Wednesday, February 18, 2009

If You Like Twitter, You'll Love These Ways to Make it Better!

By Matt Hellstrom

Do you know what Twitter is? If not, you should - it's one of the hottest web 2.0 things going right now! Twitter is a website that enables you to send out little "micro-blogs" of 140 characters or less to anyone that's following you (that's like friends in Facebook). You can let people know what you're doing at any time, and this can be pretty cool. These messages can be business or personal, and should be both.

Are you building a presence on the web? Then you need to let people know what you're doing. Twitter can help with that. If you make a new post to your blog, send out a tweet. If you put a YouTube video up there, let your friends and followers know.

On the other hand, make sure that you don't post only business type of posts. If you do, your followers are just going to think you're pitching them and they either won't pay attention to what you're saying, or they'll "unfollow" you. That's what social networking, or web 2.0 is all about - being social. Even if you're totally focused on your business and you don't do much else, you need to find something, anything, to talk about.

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.

Here are 7 things I do to build my twitter empire in the most efficient way possible.

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 your followers. Before you know it, people are going to start following you that you didn't follow first. Go ahead and follow them back, and send them a tweet with your blog address in it. If you can't follow any more because you're at the limit, delete a few that don't have pictures and haven't followed you. Those guys probably aren't too serious about Twitter anyway. This brings up 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. Go into your Facebook account and add the Twitter application. You're not on Facebook? Well fix that problem now! You absolutely must be on Facebook if you're serious about social marketing, it's that important. The way that works is when you make a post on Twitter, it will post the same thing on Facebook. Twice as many people will see what you're doing with the same amount of effort.

5. Try out twhirl. This is a desktop application that displays tweets from others without having to be on the twitter site. You can also post your own tweets there, and more. What I like about this program is that it has a url shortener built into it. If you want to post a long link in one of your tweets, you might run out of space because you can only have posts of 140 characters or less. Using twhirl, you can enter the url into a box and click "shorten" and it will give you a short little link that you can put in your post. Download twhirl at twhirl.com.

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. Tie it in with ezinearticles.com. There is a place in your ezinearticles profile that allows you to put your twitter information in there so that when one of your articles gets approved it will automatically send out a tweet. Same idea as above.

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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