So You have twitter account, have followed a few people and are gaining followers, time to add some value and meet new people.  (Note, for the first few weeks I suggest following people in your niche or interested in your niche so that you build a base of people to build relationships with.)

The whole follow people and get followed back practice, in mass, was not very appealing to me before but I now mix up the techniques that I use to get followers.We will chat more about that later.  Today it is all content.

When I got started Tweeting I was only posting about things I did during the day.  I was merely posting some of the things that I did that day.  Maybe 6 to 12 Tweets per day.  So I started to Tweet some of my more favorite quotes.  I scheduled all of my quotes for the week on Sunday nights.  I was posting a few tweets a day, hardly sufficient.

I started gaining a lot more followers by Tweeting my favorite quotes than I had by tweeting quick tips or posts about my personal life.  I was adding value and knew it when my followers began to grow at a rapid pace.    I was interacting with the community now and people were retweeting my tweets which attracted even more followers.

I took a few months to learn more about Twitter and used the quotes the entire time as I learned more about what people wanted.  So I started Tweeting about my from blogs from within my niche.  Once I began Tweeting links to my favorite content my interaction really stepped up a level.    I have always tracked my favorite topics and all of the internet business niche keywords using Google Alerts.  So I began to put Google Alerts to work.

Each morning I would read through all of my Google Alerts and post links to the most compelling and valuable content.    I was using Tweetlater to schedule all of these great stories and was getting more followers than ever before.

When I had success psoting links to other people’s content I decided to begin posting links to my own content.  As my original blog content grew and grew the more I Tweeted linked to my own site.  And the more often I blogged the more Twitter followers I got and the more readers I acquired for my blog.

So I was testing a lot of content and began to figure out what my followers or potential followers had the most interest in.

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Social Marketing, Twitter and Your Business

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Explode Your reach on the Internet

Twitter, the rage of the web 2.0 generation, is burning up today’s Internet for a very good reason – it has shown that it’s far more than just a gossip page. The short messaging service has grown extremely popular and is progressing fast. For internet marketers this means another great way to drive targeted traffic to offers and sites you can profit from. Here is an Affiliate Millionaire bonus page that you must see because you will discover just how powerful Internet marketing can be. However, if you don’t really know how Twitter marketing works, you might be confused in the start. So the goal of this article is to present a beginning course in Twitter marketing as an aid to achieving long-term success.

If you know anything about Twitter, you’ll know that you have to have tons of followers on your account to produce real marketing results. Actually, this is only partially true. Why? Well, the truth is you need more than just a lot of followers, there are other ways to use Twitter as a marketing tool. Instead of attracting a throng of casual companions, direct your energies toward developing a smaller group of cohorts that have a compelling interest in what you have to offer. When you choose this direction you end up with a bunch of interested people to your list as well as giving you the opportunity to send out your own tweets and receive a response. If you want to make this happen, identify other people in your market and start following them. And the result will be that everyone you follow is going to follow you in return. But don’t immediately start sending out tweet promotions of your affiliate offerings. Check out this awesome Affiliate Millionaire to find out what you could get with this great new course. This is definitely not the best approach as you don’t want your followers to begin looking at you as just someone else who’s trying to sell them something, which obviously can have a negative effect. Think about what your followers would want before you consider this approach. And how do you achieve that? By taking time to post links to some interesting, relevant content. When you post these, they have to contain some quality information that will be of help to your followers.

First build a relationship and show your interest in your followers; without that, they’ll suspect your motives in contacting them. Once followers come to know and trust you they will think of you as someone to look to within your niche. Only then should you include promotional links with your content links, but do it in moderation. Another solid strategy is to do targeted searches on Twitter looking for Tweets with specific questions that apply to your specific market. Once you have gathered a quantity of inquiries that are associated with your niche you can begin drafting and sending out solid quality answers to those questions. You can do this by either creating a blog post or a video/audio/article that answers their questions and offers solutions to their problems. The answer will need to be one that people will find valuable and useful. Apart from this, make sure you have a link for your product/affiliate product at the end of the content you’re providing. And to make Twitter really be able to work for you and give you good results, you’ll need to make sure that you don’t rush into any of it. Having good squeeze page templates one your site can help you increase the people on your email list. Be sure to take your time as your building your following and trust among your followers before you jump into any kind of promotional information. You’ll also want to spend a good amount of time doing your research to find those targeted questions.

With only 140 characters at a time, you can make millions…

Twitter. Why is it that Twitter is only 140 characters by the way? Well, because many cell phones can only text 140 characters, that’s why! Why is it that cell phones are limited to only 140 characters for texts? Because the message piggybacks on signals already being sent by the phone and it costs the cell phone company NOTHING AT ALL to send the text message! So the phone companies are charging us $10 or $15 per month for something that is absolutely free for them. Smart… infuriating, but smart.

Now then, back to business. How do I capitalize on the vast popularity of Twitter and get the millions of daily Twitter users to give me their cold hard cash? How do I monetize Twitter??

You don’t!

Monetizing means to make money directly from something with affiliate links, or adwords ads etc. Take a look around on the Twitter.com site; even Twitter doesn’t monetize Twitter!

If you are a new Twitter user, you will need to learn some of the Twitter basics regarding how things work and what it is you are seeing in your messages.

First, go to www.twitter.com and sign up for an account. I suggest using your company name, website name or your real name as your Twitter account name. Don’t make it something that may be offensive, hard to remember or unprofessional if you are doing this for your business.

- You are allowed to have multiple Twitter accounts but it can be difficult enough to manage one properly so there’s no need for more?
– Upload a small image, preferably a small photo of you or your company logo. Now you’re ready to get tweeting!

Next, you need to know a little about how Twitter works and what you will be seeing in your tweet stream. Most of what you will see will be garbage of two distinct types: 1) Spam 2) Random worthless updates by strangers and “goodnight” messages. (Don’t waste people’s time by posting “Goodnight Twitter”… please!!)

The information you are honestly interested in seeing will not appear in your tweet stream! The messages you will see are every post made by every person that you are following. Imagine following 2,000 people like I do, or 10,000 or 20,000… how in the world do you follow that many people?

YOU CAN’T.

You’re on Twitter to get your message across, to speak to your audience, and to respond to only those messages that are actually sent to you and are not spam, but a human that is interested in speaking to you. And, in a nutshell, twitter.com is completely USELESS for doing this!

Now if you follow me, don’t get me wrong; I’m not discounting you as a person or uninterested in what you may have to say, but I can’t possibly be that involved with the thousands of people I would like to reach on a daily basis regarding camera repair. Twitter is amazing, and if I could afford a full time employee to do just Twitter I probably would.

I use Twitter every day, and I see almost every person that tweets about a broken digital camera or digital camera repair. I wish I could message everyone, but when I try I think it looks like spamming. I would advise you to not do more than what you can comfortably handle. You are here to build relationships, not to sell.

Ok now, in your tweet stream you will see messages with different symbols, abbreviations and crazy looking links.

- The different symbols most commonly used are: @ (a message sent to a person so it shows up in their tweet stream) and # (an easily search-able topic or subject)
– Some of the most common abbreviations are TT (Trending Topic: something that is mentioned in many different tweets right now), DM (Direct Message: sent only to you, nobody else can see it), RT (ReTweet: somebody else posted this first and I can ReTweet it letting others know I think it’s good) and FML… I’ll let you figure out what FML means.
– The crazy looking links have been shortened so that they take up less space. They look odd, and yes they can take you to any site without your knowledge so you must trust the person that posts it. You only have 140 characters remember, so shortened URL’s are a must.

If you want to be serious about Twitter, you need something like Tweetdeck from www.tweetdeck.com, it’s fantastic. Twitter is completely useless for any sort of business purpose if you try and use it through Twitter.com. Myself, I never actually go to Twitter.com as there’s no need to!

Download Tweetdeck, and Adobe Air if needed and get Tweetdeck running. You will have columns for tweets where you are mentioned (with the @ symbol before your name) and sent Direct Messages (DM). Beyond these two, you can add new columns for custom searches that are automatically updated and lets you see exactly what people are saying all over the world on Twitter at all times!!

Maybe you have a dog training business online; create a search column for ‘dog training’ and you will see every single message every person tweets with the words ‘dog’ and ‘training’ in any order of the tweet. They won’t always be about ‘dog training’, (I’ve been in training for scuba diving testing… that darn dog is barking again) but most will. Now add your other keywords and phrases… ‘dog training’ won’t give you any results for ‘training dogs’ for example, but ‘dogs training’ will. Hopefully I am able to clarify the difference!

Any time you see a relevant message about something in your area of expertise, you can follow the person that posted the tweet (you aren’t really interested in following them, but they like it and normally will follow you back) and then send them an @ message. DO NOT TRY AND SELL THEM ANYTHING with your first message and do not make it an automated message either. Start a conversation and let them know you are an authority in your subject area and see if there is something that you can do to help… FOR FREE. Yes you can post a link to your site if you feel you must, but they will ask or figure it out if they are interested. Don’t be pushy!

If you want to be a spammer and annoy people, then by all means please try to monetize Twitter! Here’s how!

1- Harass people with your first tweet when they follow you, by sending them an automatic DM that spams them with something to buy.

2- Spam the same tweets over and over all day and night, every day. Even better, post the same tweets over and over all day long from multiple accounts.

3- Post tweets that are obviously stuffed with TT’s!

4- Never personally talk to people that are interested in your subject area, just post automated updates only.

5- Never give free advice, or post tweets to sites that will help people and have nothing to do with something you sell.

6- Make controversial comments about religion, politics and bodily functions. Also make sure to insult others and swear as much as possible.

7- Tweet @ every user you see with your offer and website

and so on and so forth…

I know if you start today you can use my information to get going with Twitter right away. Don’t worry about not understanding everything that’s going on or what you should do or say. Start following some people in your area of expertise and see what they do. Don’t follow celebrities unless that is your area of business; follow them once you know what you are doing and have the time to do your work plus see what Shaq is eating for lunch.

Tweet you later.