Twitter has been called micro-blogging, or blogging for ordinary people. Basically they have provided a way for people who don’t want a full fledged blog to post about their daily happenings.

The downside to Twitter is the amount of people who sign up and make a post, but then never return. Currently these abandoned accounts are never deleted, so it’s up to you to update your follower and following lists keeping them clear of these abandoned accounts.

Finding Followers:

Besides being able to add your friends and email contacts to Twitter, they also provide a handy search box to help you find people to follow.

One of the best ways to get followers is to follow others first,. There is one check you must do before adding someone to your list, the most recent post date. Just adding thousands of people to your twitter list will not bring you followers. Twitter received a lot of buzz and attracted a lot of tire kickers, but if you aren’t paying attention then you could easily end up with the majority of your list being people who haven’t logged on to Twitter for a months, and they won’t be coming back to check out your profile anytime soon.

So step one to a clutter-free Twitter is to follow the right people. I will search for a particular term, and flip through the list, signing up to follow only people who have posted in the last 7 days. Also I will not follow anyone on their first post, I want to make sure they will be coming back on a regular basis.

Culling The List:

As your lists grow, you will want to check your following list and un-check those who have not posted for a while. I like to use a 30 day rule. Every time I log on to Twitter, I check 5 to 10 people in my list, and stop following the ones who have not made a post in the last 30 days. Many people don’t post every day, or even every week, but chances are if they have not posted in the last month, they probably won’t be posting again.

Following Followers:

Step 3 is returning the favor. Whenever you log in, check your follower list to make sure you are returning the favor to everyone that is following you. Unless they are just spamming the Twitter system with affiliate links posted every couple of minutes, there is no reason not to give back.

Posting With Links:

When writing a post with a link, whether to your site, an affiliate link, or just something cool you found, there is no need to place a full URL. Just using the www.sitename.com format will automatically make a clickable link.

While affiliate links are okay, try to post valuable content as well. Just putting up a bunch of obvious affiliate links will lose your following.

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If social media is a 21st century phenomena, and a web 2.0 craze; then Twitter is a microcosm of that craze. It seems everybody wants to be followed nowadays.

For some businesses, still trying to get to grips with Social media and Web 2.0, Twitter has them scratching their heads and some are even quite afraid of it; “what if no one wants to follow me, won’t that do more harm than good?”

The answer is no; if no one is following you, no one will know, will they?

If you don’t know the answer to that question, then clearly you haven’t yet embraced the phenomenon that is Twitter.

One business that has always been quick to embrace new technology, and has fallen in love with Twitter is Homesgofast. The overseas property portal is not only “on Twitter”, but they have even found its applications in building the business.

Nick Marr, director of Marr International, the group behind the portal, said:

“We absolutely love Twitter! It is really good for us, and for any business that produces engaging articles and content on a regular basis. Twitter allows you to share your content with the world, and if it is good content, your gang of followers will quickly grow.

“At first we thought it was just a way of building traffic to the site, brand image and additional back-links for SEO. But as our following grows, we are being approached by businesses wanting to advertise and/or affiliate with us — through Twitter!”

Nick said their “Tweets” had become particularly popular with property marketers in Jamaica. “We are in the process of forming a working relationship with the proprietor of propertyadsja.com, who contacted us after seeing our following grow on Twitter,” Nick explained, adding: “we will continue to exploit this new medium, and are particularly keen to follow, and be followed by those involved in the Jamaican property market.”

Homesgofast’s following on Twitter is growing by the day, click here to become part of the craze.

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Although Twitter is captivating and watching ones followers increase is great fun at the same time I find it rather frustrating. First you have the people who want to tell you what they are having for dinner. These people should create a personal twitter profile to communicate with friends who give a hoot! I really don’t want my twitter pages clogged up with what people are eating or drinking or planning for their evening activities. Therefore I have a very quick “unfollow” finger when it comes to those people.

Then you have the people who, under the guise of sending out interesting content to their followers, send a continuous stream of links to news items?? Do they think we can’t read? Is it not true that those of us who follow the news will get it from our preferred source? They are clogging up our space! Unfollow!

Then there is the frustration that makes me wonder if anyone is really reading anything. I make a point of only posting things which may either a) stimulate a dialogue in my related field of internet marketing or b) be of interest to those who have chosen to follow and be followed by me.  With this in mind, sometimes I put out a question such as “Does anybody know how long it takes for followers to be listed on your DM list? ” Reasonable question, one would think someone would reply. Nope. Nada. Does this mean nobody reads what I write? Will I begin to develop an insecurity complex because no one finds my tweets interesting enough to read?

The benefits to using Twitter when launching a new product are definitely there. If you have a personal profile for use to update friends and family – great fun. But it just seems to me that it will become clogged with useless garble and may possibly lose the luster of being a marketing tool? Comments welcome…..

You can follow me on elizabethanco….ok, so I am addicted to the silly thing!

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When it comes to increasing your blog reader base and driving more traffic to your posts, there are few platforms more effective than Twitter. Twitter is an excellent tool for connecting with your readers and building a rapport. All businesses should use Twitter as a part of their marketing and branding strategy. For bloggers, knowing how to use Twitter effectively can lead to unbeatable exposure. Here are 5 steps any blogger can take to get his posts to go viral on Twitter.

1. Increase Your Followers

Obviously it’s going to be challenging to get your tweeted posts seen by a lot of people if there are only 20 people following you. Your first strategy should be to increase the number of people that are following you. The easiest way to do this is to follow lots of new people. Newbies tend to follow you right back. You can also look up the target keywords in your niche and follow the people who are talking about those keywords on Twitter. It’s particularly helpful to find the users who have a big following in your niche and then try to get them to follow you because they are the ones that will help your content go viral. Avoid following too many people who don’t follow you back because this can make your account look spammy and give you a bad image. Make sure the number of followers you have and the number of people you follow are about the same or at least not drastically different.

2. Become an Expert in Your Niche

Be consistent with your tweets. Regularly link to interesting articles that you think would be of interest to your followers and provide them with value every time. By regularly linking to informative articles in your niche, your followers will begin to look to you as a great source of information. This is an effective way to build your brand and it will pave the way for you to tweet your own posts. Your followers will be expecting valuable content since you have already positioned yourself as an expert in your niche.

3. Promote Your Blog

Don’t expect people to find your Twitter page and click on your link. Make the most of Twitter by tweeting your own posts! Treat your tweets as if they were your headline. Make them attention-grabbing and interesting so more people click through. Try posting the same tweet twice at different times of day to make sure you reach all your readers who didn’t see your first tweet. When you post a tweet multiple times, make sure to delete the first tweet so you don’t look like a spammer.

4. Write Interesting Articles for Your Blog

This might sound obvious but sometimes the more obsessed people get with promoting their blog and social networking, the less they pay attention to writing posts of good quality on a consistent basis. When you are just writing to fill up your blog, it shows. Make sure your posts are very informative, well-written, and that they provide unique information your readers won’t be able to find elsewhere.

5. Make It Easy for Your Followers to Re-Tweet Your Articles

After you’ve done all of the above, you have to leave it to your followers to do the rest. To make it easier for your followers to repost your tweets, add a “tweet this” link at the bottom of your tweets. How do you do it? Simply go to http://addthis.com/ and place the bookmarking plugin in your html.

If you aren’t already using Twitter, you’re missing an immense opportunity to give your website/blog good exposure. If you’re looking for a strategy to increase subscribers, traffic to your site, and a loyal reader base, Twitter is an indispensable tool that should play a prominent role in your master plan.

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There’s definitely no shortage of add-ons and additional tools being released to make expand on the ever-increasing growth of Twitter.  Probably the most efficient ones that everyone can find a use for are the Twitter desktop applications that allow you to tweet from separate client in a small window instead of spending all your Twitter time on the actual website.

Right now, the two most popular Twitter desktop apps are TweetDeck and Twhirl

TweetDeck:
One thing that can happen once you build a huge list of followers is that you get overwhelmed by trying to keep up with the long list of non-stop tweets from your network. TweetDeck is a lightweight application that allows you to break down that information into organized groups that are a lot easier to manage.

The TweetDeck screen can be set up to be split into columns that show groups of messages separately such as replies, direct messages, but also can show lists of specified groups as well. So, let’s say you have poker buddies mixed in with your Twitter network of Internet marketers. You can have two separate columns  – one for poker, one for Internet marketing, and simply add users to the appropriate groups.

The organization in TweetDeck drastically kills the noise, and it’s very easy to use. This is definitely the top choice for a serious Tweeter.

Twhirl
Twhirl is quite a bit smaller than TweetDeck, with not as many features, but still is a great little application that let’s yo follow your Twitter stream easier than refreshing the twitter website all day.

If you don’t need all the organization features of TweetDeck, then you might want to try something a little more compact like Twhirl. It still has the main features you need like search, url-shortener, etc. You can also cross-post to other social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) which is a nice feature.

Regardless which app you choose, either will surely add convenience to your Twitter experience. Now, go tweet from your desktop!

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Twitter.com has surpassed all expectations of growth. It is growing at an unbelievable rate and may come in top 10 of Alexa.com ranking if continues its march like this. Do you have a twitter page? If you have a twitter page, then I am suggesting something that will add color and zing to your page. I am speaking of backgrounds that you can add on your page. Good backgrounds can not only change the look of your Twitter profile page but also get you more followers. Twitter is being increasingly used for business promotion and backgrounds come handy to liven up the page in such cases. Even otherwise backgrounds give a personalized look to your page. Here is how you add backgrounds to your twitter page.

Some websites are offering backgrounds in many designs. You get designs such as flowers, stars, stripes, hearts, girly, celebs, sports, nature, music, tv shows, emo, butterflies, birds and animals, diamonds, polka dots, patterns, etc.

To change the background image of your Twitter page, first of all find a good background image from any website offering twitter backgrounds. Once you choose your image, right click on your chosen background image and save it to your computer hard drive where you can easily find it again. For example: the d drive. Then open your Twitter page and click ‘settings’ at the top of the page. Go to the ‘design’ tab and click on ‘Change background image’. Go and find the image, which you saved earlier. Put a check mark in the ’tile background’ check box if you think the background image must be repeated or tiled. Click ‘save changes’ and you will find your page has got new life with the Twitter background. Try different backgrounds everyday and ask your friends about their opinion. You will find that some designs reflect your personality better than others. Some colors may look professional and some may look fun. You have to choose everything depending upon the purpose of the page. Whichever gets highest votes may be kept on the page for a longer period otherwise keep changing the page and have fun.

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I was very relunctent to start Twitter. Don’t I already have enough in my life with myspace, facebook, and Youtube. Thats what I thought to myself. However, I heard a lot of celebritities were on Twitter saying interesting comments. So I decided I had better see what all the commotion was all about. The first thing I did when I got to Twitter was find the celebrity pages. I went to Oprah’s page first. I noticed that since joining Twitter Oprah has followed notable celebrities like Shaq, Hugh Jackson, and the Kutchers. However, there is one noteworthy person that she is not following. She is not following Barack Obama. Most would think that her first following would have been with Obama. After all Oprah is his number one fan. She pulled out all the stops to get him elected. Winfrey first endorsed Obama before he was even a candidate in September 2006. She made campaign appearances, and rallied behind Obama. So why is she not interested in Obama on Twitter?

There are two major Barack Obama sites on Twitter. The most followed is Barack Obama with over one million followers. The other is Obama News with around 99,000 followers. Moreover, Oprah has really gotten involved with Twitter. There are two main Oprah sites on Twitter. Her main Twitter site were she tweets. She started tweeting on April 17th and has already obtained over 800,000 followers. Next in line is O Magazine with over 45,000 followers. The best unofficial site is witter.com/Oprah_Giveaways.

There are a couple of reasons I think that she does not follow Obama. First, Obama has not tweeted much since the campaign has been over. After the Inauguration there have only been 4 tweets. Obama’a tweets are very impersonal. They look like press releases. It would be nice if he actually tweeted on how he is doing. After all that’s the slogan of Twitter . There have been a lot of Tweets on Obama News. However, the tweets on Obama News are not put out by Obama himself.

One a side not I noticed that Oprah is not following O Magazine. Maybe she does not read the magazine either. Anyway, there have been other famous non followings. Palin who at first did not follow John McCain. However, not long after the “non following” was blogged about she was following McCain. I’m sure as soon as this gets out it will only take a few seconds before Oprah is following Obama. Or perhaps she has abandoned Obama for Shaq Diesel 2012.

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Are you Twittering yet? Those new to Twitter might not really ‘get’ what it this social marketing tool is at first but as soon as you find some people to follow and get people following you, you’re going to see the potential. Micro blogging is mini blogging and it can pack a wallop of a punch in terms of social networking and marketing because of the potential for followers who could pay attention to every thing you have to say! Woo people with credit cards in their hand and you are golden!

What’s interesting is how many people on the microblogging platform are being sold something constantly and don’t even realize it because they’re just participating in an online discussion. Those discussions lead to links being clicked on and buzz being spread and ultimately, to people making money!

If you want to make money online and think you don’t have time for a tool with 140 characters and a lot of idle chit chat, you’re leaving money on the table! Look at Twitter and see all the potential.

Follow and Be Followed

Twitter only works if you’re following people and they’re following you. If you’ve joined and done nothing with your profile, it’s not going to do anything for you. Follow and be followed. One doesn’t work well without the other. Unless you’re super famous, people won’t stay on your follower list unless they feel like you’re listening to them. If you’re an online guru with a lot of clout people might not really care if you’re on their list because they still want to know what you’re saying but if you’re going to use the tool, you need to be prepared to converse with the little people and avoid elitism. That’s not to say you have to follow every single person that clicks on your name, though. There’s a fair bit of Twitter spam going on so you’ll want to be a little bit choosy about whether you follow someone or not. And, that tells you right there what you shouldn’t use Twitter for. Spammers quickly get ignored with this tool.

Twitter Tools

Because Twitter is a pretty basic tool, there are a lot of advantages to using some of the free tools that exist to enhance the Twitter experience. There are dozens of tools that help you get Twitter doing what you want or help you mine the user base for information. Tools like Tweetdeck, Twhirl, TwitterFox, TweetBeep, Hashtags, Twittermail, Twitterly and more all have varying features and benefits that can help you maximize the earning potential.

Success from Reciprocity

Reciprocity is key to success on this social marketing tool. Because it’s a virtual water cooler environment, you need to be a positive contributor in order to gain benefits from it. After you find a group to follow and get some people to follow you, you need to converse, you need to provide value and you should establish yourself as a valuable person to follow. Then, people will do things like: click your URL, re-tweet your interesting tweets, tell others to follow you, write @before your username so their followers can see you might be worth following, social bookmarking your interesting tweets, digging your URLs and more. See how this tool can help you?

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I used to see one of the latest online fads, Twitter, as a super time waster. I didn’t see any reason for it so it looked like a bunch of kids sharing useless and private information like bathroom trips and nose pickings. Now I see it as an extension of an older hobby, CB or ham radio. They both trapped nerdy kids into an isolated world they could be alone in. But both were a complex social network which proved to be beneficial to society.

While I’m not old enough to remember, the ham radio fad helped in both world wars and with people in a disaster situation.

My understanding is that every block had someone who monitored the CB for cutting news of the red invasion from Russia and twisters or hurricanes. Any well equipped bomb shelter or basement had a ham radio. Even if no one knew what to do with it, it was there.

Move forward a few decades when a natural disaster hit Southern California in 2008. I saw another side of Twitter. I noticed that many web sites about the fires referred to Twitter postings. So I started looking into it.

What I saw blew me away. People were using Twitter to plot escape routes and keep track of where the fire front currently was. I can only guess how many lives were saved by this “useless” fad. Another Internet fad was being used in ways I never thought of. Mashups of Google maps (a mixture of locations) were being used by the authorities to show the latest locations and statistics. Another marked the locations of refugee camps.

Then I noticed another use for Twitter. While not life saving, it was useful none the less. I went to a programmers convention in LA and was expecting the chaos these conventions brought 30 years ago.

However, the convention was less chaotic and people knew where to go and what to do because so many of the attendees were Twittering about last minute changes, which sessions were good, and where to eat lunch. The registration desk was less of a bottle neck since fewer people had a reason to hang around it.

Grandparents are another possible audience. Wouldn’t many grandparents enjoy being able to keep track of their darlings life?

added: 5-5-2009

Yet another beneficial use I’ve seen for Twitter was when vandals or terrorists took a hack saw to AT&T’s backbone. Not only did several server farms go done, but the phone service in the area did too. So AT&T communicated with their customers with Twitter. Ignoring the irony temporarily, once again Twitter proved itself to be a good media for humans with unusual needs like the one where ATT was victimized by either vandals or terrorists. If ATT didn’t respond and left their customers hanging in the wind, it would have been a PR nightmare for them.

I still don’t see Twitter’s value for marketting a service, but if it exists I will learn.

Now I see Twitter as practical in some situations and a virtual life-saver in others. Of course some people take it too far and do end up wasting time. But isn’t that a definition of a hobby?

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When someone decides to ask you if they can follow you on Twitter they are basically asking if the two of you can be friends. The first thing that mostly everyone does when they get a follow request is to go and look at the requester’s profile page. Due to Spam attacking us around every electronic corner, it is very important to take the proper amount of time and go look at every requester’s profile, as opposed to just accepting everyone’s request that asks.

It’s a good idea to feel out each person that starts following you. Some information you can try and find out is what is their name, do you have anything in common, could they be a potential client? It would be great to be able to find that information out but it’s also important to remember that Twitter is a two way street and they will want to know a lot about you as well.

It’s important to realize that your profile is actually a window into who you actually are. It’s almost like a commercial that shows you and your life letting the viewer get to know you a bit. When you first log on to Twitter you are presented with templated backgrounds to choose from or if you feel adventurous you can create a custom design. If you really want to go crazy with marketing yourself or your company’s brand you can actually hire a web designer to design a custom Twitter profile page.

When designing a Twitter profile it is important to remember the following important tips.

The cleaner the better – If you have a lot of things on the page it will pull the visitor’s eyes from the important things, like your content.

Consistency is key – It’s crucial to make sure the content on your profile page aligns itself well with your company’s content.

Short is not a bad thing – If you can’t attract a viewer in the first few seconds then they are lost.

Keep it useful – Are you offering consistent useful information? Do you give multiple ways to connect with you on and off Twitter? Do you have ample examples of your work?

Is it interesting – Why would someone talk to you? Are you posing questions frequently? If you can get someone into a discussion with you then you will be able to begin to discover their needs.

Any type of business can be successful using Twitter if they create a profile page that exhibits the items above. By completing at a few Twitter tutorials and by having a profile page as outlined above will give your potential followers an easy decision on if they are going to follow you or not.

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