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.

Twitter Marketing Tip - 7 Easy Ways to Monetize With Twitter

Just about everyone has figured out by now that Twitter has an amazing potential to be a fantastic sales tool for their business. There are, in fact, many other benefits to Twitter besides direct sales that are just as valuable if not MORE valuable. If you build your Twitter account the right way, you should be taking advantage of each and every one of these benefits. This Twitter Marketing Tip shows the top 7 ways to use Twitter to build your network and monetize it.

1)  Direct Marketing

The reason most of us are using Twitter is to get our messages out there in front of thousands of very targeted people. You can do this in several ways using Twitter. The first way is by simply putting your link in your Twitter profile and having people come to your website or blog to check you out.

Many people who visit your Twitter page will click on your link and decide to visit your website. If you are targeting people correctly, this can be a fantastic source of traffic for your website or blog. Some of these people will come back time after time, if they like what you're saying. Many will even purchase the products you recommend.

The second way to get your sales message out on Twitter is to create Tweets with your links right in them. Please don't be obvious and say things like, "Hey, check this out." or "Click here now." That will make you stick out like a spammer for sure. Instead, write a compelling headline that will attract people's attention and entice them to click on your link because it interests them. Getting and keeping people's attention is of utmost importance on Twitter.

2) Networking

Networking and building business relationships are the key to building any successful business. Almost every important milestone or big success in my own personal business can be attributed to knowing the right people to get things accomplished.

Twitter allows you to network with thousands of people in your chosen targeted field, people who have the skills you need. I don't know any other way besides Twitter where you can find such a huge amount of targeted people to network with so quickly. Just be really careful that you choose the right people. Check out new contacts very carefully before making decisions. Try to build relationships so you get to know the people you may end up working with.

People ask how you can benefit from a huge list of followers. Well, you are noticed when you have a big following. Many are against having lots of followers, but how often do you talk to your mom, dad, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, etc? You can still have a relationship with people even if you don't directly talk with them daily or weekly.

You are just opening up a line of communication. If someone wants to talk with you, they can. If you send emails out to your list, you don't really talk to each of them either. But you're still building up a relationship and influencing them.

3) Joint Ventures

This is kind of like networking... but it's networking on steroids. One of the easiest and fastest ways to make money on Twitter is to build up relationships with people in your specific niche market and then invite them to joint venture with you. Here's a secret the guru's don't want you to know.

Shhhhh... It's all about building relationships.

The gurus network constantly to make their money. They go to lots of conferences and seminars each and every month. It's not just to speak and sell products. That's second on their agenda. The real reason they travel constantly and show up all over the world isn't even to brand themselves and learn new techniques. All of these reasons are important to the gurus, of course, but they're not the most important. Want to know what it is? It's to network! They sometimes call it "The Back Scratchers Club." What happens when you join your list with someone else's list? It can double or triple your list and you only have to work with one person. That's called leverage. So find people in your niche to joint venture with on Twitter and watch your business explode.

4) Branding

I personally think this is one of the biggest benefits of using Twitter. I know that for my own business it has been even more powerful than direct sales. I have always built businesses by having a good following of people who I network with and by having them send me referrals. Since starting my Twitter account, that recognition is growing exponentially.

People who I've never spoken with, people who weren't referred to me by someone else, are already familiar with me because of my Twitter brand and many of them have the impression that I am an expert in my chosen field. When you have people coming to you like that, completely pre-sold on the idea of doing business with you, it's priceless!

5) Feedback

You can ask any question you can think of and get an answer on Twitter in just seconds. I personally have thousands of people that could view my question and possibly answer me back. It's like having Google, with real life experience, right at your beck and call. You can ask for feedback on a blog you're working on, you can ask a question about the product you are thinking about buying or selling. I even ask questions about my dogs. People are just waiting to help you with their honest opinions.

6) Customer Service

Businesses have always been aware of the fact that their online reputation is very important. Now, with Twitter, they have to be extremely aware, and in real time.

One bad Tweet can travel very, very far with the power of a simple RT (Retweet). You need to be on your toes with what you are Tweeting about and how you are promoting or branding your business. It can really put the hurt on your Twitter brand if you make someone unhappy with less than top notch customer service.

On the other hand, if a customer takes the time to Twitter a frustration with your business, it also gives you the ability to immediately react and fix the problem (publicly) before a bad thought or idea can become associated with you or your business as well. So use Twitter to give great customer service to your customers. This pays long term dividends.

7) Media Coverage

We all know that this world we live in loves the media. TV, Internet, Videos, etc. are a way of life now. What would we do without it?

Well, Twitter covers this too.

You can post photos of your puppies, videos of your latest project or product, online training podcasts or videos that you have on your blog, just about anything you can think of. Your Tweets can alert you to the latest trends, new online products, a sale at WalMart, whatever. You can reverse this and Tweet in a video about what you want or have for sale. There is just no limit to how you can use Twitter to improve and monetize your life.

There are 100's more Twitter benefits than these 7 I've just covered. People are constantly finding new ways to integrate Twitter into our lives everyday. I believe we have yet to see some of the amazing things that will come from Twitter. If you've found another way Twitter is benefiting you,please share your Twitter Marketing Tip with us.

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.

Twitter Marketing Strategy - To Tweet Or Not to Tweet?

I avoided Twitter, made fun of it and repeated stories I had heard from people I know loosing friends to "twittering"; they no longer could share a car ride, enjoy a meal or even simple conversation because their friend was so obsessed with the latest "tweet."

When Twitter first became popular I shared this sentiment:

"What could be more annoying and less useful than a site where thousands of people are given 140 characters to shout out about what they're doing at every moment of the day? The amazing thing is that enough people out there think this mindless stream of ephemera ("I'm eating a tangerine," "I'm waiting for a plane," "I want a Big Mac") is interesting enough to serve as the basis for a viable advertising platform."

But after fellow marketers I respect reintroduced me to Twitter as a tool to complement their present strategies, I took notice and soon began to see the advantages of the "follower." I was hooked.

Here's what I learned. Created in 2006, by Jack Dorsey, Twitter is a free online service that allows you to broadcast short messages (140-character limit) to your friends or "followers." You too can specify your own list of people you want to follow. Many think of Twitter not so much as a social network, but as an information network. It tells people what's happening in the subjects they care about as it is happening in the world.

Twitter is an invaluable tool for any social marketing strategy and is one of today's hottest new trends on the Internet. Not sure if it's for you? Even Microsoft's founder and the world's richest man, Bill Gates, has a Twitter account. You can start following him at @BillGates. Oprah tweets, celebrity Ashton Kutcher even beat CNN's breaking news feed and was the first Twitter account with one million followers.

Still, with its incredible popularity and growth, many in the marketing world continue to debate whether Twitter is a total time vacuum or a marketing tool you can't live without. I believe its value is based on how you chose to use it.

Personally, I'm not one to chatter with friends via texting or glued to current media events via my cell phone. I still like the phone and of course emails. But I have found that Twitter is an important part of my overall social marketing strategy.

Everyone uses Twitter differently. So what's the big deal; how should you be using Twitter in your marketing strategy? For over a year now, many have claimed that Twitter is the #1 traffic builder for their blog. I do see the spikes in traffic from cross-linking my posts to Twitter.

Twitter is an opt-in world, so if you don't find someone's tweets interesting, you simply stop following that person. Originally, I used Twitter to have a following that shared a common interest about new articles I was posting on my blog concerning Internet Marketing. Later, I found myself not only using it as another outlet for exposure, but also as a marketer it was useful to follow market leaders, competitors, bloggers, speakers, and authors in my niche. It became a great way to follow people I found interesting and wanted to keep up with. Twitter is like a cyber press release, but only from the people whose news you care about.

Keep in mind that although we are focused on business with promotion being the number one priority, Twitter is about give and take. If you just use it to push your stuff, you'll be zapped in a zano-tweet-second, translation- blocked for good. Twitter is not about pushing content or your agenda, it's about give and take.

Follow / Following / Unfollow

Many take the approach, "Anyone that won't follow me, I'm not going to follow back."

Follow - Twitter is similar to your RSS. Who you follow is basically who - or what information - you subscribe to. Remember it's an opt-in system. If you're using Twitter for marketing purposes then you want to follow the market leaders and the news sources in your niche. Don't worry whether they follow you back. Seriously. The point of following is to get the news and updates that you prefer. Period.

I use a "Tweet Adder" to build my base of contacts or "followers" that I think may be interested in my content. I do unfollow people that have not accepted my invitation to follow me after three days. I do this to keep my ratio fairly even. The people I follow based solely on their content I am not concerned whether or not they follow me.

As I mentioned earlier, I seek people that may have an interest in what I'm doing. Twitter tools, like "Tweet Adder," give you the ability not only to follow specific people, but also to follow people interested in specific topics. Tweet Adder offers specialized search tools that I use to build my list of followers. These tools allow me to capture people tweeting about my specific topics and keywords. Note, when building a list use keywords similar to what you would use on a capture page including your competitor's name.

Following - I don't spend much time checking to see who is following me. In fact, I turned off email notifications because I found it pointless and didn't need more spam to clear out each day. Your focus should be on building a very specific following, not on who is following you. Unless you notice that you are attracting the "wrong people" in which case, rethink your search words.

You want to regard "building your following" as you would "building your leads list."

Unfollow - Some people will unfollow anyone that won't follow them, or who unfollows them.

You should unfollow anyone you no longer want to follow. It's not rude, if that person is consistently off topic to what attracted you to them in the beginning, you should set them free! As I said earlier, the followers I request to join me using the adding software, I do unfollow after a few days if they don't accept my request. This is a completely different group than the people I choose to follow based on their content that attracted me.

These are just a few ways to utilize Twitter. As you integrate this tool into your social marketing strategy you will learn more tactics to maximize Twitter World.

Twitter Marketing Strategy

Make sure you have a Twitter Marketing Strategy. Keep it simple, and tweet consistently. If you don't have a specific goal or strategy, Twitter will surely become a "time vacuum" for you.

Initially I only used Twitter as a way to increase exposure for my other strategies. Then I realized I could also build a following of like-minded people that would find value in my information. Every time I announce on Facebook that I have posted new content on my blog, a tweet is automatically sent to my followers using a plug-in I installed. Then everyone that is following me can view my new posting and even better, if they like what they see, they may re-tweet and share the information with all their followers. You can see how this can maximize your exposure! Here's an important tip, be sure to keep your tweet to 120 characters or less for easy re-tweeting. As tweets are re-tweeted they pick up characters.

"Be sure you are always providing new content that has value. You want your followers to be loyal and to have interest in what you are sharing. That is why you need to define your target market and your offers, and create a strong message-to-market match."

Keep an eye on your followers and their mindset. Figure out why they chose to follow you, and make sure your updates, topics, products, website or blog continues to deliver on that attraction. If they did follow you specifically for those reasons, and you don't deliver, then you are letting them down. And we know that means a "unfollow click" is coming.

Building a following on Twitter should be viewed much the same as building a lead list. You definitely want to provide quality over quantity with your Twitter marketing strategy. The more focused your topic and readership, the more productive you will be - and the higher your click-through and conversion rates will be.

Marketing is not spam. Sharing resources and links is not spam. As long as you respect your followers and continue to provide them with "real value" information they desire, you are providing a service. Not Spam. Just remember to ask yourself this about your social marketing strategy, "Why are people following me and am I delivering what they seek?"

Your Twitter marketing goal should be to tweet useful information that is of specific interest to your followers. Twitter is a place where you can be more personable and even more intimate, but you want to maintain your professional character and your integrity at all times.

Remember that Attraction Marketing is the "Key" and that you want to build Relationships.

ENGAGE your followers.

In addition to staying current on news, information and conversations in your niche, and increasing your viewership and traffic, Twitter is a great way to engage your target market in productive relationship building conversations.

Here are just a few ideas that I've seen work incredibly well for my social marketing strategy:

Host a contest on Twitter. For examples, search "Twitter contest" at Google.

Encourage your followers to 'tweet you' questions, favorite links, resources, and tips or personal experiences about your topic. Using your content blog is a great way to craft new and interesting posts. Use Twitter to really engage your target market in conversations about your industry. What do they need, what do they love, what really frustrates them?

Compile the feedback and share it in a post. Once published, thank your followers and give them the link to check out the results. Not only will you be making connections with your prospects, they will appreciate your genuine interest and you will be able to gain valuable insight that will help you tailor your Twitter marketing strategy to better serve them.

There are so many more good reasons to create a social marketing strategy, than to not. Start building your group of targeted followers with your own Twitter marketing strategy now.

Social Media Marketing - 3 Best Twitter Uses

Why Would I Tell Others What I Am Doing?

This article is about making Twitter pay in your business or life. Twitter is very new in the bigger world of communicating. It is still in the adoption phase, and that makes Twitter a moving target with regard to how best to you use it. Personally, "tweeting" is fine, if my time is unlimited and my interests are diverse. However to many of us, we need to make our Twitter time pay off. Below I give you the 3 top uses of Twitter so that immediately you put it to its absolutely best use.

Twitter as the latest social web networking gizmo, is intended to allow others of your choice to know what you do all day. You may ask yourself, "why should I spend my time telling other people what I am doing?" That is a very good question. Twitter is designed to generate social and business value out of answering that question. On the face of it, Twitter looks like a monumental instant messaging system. And some people use it that way. But that is not what it is about. At least, that is not what where its true power resides.

What Is The Unique Value of Twitter

Here is the answer. In short, Twitter is immediate, it is searchable, and it allows you access to contacts that can be of further use to you. On top of this, everything about Twitter is free. If you believe in what you do, what you do all day will be in line with your interests and beliefs. So if I am reading a blog, writing an article or filming a video, then that stuff will be of interest to my followers. You might say that that is nobody's business if you are from the old school. In the old days, your family or the people that live in your neighborhood and work in your office or place of work are the only people that need to know. Well, the neighborhood just got much bigger due to the web. Your community is defined across geography and the people that you see everyday. And more and more, the way that you make yourself known to others that share a mutual interest, is through the web. Use Twitter to find, communicate with and promote to them.

The best way to utilize this article is to bring to mind now the things that are important to you:

1) your market niche,

2) a personal interest or hobby

3) a cause that you are committed to.

When you read this brief article, use your interest to put this information to work immediately by trying it out. Here are the three ways to use Twitter:

1. The Twitter Search

There are at least three ways of searching Twitter to find out things of importance to you. Here are the ones that I find most useful:

What is the most popular URL of interest to you being discussed now on Twitter? Remember content is on websites, not usually on 2.0 sites. Therefore, in order to answer this question, you should go to Twitter(url)y. Twitter(url)y provides a sort of voting system based on the number of times that a URL is used (either in TinyURL, Snipurl (snurl) or full URL) by people using Twitter. URL's are ranked from top 100 highest voted URL's based on this voting system.

Most popular topic of interest to you . Use http://search.twitter.com to find specific term(s) that is(are) of interest to you. Are you interested in bee farming....type it in the search bar, and find out what's buzzing. And seriously, bee farming does have results in this search.

Others in your geographical area with similar interests on Twitter. Use http://www.twitterlocal.net/. Are your interests local? Now you can connect with people in your area that Twitter in areas of interest to you. TwitterLocal allows you to receive tweets specifically from people of specified distances from a zip code of your choice. This is great if you have social interests (schools, organizations, government) that you want to be updated about. It also provides the top 40 worldwide locations with the highest Twitter activity if you want to connect with the hottest geographies. If you are opening a hot dog stand in your area, this would be a good way to get the word out for free.
2. Contacts - New and Existing Twitter is about finding out what is being discussed. But more importantly, Twitter is about who is discussing it. How do you find out about high impact people now? In the virtual world, probably you search on Google and read and comment on their blogs or you get involved in on-line communities. In the real world, you have real communities or maybe Meet-Up groups.

After you find out Twitter people that are talking about the things that are important to you via one of the methods above, follow them by clicking on their link. In the beginning, you may be tempted to follow everybody. Resist the temptation. Choose carefully who you follow. I find a good way to decide who I will follow, is to look at some of the content that they have created (not just re-tweeted) and find out if they appear to be opinion leaders and not just re-distributing other peoples' material all of the time. The opinion leaders are important because they will give you access to quality material and they can in turn be useful for getting behind your opinions.

When you create quality material, you will quickly become known for that and people will begin to follow you very quickly.

3. Promoting Content

Most likely, you will have some content that you have or will create that merits some distribution to a deserving audience. Your content could be anything - a grand opening of a physical store, a website or blog, or a YouTube video (or Facebook Page or Linked-In page). You name it. Twitter gives you 140 characters per tweet to get your word out. Additionally for long URL's, it will automatically provide a shortened version (TinyURL). You need to think very compact and creative to get your word out in 140 characters. Twhirl is a user interface that can be downloaded for free and can reside on the desktop of your computer for ongoing access to Twitter.

When promoting anything, remember that you are doing people a favor in communicating to them via Twitter. In so doing, ensure that you include followers that are open and willing participants in mutual interests. Make your content relevant to your followers. Also if you have found something of interest, re-tweet that content that would be of mutual interest to your followers. Influencing other people to your way of thinking is also a good use of your time on Twitter. After all, if you believe in what you do, it will be reflected in what you do all day. So, when you are tweeting something that you are doing presently it should be something that is at least, expectantly entertaining, or at the least content-rich. Be respectful of others' eye-time.

In Summary

Twitter has its focused use. If you are looking for the latest, searchable news and who is in on "the conversation", this is the medium for you. I heard a quote that says "the community defines the channel, the channel does not define the community." Twitter is the channel, the community is yours. The Twitter channel is a fast-paced one that provides vital signs to some conversations that are or will be important to you. It is not the answer to every communication need, but it is valuable. Use the information right now to put this to work for you.

Follow me on Twitter - http://twitter.com/frank_dobner

© Copyright - 2008 Frank Dobner

Frank Dobner
Director - Sales & Marketing
The Startup Source
http://thestartupsource.com
dobner@comcast.net