Saturday, September 13, 2008

Twitter Micro-Blogging Is Cool - Take Full Advantage of it!

By Matt Hellstrom


Twitter is a great way to connect with your friends and colleagues. What is Twitter, you ask? It's what's called a micro-blogger, a website where you can post little message of 140 characters or less about what you're doing, and they get broadcast out to anyone that's following you. You're messages can be about anything, but if you're an internet marketer they should be a combination of business and personal ones.

If you're building a web-based business, some of your "tweets" should be business-oriented. For instance, if you post a new entry to your blog, let your twitter followers know. If you're watching a webinar that might be helpful to others, let them know.

But you need to find a happy medium. If you just post business tweets, people are going to think you don't have a life (and they may be right!). This is web 2.0, social networking, and you need to be social. Find something to talk about - anything - other than your business and you'll keep your followers interested for much longer.

Maybe you lost a bunch of weight. Maybe you're an aspiring singer. Maybe you like to bowl, golf, play poker, or walk your dog. Whatever it is, talk about it from time to time. If people realize you're actually a person, they'll be more drawn to you.

You want to be as organized as possible when you're expanding your twitter fan base. Here are 7 guidelines that I've developed to help me.

1. Follow lots of people. You can follow up to 2000 to start with, and more if you fulfill some criteria set out by twitter (what that criteria is, I'm not exactly sure, but I think it involves how many people are following you). Here's what I did that seemed to work: I found someone that was interested in the same thing that I am, attraction network marketing, and started following the ones he followed. Eventually, I got to 2000 and I couldn't follow any more. What you'll find out is that if you follow those people, a lot of them are going to follow you back. When they do, send them a short message, with a link to your blog.

2. Follow people who follow you. Soon, people will follow you that you didn't follow first. If they do, follow them and send a similar message to them as above. If you're at 2000 people you're following, go in and delete a few that don't follow you. I delete ones that don't have a picture, as I don't think they're too serious about twitter. This leads to my next point.

3. Make your site you. Write a blurb about yourself, and include something personal, not just your business stuff. Put a picture on there, show your blog address, and add a background. Don't forget, you're trying to be social even if that comes hard for you.

4. Tie your twitter account in with your Facebook account. You do have a Facebook account, right? If not, shame on you! Go get one! This kills 2 birds with one stone: when you post something to twitter, it automatically updates what you are doing on Facebook.

5. Download twhirl. Twhirl is a program that runs on your computer opposed to in your browser. You download it, then you can view and post tweets without being on the internet (you do still have to be connected, of course). One of the features of this cool little program is that it will shorten your long url's for you. Just enter it in a box and click "shorten" and it will spit out a short one to save space in your 140 character tweet.

6. Try twitterfeed if you're a blogger. Twitterfeed automatically tweets any new posts that you make to your blog, and if you're connected, to Facebook. It works by monitoring your RSS feed periodically for new posts, and if it sees any it sends out a tweet. Saves you time and having to remember. You can set it up for free at twitterfeed.com

7. Register your twitter username at ezinearticles.com. In your profile, you can enter your twitter info, and when one of your articles gets approved it will automatically send out a tweet. This is good, because sometimes by the time it gets approved you'll forget to post it on twitter.

There you go! 7 ideas to make twitter better. Get out there and start tweeting soon. It will help to develop your web of content and get people to notice what you're doing!

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