechGroup.

You can also find us on FaceBook by clicking on our FaceBook badge on our website.

And of course, don't forget to read our blog (filled with informative information about growing your website presence online). You can find all of these items at http://www.axsystechgroup.com.

To Twitter Or Not to Twitter - Should I? How Do I Get Started on Twitter?

Recently I have been asked by a lot of friends, customers and colleagues if I Twitter .

Yep!!! I do.

At first I was slow to start and it took me a while to figure out what the big deal was, but every day I am finding new reasons to Twitter. In fact it has become my most productive social media form.

Need some money?

Twitter about a new product you like. (Make sure you're an affiliate first.)

Want to grow a list?

Make lots of Tweets that have value and invoke interest. This is important , do not market constantly on Twitter . That list will wither up and die. You need to listen to Tweets and respond to them. Become friends with those who touch you in some way, because beautiful relationships can be formed this way. When people know and trust you, they will follow you and do what you do. Treat your Peeps like they are your family, with love and respect.

I want to share the way I Twitter with my readers, so here is my step-by-step method and checklist to quickly help you be successful on twitter. Whether you are new to Twitter , or you've been around awhile, this stuff is important.

What is twitter?

Twitter can be a fun way to keep in touch with your family and friends or to find new friends and business associates. So twitter is kind of like a personal blog, only with shorter and more frequent posts. It's a "microblog," a social communication tool you can access and use on the web. It can also integrate with text messages on your favorite mobile phone.

When I see someone new following me, I want to know more about them, so I check out their Twitter profile, I read their bio, and check out their website. Sometimes I get a follower that is new to twitter and who doesn't know how to set up their profile information, and that's the reason for this article. Some of these people are following lots of other folks, but not many follow them back.

One problem is that Twitter's instructions for setting up a new account is missing something important, setting up your profile information. This needs to be done before following anyone, before you make your first Tweet. Your profile needs to include your photo, bio and your website.

I usually advise people to use their real name and photo. (I've been using Carolz_place a long time, so decided to keep it, as lots of people know me on Social Sites that way.) To make your name more readable, capitalize your username, as in CarolHansen. (If you already have a twitter account, you can fix the capitalization in your account settings. As long as you only change the capitalization and don't add or delete characters, you won't hurt anything.) If your twitter ID is your company name or product name, you might even want to use that.

Here is the checklist you need to follow.

Even if you have a Twitter account, double check each step to make sure you've done it completely, as they are all important.

Step 1. Create an account at Twitter using these guidelines.

* On the signup page, capitalize your first and last name, as in CarolHansen.

* Skip the next invitation page, which is... are your friends on Twitter? You can do this later in step 4.

* Skip the next page, the home page. You can update your status in step 3.

Step 2. Set up your information for people to see.

* Click on the Settings link at the top of your twitter page.

* Fix the first text field (Name) so it is First name, space, Last name (with capitals).

* Set your time zone, your URL, your bio, and location. (Make sure your bio is interesting and attracts lots of attention.)

* Click on the Devices tab if you want updates to come to your mobile phone. Enter your phone number. (You can do this later if you want.)

* Click on the Picture tab, and upload your photo. (If you have one saved on your computer, click browse to find it.)

* Click on the Design tab, and select a theme you like. (You can change this anytime, and we might learn how to do that in another post.)

Step 3. Create your first status update.

* Click on the Home link at the top of the twitter page. It asks, "What are you doing? "

* Update your status so your future followers will know you are real. You can type anything; perhaps "Just signed up for twitter. I'm setting up my account."

* Enter one or more updates.

Step 4. Find your friends and new people to follow.

* Click on the Find People link at the top of the Twitter page.

* Then click on each of the tabs to find your friends and family by their name or email address, your address book, etc.

* Another tool for finding people you know or want to follow is at Search.Twitter.com. Try typing their name or nickname, their website, or something you know them by.

* Now go looking for other interesting people. Read their profiles and check out their website before deciding to follow them. Then click follow, and send them a tweet that lets them know who you are or why you're following them. Look for some who are "gurus" in the area you're interested in. You'll learn a lot from them.

Step 5. Start engaging followers in meaningful conversation.

* Ask for advice. Ask questions. Ask how and what they're doing.

* Offer tips and advice when you see someone asking for it.

* Be open in your conversation. Go with the flow. Don't agree with everyone, dare to be different, be a leader.

* Talk with people, not at them.

OK, now your Twitter profile should be up and running and people will be able to get to know you quickly. Have fun with Twitter! And don't forget to follow me on Twitter, cause I'll follow you back. Please let me know if this information helped you by leaving a comment. Be sure to include your Twitter @UserName. Thanks for stopping by.

To learn more about how to create traffic with Twitter, Social Marketing and Affilliates, you can check out Carol at http://FromMyKitchenTable.com

You'll learn all about Marketing Tips That Work, Social Marketing - Traffic Generation - List Building - Affiliate Marketing - Product Creation.

From Carol Hansen - From My Kitchen Table - Bizness Wizard.

7 Simple Rules to Success on Twitter

Unless you've been living under a rock, you have probably heard of Twitter. It is a rocking hot social networking site that seems to be to be used by almost everyone today. It's on the news, on the radio and on the minds of thousands of people everywhere, every single day.

There are many different types of people on Twitter. But, most of these people are on Twitter for a single reason. They want people to know about them. They want to connect with people. Lots of people.

Did you know that there are Twitter Rules for marketing and business success in what you do. I am a marketer and have been for many years. In the last few years my business has been expanding by leaps and bounds, because of social media and the internet. But, there are rules that all marketers must follow if they are going to have success in the marketplace, especially online.

Here are the 7 Simple Rules to Success on Twitter:

1) The Rule of Visibility on Twitter.

You absolutely MUST be visible on Twitter if you are going to get your message out to the masses. You must spend time on Twitter and get to know people. You must put yourself together a "Twitter Blueprint" and then work that bluprint every day. How many hours a day are you going to be seen on Twitter? How many people are you going to follow this week? How many times are you going to Tweet this week? How many direct replies will you make? All of these things make you "visible" on Twitter. Be seen and be heard. Be there on a daily basis.

2) The Rule of a Powerful Twitter Profile.

Why would people want to get to know you on Twitter? One of the first things they will check out is your Twitter profile. What does it say, or better yet, what does it do? Does it make people curious and want to get to know you? Does it make them smile? Does it make them think? Does it make them see that you have value for their life and perhaps can help change it?

Powerful Twitter profiles are NOT based on what is said in your profile, but on what your profile DOES. Does it direct them to DO something? Does it tell them you are a person they really need to get to know? Put yourself OUT THERE and tell the world why they need you as a friend, and get them to take some action towards YOU.

3) The Rule of Twittering.

You MUST use Twitter to market or to share your message. Many people regard Twitter as a communication utility much like an email. It is not! Twitter is a method for you to build - MESSAGE BY MESSAGE - FOLLOW BY FOLLOW - PHOTO BY PHOTO - VIDEO BY VIDEO - your brand on Twitter. Every time something happens with you, Twitter about it. Don't just look at Twitter, get your messages out there and be seen. Answer the messages on Twitter. Thank people for sharing their Tweet with you. This will show up on their Twitter and even more people will see you. This will set you apart from most people on Twitter. Twitter is basically a billboard of what you and your friends are doing on Twitter. So use it often and use it wisely. Don't forget that everyone is watching what you say.

4) The Rule of Twitter Networking.

You are part of a Twitter and you have access to that huge network of people to become their friend and business partner. You can live anywhere and have access to this huge audience. There are literally thousands of people on Twitter that you could potentially meet and then get to know and connect with. You can find local Twitterers as well. You will find that Twitter is a gold mine of people to connect with and build trust with. This may lead to business down the road. So go Twitter now!

5) The Rule of Twitter Direct Messages.

This can be an overlooked and rarely talked about Twitter tool. Direct messages are part of your "Twitter System." Go to Direct Messages in your sidebar. This is a list of people who are thinking about you, talking about you, including you and connecting with you. This is a goldmine of people that have proven that they are behind you and willing to make you a part of their Twitter experience. Pay attention to your Twitter messages. Thank them for their thoughts and let them know you appreciate it. Reply back to them whenever possible. The Direct Messages are gold and can be a prospecting Vault of valuable leads. Make sure you stay connected to them.

6) The Rule of Twitter Pictures and Videos.

Sharing photos and videos on Twitter is HOT. People love photos and videos. The Tweets with photos and videos are the most looked at and watched Tweets on Twitter. Make some videos and upload them. Upload some photographs. Not only will they be seen, but they will also be Re-Tweeted many times. This means that you can pick out Tweets you like and share them with others. Now isn't that cool? It is called exposure! It allows you to post a photo or video that you like and then it sends it out for all of Twitter to see. It shares the image that you want and allows everyone to see a glimse into your personal life. It helps people see you as a real person and not just a website, so share some of your personal life on Twitter. Find interesting photos and videos of others and send them out as well. People love to look at pictures and watch videos. Use this to your advantage.It will build exposure for you.

7) The Rule of Twitter Search.

When you do a Twitter search, it is going to bring you a list of people who have a lot in common with you. Just go to search.Twitter.com and type in what you are searching for. You'll find a lot of other Twitterers who are Tweeting about what interests you. You can build a list in your own area of expertise and then you can send Twitter direct messages to them. Make sure they are messages of value and interest. Show them that you are an expert in this field. This gives you huge exposure. Whatever you do, like posting a message, uploading a video or photo, writing and publishing an article, or just commenting on another person's message on the Twitter, it will show up on Twitter. Be seen, and be seen often if you are trying to brand yourself on Twitter.

You need to establish relationships and build a community to market to. But, if you are going to market on Twitter, then you need to at least get a blueprint of how and when to do it. The 7 Rules of Twitter hopefully gave you some ideas in your social media marketing. Please let me know what you think and what ideas you have.

To learn more about how to create traffic with Twitter, Social Marketing and Affiliates, you can check out Carol at http://FromMyKitchenTable.com

You'll learn all about Marketing Tips That Work, Social Marketing - Traffic Generation - List Building - Affiliate Marketing - Product Creation.

From Carol Hansen - From My Kitchen Table - Bizness Wizard.

How Twitter is Destroying Your Mind

It's called parsing. It means that you cannot think of anyone or anything over 140 characters long. Each letter, number, punctuation point and space counts as a character. Twitter rules as well as destroys.

As you probably have heard around the coffee shop, Twitter is now being blamed for causing America to go mindless. Buy hey, come on, how can Twitter be responsible for the pre-Twitter status quo?

Blame is easy because Twitter is a newbie on the street corner of interactive Web 2.0 sites. One simply logs onto Twitter and it's free expression as long as it's 140 characters or less.

Now realistically it is not fair, though admittedly very convenient, to blame America's total lack of attention and focus on Twitter. It's not Twitter's fault this is an election year.

Twitter is simply software that just sits there until one enters their 140 characters or less, regardless of who is running for President.

But it's all worth it in the end because the Twitter community has a steady stream of new members; many of whom just might become your Followers. Followers are a type of fan and you are the Followed. So to speak or rather twitter.

The truth is, like many Web 2.0 unwritten "givens" if one Follows you, you should respectfully Follow them back.

Whether you actually do Follow or not is not really the point, it's Web 2.0 courtesy to respond in kind. Be nice or leave.

Of course one should morally Follow back out of courtesy so that more folks don't jump off the Golden Gate Bridge; imagine the trauma of Twitter rejection.

But just because one Follows, doesn't actually mean one follows, in Twitter terms of course.

There's no getting around it. How truly embarrassing when one goes back over the archives!

Some poor soul thinks they are carrying on some sort of dialogue with you and it's clear you are taking off wherever you wish totally ignoring them and everything else: my gosh, what must they all be thinking? Or rather, twittering?

Are they somehow subliminally twittering with me? One eventually starts to wonder: what is really going down here?

But whatever you do, don't lose control because you committed a downright ugly Twitter indiscretion. You know, something you are afraid might pop up on you-know-who's Google search.

But if you do sin, one of the Twitter strategies for covering up your indiscretion is simply moving on. Or in other words, bury it in the archives.

Twittering away with goofy and silly nonsense does wonders for burying the Twitter where you called your boss an infected scab. And worse.

But no worries, in the end Twitter is all so stylishly superficial anyway. If there is any Twitter style that has emerged, it is the cutesy superficial style.

That is probably because every California valley girl twitters night and day but of course that's how they talk as well as Twitter.

If you like Search, Twitter has a good search function but with billions of Twitters it's like getting 10,000 hits on a search.

And since so many Twitters are twatter, it's sort of like 'what's the point?' One can only assume some sort of alternative self therapy involved with these Twitter search freaks...

Which seems strange since the original idea was for your friends to know what you are thinking and doing every minute of the day.

It seems even stranger if you are married, but remember you too were once young and for some reason were once interested in those sorts of things.

Besides, how important can your thoughts while doing laundry really be?

The answer is not really important at all and that best describes the real strength of Twitter; it's artificial and not very important at all.

It's contrived except for those that already think in Twitter. So for those folks relatively speaking, they are twittering but really not in Twitter terms of course.

If it sounds too complex it's really not. Twittering requires only superficial usage of scattered parts of the brain and very quickly you will notice numerous Twitterers that do not express any sort of thought whatsoever.

They have a hope that someday a miracle will happen.

It's sort of like "hi, I'm here trying to think, not much yet in terms of results but will keep on trying and keep you posted or rather twittered should I actually think something."

That's because recent research showed some 87% of we Twitterers have less than a two second attention span.

Call it parsing or call it scatterbrained but the reality is a society hooked on Twitter and Sudoku is a society with way too much free time on its hands. And that spells big trouble.

But on the upside, even though we really aren't important, we can impress other unimportant people that we are in fact important because we Twitter.

In global terms, we should be thankful. Twitter is showing us a very important and revealing aspect of our humanity: a mind is not necessary for self expression. Or, as we say out here in California, "No es necessario!"

So go ahead, feel free to exercise your mindless self expression. Go ahead, Twitter me, I dare ya!

Jack Deal twitters under the avatar jackddeal as well as own JD Deal Local Search Marketing, Salinas and Santa Cruz, California 831-457-8806. Related articles, twitters, quotes, ideas, strategies, tactics and tips can be found at [http://www.jddeal.com/blog/humor]

How to Increase Your Twitter Followers?

What's the big idea about having Twitter followers?? This is a question I asked myself for quite some time. What purpose does a big list of Twitter followers serve? How do you increase the number of your followers?

All these are questions asked by users as well as business owners who would like to use Twitter as a professional marketing platform.

We all want to increase our Twitter followers of course. We all want people to read our updates. As a matter of fact, it's not difficult to build an outstanding profile; however, what you need is to understand how to do all this. What matters the most is not how you tweet or what you say on your updates, but what is important is who you actually are and how you use Twitter.

There are so many articles out there on how to grow your Twitter followers. Many of them teach you how to provide value in your tweets so that you can increase your followers.

My idea is: you don't need a million followers to promote your business online. Why? Because if you look at the list of Twitter users with the most followers you will that almost everyone on that list is a celebrity. Those people did not build their lists from scratch on Twitter! No way! These celebrities have been building their audience for years before Twitter became popular! So when they go onto Twitter, they automatically built a long list of followers because they were already famous!

Now, you may be wondering: why shouldn't I try to get millions of followers like those celebrities?

I am not saying you shouldn't get millions. What I am trying to say here is what you need are quality followers. In other words: you don't need every Tom, Dick and Harry to follow you on Twitter; you need people who are in your niche, people who are interested in the product or service you are offering. Does it make sense now?

This does not mean that can't build a targeted Twitter list unless you are rich and famous. No. As I mentioned earlier, it is not about what you tweet, but it's about how you use Twitter. So it's about quality.

In my opinion, there is no right or wrong way to use Twitter. But here are a few examples of things I use myself and that might help you get more followers:

Treat your Twitter profile as if it were your website or blog:

What's the use of having a blog or a website if nobody is visiting them? That is why we strive day and night to drive traffic to our websites and blogs, right?

Well, what would you think if I told you that you should treat your Twitter profile as if it were your website or blog? In other words, you should attract traffic to your Twitter profile just the exact same way you would do for your website or blog. So the more traffic you drive to your Twitter profile, the more followers you will have.

But again, as I mentioned before: QUALITY! So the more targeted, the better it is for you!

This sounds like everyone knows it. However, many people unfortunately overlook this very important detail. Instead, they concentrate on less important things like the frequency of Twitter usage.

But as I mentioned earlier, it is HOW you use Twitter. So the key is sending traffic to your profile.

When fishing, when you want to catch as many fish as possible, you use a large net and spread it as far as you can, right? Likewise, when you want to build your Twitter profile you should keep working on sending visitors to your profile.

With that in mind, you want to offer some sort of incentive. Why would someone visit your blog or website? They are looking for freebies. Why would someone follow you on Twitter? What's in it for your visitors? Apart from your friends and relatives, if someone wants to follow you on Twitter, they will most definitely expect some kind of incentive in return. So just the same way you offer free giveaways on your blog and website, you should think of doing the same thing on your Twitter! It could be anything: a free report, a case study, a list of tips, anything really. As long as your visitor/ follower will benefit from it in some way.

Now the fun part: how would you attract traffic to your Twitter profile?

I will give you a few pointers that have been working for me:

- Make a cool nice looking banner ad (or have it made) and post it on your blog, website, forums etc. to attract visitors to your profile.

- Include links to your Twitter profile from your blogs and forum threads.

- Always include your Twitter profile link in your forum signatures.

- If possible, have your blog show your Twitter updates on the side of the page. Some blogs allow that like blogspot.com (Google)

- Learn to pitch Twitter influences with articles relevant to your visitors' interests.

- Once you build up a relationship with your followers, ask them to recommend your profile to their friends and other users and offer to do the same for them.

There is another way to increase your Twitter followers which is simply to follow other users on Twitter. But you must be very careful with this as you might get reported as a spammer.

Let's discuss this method in detail:

This method has worked for many people when Twitter was "the new thing". Nowadays, people are more aware of spammers and many tools; such as Twitter Blacklist have been developed to help Twitter users chase spammers away.

Most Twitter users don't appreciate it when you simply follow them for the purpose of broadcasting your updates without building a relationship with them.

My advice to you: if you want to build a large list of Twitter followers, start by creating a presence online. Give advice, offer free giveaways, tips, tutorials, etc. Be active on your blog. Be consistent about giving new and updated information. Share your knowledge online. Then people will start following you without you asking them. Because by that time, you have already built up credibility online; therefore, people will start subscribing to your blog and follow you on Twitter because you offer value and because they know you're the real deal.

I hope this article has helped you figure a few pointers about Twitter. If you wish to know more about attracting more Twitter followers, simply fill in your details in the form below and I will be sending you a free report.

To learn more about how to make your mark on Twitter: go to: http://www.web20traffic4you.com/twitteroptin.htm

To Learn more about list building: go to: http://www.web20traffic4you.com

Using Twitter to Build Brand Equity

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chairman of Twitter, Inc., said that the definition of Twitter was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds," which was exactly what Twitter was. But instead of just chirping, the micro-blogging social network service has become one of the biggest buzzes in 2009, capturing countless media headlines and stirring up conversations worldwide.

Apart from Twitter, the economy is also a main topic this year. While companies find their customers are spending much less money during the economic downturn, they turn to Twitter to help build their brands, promote their products or services, and keep in touch with both loyal and potential customers.

So how do companies use Twitter to build their brands? To answer that, let us first learn some facts about Twitter.

Twitter, founded in 2006, is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as "tweets". Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers, known as "followers". The three-year-old Twitter, whose popularity is still proliferating as we speak, is already the third most popular social networking site in the world behind Facebook and Myspace.

Twitter is different from other social networking services because users do not need to send requests and get approved before they can follow others. A simple click is enough for a Twitterer to follow or unfollow any other Twitter users, who may be a celebrity, a politician, a company or an individual. Not only can users send private Direct Messages (DM) to a follower, they can also send public replies to whomever they want in the Twitter-verse. Because Twitter is text-based in nature, users must post pictures or videos through URL links, which enables Twitter's interface to stay simple and clean. Even though Twitter does not and will not put any advertisement on its website, it is still a free service, which means businesses do not need to pay a dime to promote themselves and communicate with tens of millions of potential customers.

Labbrand believes that brand equity includes brand strength and brand stature. While brand strength is determined by brand differentiation and brand relevance, brand stature is determined by brand esteem and brand knowledge. Twitter can help a brand build up these four pillars of brand equity through different dimensions of interaction between a brand and its stakeholders. We will address four examples to illustrate the point. While the brands cited in the rest of this article may satisfy all four criteria, we will only use one brand example to highlight each measure.

Differentiation under the Communication and Design Dimension

Businesses strive to make their brands unique. Differentiation is strongly associated with a brand's communication and design. Given the proximity that Twitter provides, twittering is undoubtedly a highly unique way for companies to communicate with customers. However, this advantage may not last for long due to Twitter's fast growth, because when the majority of brands have their own Twitter pages the fact that a brand has a Twitter page will no longer be unique. At least for the time being, however, Twitter can contribute to brand differentiation. JetBlue Airways, an American low-cost airline, has differentiated its brand through Twitter communication. Since problems with flights can cause a lot of headaches, JetBlue has set up a service where customers can complain about flight problems directly to airline staff via Twitter. It is no wonder JetBlue has already attracted more than 1.1 million followers since the launch of its Twitter page in the spring of 2007. Today its account is often cited as an example of smart corporate twittering. Using Twitter to create an efficient customer service communication platform will contribute to JetBlue's differentiation and overall brand equity.

Relevance under the Market and Consumers Dimension

Brand relevance is a measure of appropriateness and relates to a brand's appeal. Relevance both drives and reflects consumer choice. Relevance basically answers the question of why consumers choose to buy a particular product. It can be called the cornerstone of a brand. For companies new and old, including small businesses, how to make their brand relevant is often difficult in a highly competitive market with diverse and demanding consumer groups. Yet, Twitter can give a brand the chance to build relevance and even loyalty among today's consumers.

Teusner Wines, a boutique winery in Australia's Barossa Valley, has only three employees, but its Twitter account (@Teusnerwine) has nearly 6,000 followers. Dave Brookes, Teusner Wines' one-man sales and marketing department, believes that using Twitter is more about building relationships with existing and potential customers than selling products. Brookes sends friendly messages to those who are talking about Teusner Wines on Twitter. After keeping casual, relaxed exchanges with followers and avoiding product promotions, Brooke saw more people coming to the winery for tours and an increase in traffic to its website. Even though shipping restrictions prevent Teusner Wines from selling directly to individuals outside Australia, a number of people from United States and Canada have asked where they can find Teusner Wines at stores and restaurants near them, demonstrating that these potential consumers find the brand highly relevant. Moreover, Twitter users might like a brand and consider it relevant simply because it uses Twitter.

Esteem under the Products and Services Dimension

Differentiation and relevance are still not enough to build a successful brand. Eventually, customers need to decide whether or not they will purchase the product or service, and how much they like the brand. Since Twitter as well as other social media are strongly interactive, they are always linked to the esteem dimension of a brand. American Apparel (@americanapparel) has more than 40,000 Twitter followers. One of the United States's largest clothing manufacturer's unique ad campaigns was inspired by one of its own Twitter followers. American Apparel received a DM from a freelance photographer (Ryan Marshal @ThePanicRoom) chronicling his wife's pregnancy with week-by-week photos of the mother-to-be in American Apparel clothing. The company liked the photo series so much that they used the images as the basis for an ad campaign showing cute and comfy looks for expectant moms. American Apparel also set up its ad on Marchal's blog (pacingthepanicroom.com). They ran a unique banner ad for baby clothes, and the blog became one of American Apparel's top performing sites for online ads.

As you can see, Twitter helped drive American Apparel's product promotion decisions, and at the same time demonstrated the brand's proximity to their customers, thereby building esteem.

Internal Effects - Esteem & Knowledge under the Culture and Behavior Dimension

Thus far we have discussed external brand interactions; however, Twitter can also enhance interactions between employees and the companies that they work for. This means Twitter also has internal effects on a business and their internal brands.

Just like a twittering company would appeal to its twittering customers, it will also appeal to its twittering employees. It works the other way around too; some companies test applicants' ability to use twitter when recruiting new employees, since Twitter is considered to be a vital tool by many marketers.

As for knowledge, it measures whether there is a true understanding of what a brand stands for. No one knows better about what a brand stands for than its own top executives who get to decide what their brands mean. Normally, only a few privileged employees could directly interact with their top executives, but Twitter can help to change this. For instance, Zappos.com's CEO Tony Hsieh is in charge of the electronic commerce company's Twitter account (@zappos), which has nearly 1.2 million followers. Not only can customers contact Hsieh via Twitter, so can Zappos.com's employees. Hsieh constantly writes his thoughts on business and Zappo as a brand like "Good businesses figure out how to continuously add value. Great businesses figure out how to continuously multiply value," and "When your work is an extension of who you really are deep down inside, it's no longer a job or a career. It's a calling," so that employees can better understand the brand and better serve customers. By building esteem and knowledge internally, Zappos will build a stronger and more valuable brand overall. (In July 2009, Amazon.com Inc. announced it will purchase Zappos.com, and the deal is expected to go through in the fall. It will be interesting to see if this acquisition will affect Zappos Twitter account!)

Conclusion

From the above exploration of Twitter, we can see that Twitter does have the potential to help businesses build brand equity. However, we are sure that the most effective way has not yet been discovered. The new-born Twitter leaves businesses a huge space to explore, innovate, and experiment with the most effective ways to twitter up brand equities.

Vladimir Djurovic is the founder and Managing Director of Labbrand, a Shanghai based innovative brand agency specialized in brand research, strategic and creative services. Labbrand website at: http://www.labbrand.com/ is also the portal to Labbrand branding blog: http://www.labbrand.com/brand-source which collects fresh ideas, trend analysis and reviews of branding related hot topics, with a special focus on China.

4 Stages of Twitter SeeSaw

What is a Twitter SeeSaw

A Twitter SeeSaw is when you have a lop-side count of either Following or Followers. This affect tends to happen due to these four stages.

1.) Twitter Rockstar

2.) Twitter Peoples Champ

3.) Twitter Spam Follow

4.) Twitter Snob

Twitter RockStar (+ Followers)

The most known Twitter SeeSaw reason is the Twitter RockStars or the Twitter Celebrities. The most notorious Twitter Celeb right now besides Barack Obama is Kevin Rose; founder of Digg.com.

As you can see Kevin has a high Follower count compared to his Following count. Now I don't know 100% why Kevin chose not to follow people back but most famous Twitter profiles choose not to follow back due to a high demand of people following them.

Twitter People's Champ (Balance)

The Twitter People's Champ is when you have a good balance ratio of Followers and Following. Most famous example of this scenario is Guy kawasaki; Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures. Guy exemplifies fantastic Twitter Balance and Recriprocation. His ratio is almost a dead even 50/50 ratio with room to spare of not following Spammers. This status shows Follow-back love and openness to interaction.

This Stage Is The Very Best Stage To Have On Twitter Due To The Power Of Connection And Engagement Of Social Media. This Is What Social Media Is All About, Without Interaction Then It's Like Just Reading The News On A Website With No Social Interaction. This Stage Is Highly Encouraged To Practice And Will Reap The Best Rewards. This Does Not Mean Follow Back Everyone Who Follows You, Still Weed Out The Scammers, Spammers And Fake Profiles To Maximize Effectiveness.

Twitter Spam Follow (+ Following)

The Twitter Spam Follow is a no brainer where they become lopsided in trying to follow as many Twitter accounts as possible in trying to gain a follow back. Twitter had recently put a cap on the follow limit you could have in a short time frame without having a the same number of follow backs; 2,000 is the ceiling limit. Now the Spammer have found a way around this by doing a mass follow, relying on Twitter to notify you by e-mail that you have a new follower, the spammer will then mass remove follow to stay under the 2,000 limit.

Twitter Snob (+ Followers)

The Twitter Snob stage goes hand in hand with the Twitter Rockstar. You may not be a Twitter Rockstar but you may have more Followers than Following. This is due to the reason because you don't want to clutter your Twitter stream with an overload of Tweets of people you may not know too well so therefore you a become very selective in choosing who to follow so your Twitter stream will always be filled with the Tweets you want to see.

You May Not Want To Clutter Your Twitter Stream But There Are Better Reason Whys To Have A Great Follow Back Ratio. The Main Reason Is Due To The Power Of Utilizing Social Media Effectively. Another Reason Is Because You Can Still Have A Clean Twitter Stream By Using Great Twitter Tools To Organize Groups Where You Can Focus On The Ones You Want Without Sacrificing Your Following.

My suggestion would be to use TweetDeck when your on a personal computer and an application like Tiny Twitter for your Mobile connection. Both Applications are very good in organizing your points of focus so that way you can still keep track of your main Followers while still keeping tabs of the Twitter world.

TweetDeck is great because you can create a group where you can follow only the Twitter people you want to follow and organization is key which should solve the problem of the Twitter RockStar and Twitter Snob.

JustinSMV

For more Social Media, Marketing, Blogs and Technology articles visit Social Media Vision

http://socialmediavision.com

Twitter Demystified For Business Users

Twitter is the current top "hot property" on the Web, but its popularity and how to use it has mystified many business owners. Many people think that they want to, or should be using Twitter, but simply do not understand the platform, its use, or its place in building web exposure. This article will demystify Twitter and help you to learn how to use it in the workplace and to promote your business.

First, I have to say that I had been confused on how to use Twitter to benefit my own business until I downloaded TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a desktop application that allows you to review and post status updates on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. I consider it a "must have" application for anyone who wants to make sense of Twitter. TweetDeck allows you to sort the people you follow on Twitter into groups, allows you to limit the number of Tweets (Twitter micro posts) to be shown at any one time, and also allows you to remove all Tweets you have seen with one click. Additionally, using TweetDeck, finally a Twitter search on a topic makes sense.

Since using TweetDeck, I have had a much better Twitter experience. As a Twitter newbie, visiting your own Twitter home page is intimidating; it consists of post after post from people who you are following, who you may not know much about, and it just seems like a huge volume of content. To get started effectively first group the people who actually have something interesting to say on TweetDeck and voila, you have a powerful tool that keeps you at the forefront of what is happening in your industry and on the Web.

So how do you get started with Twitter? Well the first thing is to start on Twitter yourself to understand what you like to read, who you like to follow, and to clearly identify what you like about Twitter. For me, it boils down to this: I like to follow people in my industry who say something of value, who provide a link to a new application or point me to an interesting new article, video, or blog site that I should review but may have never have found myself. Based on what I like, and the people who I find interesting to read, I now write my Twitter posts using this same formula to grow my own Twitter audience.

What I also like about Twitter is that the people who I follow also know how to show their true personality in their Tweets. Ye,s I do like to know what Danny Sullivan (famous search engine marketing guru) ate for lunch, but better yet is the link to the video he thought was funny. I love following Ashton Kutcher (movie star married to Demi Moore who just hit 1 million Twitter followers in April). Man, that guy is really funny and is having a ball with Twitter. His posts are great and he has just earned the status of the user with the most followers. This is why you can't hire someone to "Ghost Twitter" for you. It's about showing the real you - you can't fake that!

So how can you use Twitter for business? Twitter is an excellent tool for linking and this is the real value for businesses. By using Twitter to point people to content on your website, articles you have written either on or off your website, or by linking to a service you want to highlight, you drive traffic. On top of that, Google actually indexes Twitter and so your Twitter page can appear in the organic search results so make sure your bio is well thought out. Don't waste time using Twitter to point to blog posts, use TwitterFeed to post your blog posts directly onto Twitter. If you have a blog or website, you'll get new Twitter followers by posting your TwitterFeed right onto your web pages. People who may not have known your Twitter ID can simply click the bottom "follow me link" and start following you on Twitter.

What's important to be successful in using Twitter is to identify what you personally like about this new media and then deliver the same type of things that you like back to your own followers - work to provide value not drivel! So you've got to play with Twitter and learn how to use it first before you can really become successful with it for your business.

So how do you get followers? Well, I started by following everyone (who I found by doing a Twitter search) who had the last name McCord. Then I searched for web design, search engine optimization, and pay per click. Any site profile that looked good, I clicked to follow the writer. It was that easy. Many times people who you follow yourself will choose to follow you. That's how you initially build up your Twitter base. Over time you will start to identify your "Twitter voice" and refine the type of Twitter presence you want to have by changing your content style and the things that you Tweet about. As you refine your presence, you will build a following.

Another cool Twitter use is that you can reply to any of your followers by simply putting an @ in front of their Twitter ID. For example to send something to my attention use @mccordweb at the very front of your Twitter posting and click enter. Just remember that this post is seen by all followers on my site and on your Twitter site. If you need a more private exchange, go to the direct message link on the Twitter.com site and select a follower by Twitter ID name and send your message from there. This note will be private. If you are using TweetDeck you can click on a follower's Twitter ID icon and then select to send a direct message or @reply to them. TweetDeck will automatically insert the correct syntax for you in the Tweet.

For many businesses the ability for users to communicate with top management using Twitter is an invaluable resource. This one-to-one exchange allows a company principal to keep tabs on customer viewpoints, concerns, and interests. As a Twitter reply or direct mail does not use email and does not require a response, this is a great way to tap into social networking to test new ideas and to ask for user feedback. For example, if you have a new software product ask your Twitter followers for feedback on a specific feature, or provide a link to your beta version for their testing.

How you use Twitter is all about your personal business needs. The best advice that I can offer to you is that you need to use Twitter a bit yourself first to understand the medium and to find out what you like to read best using Twitter. Then, create your own Twitter network sharing information that you find interesting and have some fun.

Currently I am following 204 people and 183 people are following me on Twitter. Personally I find Twitter great fun and a very cool way to find out first what's happening in the world before you see it on TV, read it on the Web, or see it in the newspaper. That's the real power of Twitter; you share, you find out, and you know, all by a person-to-person exchange of information.

For those of you clicking in from my e-newsletter the rest of the content on Twitter applications and uses follows.

Below are some of the Twitter applications that I like and use regularly for my business.

Twuffer - I love this one, it is a Twitter post scheduler. Some people feel that Twuffer defeats the immediacy of Twitter posts or Tweets, but I like it as I will schedule Tweets on days that I am not blogging to keep my followers advised of things I find important. It is easy to use, allows you to Tweet ahead, and lets you select a posting schedule by day and time. If you are pushing content on a service or product this is an excellent tool to use. Set your Tweets up one week or one month at a time and feed your content to readers in addition to your regular Tweets. Make sure to use http://www.TinyUrl.com to change any long URLs you point to in the Tweet to a Twitter-friendly short version to save space.

Twitter Feed - This is another one of my top favorites. TwitterFeed allows me to show my blog posts from "The Web Authority" directly onto Twitter. It also allows me to post my Tweets back on my blog (by installing a widget) in my blog template - very cool cross interaction! I pick up many Twitter followers with this technique. Readers come to visit my blog and then choose to follow me on Twitter.

Twitter Grader - This one is a vanity application that allows you to see where you stack up against other Twitter users. Twitter Grader measures the power of a Twitter user based on followers, number of updates, and posting frequency.

TweetBeep - With this application, you can manage your online Twitter reputation. Alerts will be emailed to you whenever a Twitter user Tweets about your business, name, or domain. You select the alert criteria and what to watch for using TweetBeep. This is great for a business that is concerned about branding and online identity. PR professionals should make sure to use this tool to watch for comments about their clients.

Twitoria - Clean up your Twitter followers by finding out which people never use Twitter or post infrequently so you can delete them right from the Twitoria interface.

Qwitter - If you want to know when someone stops following you, sign up for this service. Actually, this can be an excellent tool to find out what a reader hated that you posted about and caused them to "chop" you, so you can fine tune your message. If you get a flood of drops after a Tweet, it allows you to learn that people don't like a certain type of Tweet - instant feedback at an anonymous level!

One big thing about Twitter that I have not even mentioned yet but is actually one of Twitter's best features is the ability to text-in Tweets from your mobile phone. Although you can't easily link to great content typically on the fly like this, the ability to connect with others without being tethered to a computer is an opportunity to show the "real you". Maybe your followers do want to know what you are eating for lunch or about a seminar you just attended, just be kind and don't vomit out Twitter spam using your Blackberry on meaningless drivel.

You can easily set up the ability to receive text messages from your Twitter account to your cell or Blackberry, but be careful as you may be inundated if you have a large following. I would recommend receiving Twitter updates via text message to your cell only from a small group. For example if you have a project team, set up a Twitter account for each member to allow them to post just to this small unique circle of team members. The value to track and interact with each other at anytime and anywhere using Twitter by computer or by cell phone adds real value for work groups and teams - particularly team managers. Twitter even allows you to make this type of group private.

Another feature of Twitter is the ability to add hashtags in front of keywords in your Tweets to help with sorting to allow others to find your important content. For example if you wanted to Tweet about a recent earthquake in LA you would use #laearthquake in the front of your Tweet. By using hashtags you enable Twitter to return your information for topic searches on newsworthy Tweets. You can visit Hashtags.org for more information on the current hot hashtags that are in use for today so you can follow, add to the topic, or create your own. For example in Twitter World, Fridays are the day you post with #followfriday and enter in the Twitter IDs you want to recommend to others. You would be amazed at the cool new people you can follow and interact with from recommendations of the people you follow.

In conclusion, Twitter is one of the hottest new mediums to arrive on the Internet scene since Facebook. Although it is not exactly "new", Twitter has just recently become very high profile. If you are in business, Twitter definitely warrants your attention. Not only is it a very smart new tool to use in your marketing arsenal, but I think that the more you use it you will grow to love it and find it fun to use. The ways that you can use Twitter are endless: for teams, for family members, for business networking, to stay at the forefront of news, to promote yourself and your services, and to just have fun connecting with others online. Just remember you can't really make sense of Twitter for business without using TweetDeck or another similar aggregating and sorting application. Thanks for reading, see you on Twitter, you can reach me at @mccordweb or visit me at www.Twitter.com/mccordweb.

Nancy McCord is an expert in the field of search engine marketing and Web visibility. She is the owner of McCord Web Services LLC based in the Washington DC area. Her firm provides web content writing, blog writing services, webmaster services, web design, and Internet marketing services. You can find out more about the services that she provides at http://www.McCordWeb.com.

Twitter - An Overview of This Site

What is Twitter?

Twitter is an essential service for acquaintances, relatives, and colleagues to converse and stay associated by the exchange of rapid, regular communication. People inscribe little updates, often known as "tweets" that consist of 140 characters or less. The messages then get posted to your report or a blog sent to links and are traceable through a search on Twitter.

Twitter's interior expertise is a gadget agnostic communication steering system with elementary communal networking characteristics. By accommodating messages through SMS, network, mobile network, or instantaneous message, Twitter helps people in getting connected.

The consequence of employing Twitter to continue being linked with friends, associations, and other important people is with the aim of having a good judgment of what people may be up to. However, you need not respond to any updates unless it is welcomed by you. This infers that you may step inside and away from the information as it ensembles you and it does not require your concentration. Furthermore, customers are in command of whose information they receive, at what time they obtain them, and on what apparatus it is scheduled.

The subsequent aspects will reveal how Twitter can be used by your business for advertising purposes, client service, product expansion, complimentary publicity, and precious contact to professionals.

How twitter can help business grow

As the message is tweeted, it is sent to the Twitter world. It seems to be the advertising to attract people in and pursue you. For a good number of businesses, 140 letters will not trade the merchandise and service. The entire money that is devoted in the blog owned by you, website as well as white documents will include spectators that congregate your client demographics and benefits. Also mull over using the accurate tools as it is probable to add 1, 5, 10 or even 20 thousand supporters in 60 to 90 days.

Many corporations and trademarks are making attendance on Twitter, some place they can interrelate with clients and the community. Gaining supporters on Twitter can take some time for a common man, but an admired product name or well recognized company can amass enormous numbers of groups within a short period of time. These supporters can accept "tweets" from business, varying from small advertisements to details on novel, forthcoming products. Keeping consumers in the sphere is uncomplicated than it was previously.

Industries and companies can get hold of discussions going on regarding their merchandise in delicate, appealing customs by means of employing Twitter. When a civilized record of supporters is assembled, a company will be able to send Tweets requesting people about what their idea is about different goods or impending ideas. This is substantially cheaper as well as quicker than conventional mail or phone surveys.

Twitter for Marketing

Twitter makes an instant promotion that is necessary to present your creation and services to probable clients by counting all messages, association structure, and trade name recognition.

Thus, it is an ideal social association platform that can be used for publicizing sales and promotions. If you are able to receive hundreds, or thousands of citizens concerned in your function to follow your company's tweets, you have a targeted list of prospects at your fingertips.

Twitter for Customer Service

Many businesses designate individual resources and time completely to augment their client service via communal networking. Companies can locate the confrontations, inquiries, and predicaments that customers face by analyzing the tweets.

Customer service representatives or public relations liaisons can immediately resolve any problems by engaging themselves in the conversation. Customer service representatives who engage their clientele via Twitter increase their company's transparency, and show that they not only concerned about their customers, but they also care about their brand.

Twitter for Product Development

Twitter may be employed as an on the spot survey instrument for merchandise development. You might make it simple by recognizing the preferences and hates of others by means of a tweet and integrate or develop your existing goods.

A software company is operating on a Twitter plug-in which will tweet declarations, results and inquiries within their expansion team. It is quicker and more expedient than email, and gains an RSS feed that can be used for posting their expansion updates.

Twitter for Free Publicity and Brand Awareness

Free promotion is priceless and it may be hard for an industry to acquire admission to the media. Companies habitually shell out several million dollars to print their product in the minds of probable customers.

With Twitter's custom-made characteristics, you will be able to position your product or business logo on the pages of Twitter. Due to the distributing outlook of Twitter, traffic and promotion comes complimentary. Public will relate your Twitter with your business, and amplify their faith in your merchandise as well as services.

Functions of Twitter

Retweet

In case there is space, you would be able to insert a remark linking RT and the @ [username] part of the tweet (just like in the image above), however, due to the 140-character constraint, this is not feasible forever.

A large amount of Twitter applications presently contain a RT button that completes the whole lot for you, therefore what is required is to click retweet and present. Then it is tremendously easy to transform the tweets that grab your attention.

Hashtags

In case you noticed the Twitterverse over a stipulated time-span, you would have observed tweets having the number sign and the word, which would look like:

Hash tag

Numerous websites make use of these "hashtags" to locate "trendy aspects" on Twitter at this instant. It is regarding the talk and must be counted if you would like to be on familiar terms with what the public at the moment is discussing about on Twitter.

Similarly, hashtags are identical to an email focus line: They advise the readers (and any other person evaluating tweets) about the topic under discussion. They might either be at the conclusion of a tweet or implanted in the tweet.

A hashtag embedded into the tweet

Regardless of whether you implant the hashtag or place it at the last part in the tweet, it would be evident in a Twitter seek or trendy report. They have two websites that route the usage of hashtags in Twitter and these become helpful information in case you are thinking of using a hashtag, even though you are unsure of whether it is being used or how it is to be used. The website also permits you to classify hashtags.

Shortened URLs

Numerous appealing applications are on the rise due to Twitter, and URL shorteners are one of them because URLs are long and dominate the entire partial characters before you're capable of explaining why you're allotting an exacting link. Shorteners of URL take a unique URL, break it down to 15 or more letters and offer a fresh URL.

Twitter Search

Twitter allows a fixed search that hunts the entire number of tweets in the communal timeline. By going to search, you would be able to investigate any aspect by through a simple key word. In case you need to limit the search to a site, individual, meetings, or several new limiters, employ the sophisticated search instrument. When you get the solution as per your preference, you would be able to invest in the results through RSS to obtain potential information that would meet the matching criterion.

Automatically-tweeted Blogs

A motive why most individuals use tweeting is to promote blog circulation. You would be able to cut down your URL and enter the title by hand, or you would be able to derive benefit from the variety of services which contact your RSS feed, put together your title and a small description, and tweet the posts without human intervention. Twitterfeed is in all probability the most admired site presenting such a service.

HootSuite tweets RSS feeds

A word of caution: Many people may deem it as spamming, in case you are indulging in driving out tweets that endorse blogs or website owned by you. Twitter's existence is not chiefly for advertisement purposes, it is also used as a social networking site, and in case, it is used for advertisement purposes alone, then goodwill would not be won from the public that you try to draw towards your trademark In addition, networking is most important aspect to accomplish triumph over the Internet.

Features of twitter

Integrated Search

Twitter can be used to explore anything and the time involved is also very less. Store your searches, if you feel that you would use them again, and make use of Twitter to determine the occurrences of the world. Numerous exhilarating search characteristics help in locating amusing facts in Twitter.

Search in sidebar

Beneath the general sidebar alternatives, you'll find the search tab. Key in a word, town, place, or search engine to locate tweets in relation to your preferential interests! Saving your Search

Click on the linkage of a stored search will exhibit the entire view of all genuine tweets! You would be able to store 10 or fewer searches, that can be easily eliminated - click on the red x beside in order to eliminate this stored search.

Trending Matters

With the novel search assimilation, there is a fresh tab that is exclusively kept for trending matters, which registers top ten issues that individuals from all parts of the globe are tweeting on. You only have to go to the Trending Subject matter tab in order to see or hide the matter.

Following bar

In case you have stored several findings or are desirous of gaining knowledge on the existing trends, you would be able to conceal the photo network of public whom you pursue by going to Following tab on the side bar.

RSS feeds

Append an inquiry for desired seeks on the feed reader in order to view assured tweet searches without signing on to Twitter. You would simply be required to click on "rss feed" to capture the feed and affix it to the preferred reader of feed.

Traffic on Twitter

The following is the ratio of traffic on Twitter

Weekly average is 1.675%

Per month average is1.508%

Once in three months average is1.08%

Traffic Details

The following are the Countries that use twitter and their respective percentage

United States 47.5%

Germany 8.4%

India 6.4%

UK 6.2%

Australia 2.9%

Canada 2.7%

China 2.3%

South Africa 1.8%

Japan 1.5%

Pakistan 1.2%

Netherlands 1.1%

Italy 1.1%

Brazil 0.9%

Indonesia 0.9%

Spain 0.9%

Turkey 0.8%

Sweden 0.8%

Austria 0.8%

France 0.6%

Russia 0.6%

South Korea 0.5%

Others 10.0%

Ranking of Traffic of Twitter.com in other countries:

Australia 16

Austria 32

Brazil 137

Canada 22

China 214

France 296

Germany 28

India 36

Indonesia 80

Italy 134

Japan 288

Netherlands 40

Pakistan 25

Russia 290

South Africa 14

South Korea 185

Spain 138

Sweden 37

Turkey 117

UK 15

USA 16

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