Twitter Tools Part 1
by Al Ferretti and Skeeter Hansen

Twitter Tools (part 1 of 6): “For Fun and More”

Twitter Watchdog presents Twitter Tools Part 1 of 6 For Fun and MoreEarlier this year, Evan Williams CEO and Co Founder of Twitter reported that there are about 2,000 3rd party tools and apps for twitter. Wow~ Did he say 2,000? That’s a lot of options.

To keep things simple we’re sharing a tidbit with a link to some of the more popular twitter tools in use today. This is part 1 of 6 and we are beginning with twitter tools and apps “For Fun and More”

Crowd Status- View the status of your friends on Twitter in a start-up page style.

Bkkeepr– With this service, you can track the books you are reading on Twitter.

CommuterFeed – You can share your traffic report on Commuterfeed using Twitter.

Foamee – This is a fun site that allows you to track people who owes you beer or coffee using your Twitter account.

FoodFeed – is a micro blogging site that you can use to post about your food habits through Twitter.

InnerTwitter– Meditate by receiving chimes at regular intervals from InnerTwitter.

Notches– Allows you to write reviews of certain items on Twitter.

Hahlo– if you are not satisfied with your Twitter interface, you can check out Hahlo to manage your Twitter account. It gives you a separate profile page and the rest of the Twitter features in a new look.

My Tweeple– Manage your friends and followers in Twitter on a single web page.

Post Like a Pirate– This tool allow you to convert your post into pirate-speak before posting it to Twitter. I, however, don’t need it, because I already speak like a pirate. Yarr!

Quitter will help you how to use Twitter to quit smoking. Bonus points for cool name.

Roll the dice – You can use this service to do all the silly things on Twitter like roll a dice, flip a coin, deal cards, or generate a random number.

StrawPoll – Sends out polls on Twitter that you can participate on. As they say, you can never have too many polls.

TrackThis – This is an useful service to get updates of your shipment using Twitter. It supports FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL tracking codes.

Twee60 – You can tweet your Xbox live status with Twee60 automatically.

TwitResponse – Set up your Twitter posts for the future.

TwittEarth – This is a 3D model of the earth displaying the latest updates on Twitter across the globe. You can download the tool as a screensaver.

Twitterfeed – Posts your blog posts automatically to Twitter.

TwitterMeThis – When you follow TwitterMeThis, it will send you a question randomly. If you are the first to answer that question, then you get $5.

TwitterSpy – provides you a Google map on its site. when you hover your mouse above certain locations on that map, you get to see the latest public posts from that area. Strangely addicting.

Tweetclouds – Create a word cloud from a public Twitter stream using this service.

Tweetgift – Remember Facebook where you can poke, throw a sheep, or hug a friend? Tweetgift enables you to do the same on Twitter.

Twaction – Another service that lets you do Facebook-style pokes and slaps at friends.

Twistori – Based on Summize, this service collects Twitter messages with words such as love, hate, think, believe, wish, and feel and displays them on its site with automatic updates.

Twitpoll – You can participate on polls using Twitter through Twitpoll.

Tweetshots – this service allows you to take your Twitter posts to Tumblr, embed in websites, or send over email.

TwitterAnswers combines Twitter and Mosio, so that you can send questions over Twitter and have them answered by other people.

Twitter Karma – This tool fetches your Twitter friends and followers and displays them for you, letting you paginate through them in a nicer way than you would on Twitter.

TwitterNotes – You can create notes on TwitterNotes using Twitter and tagging your notes.

TwitterPoster – This site generates a mosaic of user icons of those with a large number of followers on Twitter.

TwitterSnooze – If you have friends on Twitter who are updating every 10 seconds and are irritating the hell out of you, you can simply now snooze them away using this tool.

TwitterSpectrum – Based on Summize, this tool show you the associated words of two pair of words or names in a nice spectrum layout.

Xpenser – Record your expenses using Twitter. You can also use other mediums like email, SMS, IM, voice, etc.

Who Should I follow Who Should I follow – Find interesting people to follow on Twitter using this tool.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/twitter-tools-part-1-1147155.html

About the Author

For more Articles about Twitter we encourage you to follow the link below http://twitterwatchdog.com or our
RSS Feed at TwitterWatchdog RSS
brought to you by Skeeter Hansen and Al Ferretti

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the followers. That’s why information on Twitter is short, to the point and effective. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. You can access Twitter via Web, Desktop Applications and even SMS. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

I started using tweeter some time ago. Surprisingly after few days of posting some tweets it started getting indexed in Google. While Google continues to dominate the world of “search”, it has a long way to go in offering real-time search capabilities.

Twitter is a powerful communication platform providing social networkers the opportunity to post updates in real-real time. The growth of twitter has been so phenomenal that Google also started paying attention and it is indexing Tweets. Many Twitter pages and individual tweets can be seen on the first page of Google.

Then I started learning more about it. Rather than using it just as a social networking platform, if used properly, it can benifit you in so many ways including by boosting your personal brand and enhancing website traffic.
 
 I want to list down some of the methods by which Twitter can benefit us:

1. A Powerful Tool for Obtaining Information / news. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. This is very useful for active social news participants as they can subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows them to receive and view content quickly.Twitter can be quite an effective search tool for researching any kind of information. The results can complement other methods or sources of information. Twitter has a wide range of users, who constantly update Twitter with new information on different niches.
2. To reinforce Personal Brand and awareness. Twitter is a social media platform which has the primary advantage of developing a social brand that is well-connected and accessible. Due its vast usage, Twitter can be a used for promoting your products and services and establish your brand. If you have established business you can use Twitter to enhance your brand image. On the other hand if you have a smaller business with limited brand awareness then Twitter can be excellent for promoting and establishing your brand among enormous audience.
3. Get Feedback. Twitter provides you with an opportunity to join a group of interest by following others who are influential within your niche. Twitter also allows businesses to communicate with customers and receive feedback in a casual and cost effective manner. It can prove useful in understanding and obtaining consumer opinion about new products or services or new ideas. You can also use Twitter to communicate new ideas with people and test public opinion. Bloggers sometimes use Twitter to discuss ideas for new posts.
4. Use it as HR tool to Recruit People. Want to hire a good web analyst, web designer, or programmer? Send out a tweet asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.
5. Marketing Opportunities. Twitter can be used in promoting your products and services. It is a cost effective method to increase awareness about your products or services. You can use it to inform customers about any new announcement or special offers. Twitter offers all the advantages of traditional text message marketing and more. It can prove to be a useful tool for conducting market research by better understanding of potential or existing customers.
6. Boost your website traffic. Twitter can be used to direct traffic to your websites. If you tweet about your website, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up and re-tweet it. Bloggers often use Twitter to inform their audience of any new posts on their blog by posting links on Twitter. Thus Twitter can be seen as a traffic generation tool. The placement of links within profiles and conversations can direct visitors to a specific website and is especially powerful if you pitch to early adopters and influencers.
7. Make new friends. Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is a simple way for you connect with like minded people outside of your usual circle. A Twitter association can be developed into a long term acquaintance.
8. Spreading Social Network. Twitter is an excellent tool to help bloggers share links to content which is of mutual interest to like minded people. On a personal level Twitter allows one to communicate with friends and family or close network of connections. On an organizational level Twitter allows colleagues who are not co-located to communicate with each other or businesses to communicate with their customers. With Twitter it is also possible to target a specific niche or audience by following others from your industry. It can thus allow a business to build contacts within the industry. Communities have developed around many of Twitter groups or niches. Twitter can be used to establish reliable and long term relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
9. Get Votes. Send a link to your stories you’ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Your followers might vote up the stories if they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites
10. Event Updates. Twitter can be used as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes by entrepreneurs. This is a stress-free way to broadcast information. Businesses have also used Twitter effectively to measure the performance of campaigns.
11. Promotion. Twitter can be used as a promotional tool to announce offline endeavors or upcoming online events (webinars, virtual tradeshows etc). If you are an e-commerce site, perhaps you have a deal of the day or seasonal offers where you can promote these deals. The fact is you do not want to be too promotional, but Twitter does present the opportunity to promote your products or service and brand to your friends.
12. SEO Boost. If you have good content on your website and you want to drive additional traffic to this content on your website, you can use Twitter to do so. A quick tweet with the URL can help drive additional traffic to a preferred landing page on your site to help persuade the conversion on your site.
13. Find future Prospects online. Twitter allows you to interact with potential prospects and your target audience. While you do not want to be in direct touch all of the time, Twitter does allow you to engage with your prospects by re-tweeting their posts or responding to something that they may have tweeted about. Discretion and tact is needed in this area.
14. Twitter and Mobile.  Since Twitter is very simple to use and is limited to 140 characters, mobile use with Twitter is also easy. You can both send and receive updates what you and your friends are doing on the go using a simple SMS. Twitter can be a great mobile communication tool. As we know in business, this can be a pretty powerful thing.
15. Offer live exposure. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.

In short, Twitter allows you to monitor how influencers think or feel, you can also get into their attention zone via active networking. For businesses, Twitter is another channel which connects current and potential customers with your product or brand. It allows deeply infiltration into the lifestyles of interested participants, which helps to build brand persistence/loyalty. So twitter can be used a tool to achieve simple aim of tracking and directing attention from various groups of your interest and in turn drive business.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/benefits-of-using-twitter-1170744.html

About the Author

Shilpa Singh, Director Himshilp- Internet Marketing Consultants handling SEO, SEM, website designing and website promotional stratagises.

http://www.himshilp.com

If you use Twitter very often, then you may be interested in learning strategies about how to earn cash on Twitter. It certainly takes time to manage relationships on Twitter, but it all can be monetized for your benefit. There are many companies who are increasingly turning to Twitter to reach the social media audience and because of this, it is actually possible to make some money using Twitter. Not only do Twitter users make money through microblogging, business owners are also learning how to monetize Twitter to increase company revenue. Strategies on How to Monetize Twitter * Sponsored Tweets: A new trend that has arisen is company advertisers starting to use a service called “Sponsored Tweets” which allows these companies to connect with microblogging services that will tweets ads for them. If you are a small to medium-sized business, this is a great service to use for finding microbloggers who will tweet your promotions. If you’re a regular Twitter user, then you would have developed a sizeable amount of followers, and this means that you can use Sponsored Tweets to make money with microblogging. Recently a company called IZEA made its name with a microblogging service called PayPerPost which provides a Sponsored Tweets program that connects companies with microbloggers. Despite the fact you can make money as a company or microblogger, the downside is that it has spurred a lot of controversy and concern over the fact that Twitter users may have to sift through a lot of promotions to reach the information they seek. * HootSuite and Google AdSense: HootSuite is a third party Twitter application that provides a way for Twitter users and companies to manage their brands on Twitter. The application was just released a few months ago and helps companies to track conversations online with multiple users managing the application. HootSuite can also be used to make money using your tweets by incorporating Google AdSense in your tweets with outgoing links. In return the user has to share the tweets with outgoing links with HootSuite. For example, let’s say 6 people clicked on your tweet. If they click on your AdSense ad 6 times, 3 of those clicks will belong to HootSuite. * EasyTweets and Subscriptions: EasyTweets provides a way for you to manage more than one Twitter account and also makes monetizing Twitter a lot easier. Due to the fact that it has a good account managing capability, a large amount of Twitter users currently use it to charge a subscription to their messages on Twitter. If you offer highly valuable and timely information such as specific news or online deals, you can charge a monthly subscription for access to your tweets. EasyTweets makes it possible to administer various accounts with various subscriptions to your tweets. It must be remembered that these are only a couple of strategies that Twitter users can use to monetize Twitter. There exist other ways that companies and Twitter users are actively using to create extra income on Twitter. With a bit of research, you can easily find other methods to monetize Twitter.

If you use Twitter very often, then you may be interested in learning strategies about how to earn cash on Twitter. It certainly takes time to manage relationships on Twitter, but it all can be monetized for your benefit.

There are many companies who are increasingly turning to Twitter to reach the social media audience and because of this, it is actually possible to make some money using Twitter. Not only do Twitter users make money through microblogging, business owners are also learning how to monetize Twitter to increase company revenue.

Strategies on How to Monetize Twitter

* Sponsored Tweets: A new trend that has arisen is company advertisers starting to use a service called “Sponsored Tweets” which allows these companies to connect with microblogging services that will tweets ads for them. If you are a small to medium-sized business, this is a great service to use for finding microbloggers who will tweet your promotions. If you’re a regular Twitter user, then you would have developed a sizeable amount of followers, and this means that you can use Sponsored Tweets to make money with microblogging.

Recently a company called IZEA made its name with a microblogging service called PayPerPost which provides a Sponsored Tweets program that connects companies with microbloggers. Despite the fact you can make money as a company or microblogger, the downside is that it has spurred a lot of controversy and concern over the fact that Twitter users may have to sift through a lot of promotions to reach the information they seek.

* HootSuite and Google AdSense: HootSuite is a third party Twitter application that provides a way for Twitter users and companies to manage their brands on Twitter. The application was just released a few months ago and helps companies to track conversations online with multiple users managing the application.

HootSuite can also be used to make money using your tweets by incorporating Google AdSense in your tweets with outgoing links. In return the user has to share the tweets with outgoing links with HootSuite. For example, let’s say 6 people clicked on your tweet. If they click on your AdSense ad 6 times, 3 of those clicks will belong to HootSuite.

* EasyTweets and Subscriptions: EasyTweets provides a way for you to manage more than one Twitter account and also makes monetizing Twitter a lot easier. Due to the fact that it has a good account managing capability, a large amount of Twitter users currently use it to charge a subscription to their messages on Twitter. If you offer highly valuable and timely information such as specific news or online deals, you can charge a monthly subscription for access to your tweets. EasyTweets makes it possible to administer various accounts with various subscriptions to your tweets.

It must be remembered that these are only a couple of strategies that Twitter users can use to monetize Twitter. There exist other ways that companies and Twitter users are actively using to create extra income on Twitter. With a bit of research, you can easily find other methods to monetize Twitter.

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INCREASE TWITTER FOLLOWERS

There is no who havent heard about twitter yet

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications

Who doesnt like to dominate such a network with thousands of followers to follow

Yes You Can Dominate Twitter World

Just Visit

http://twitterarmy.tk/

We have got enough evidences for you there.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/how-to-monetize-twitter-1502548.html

About the Author

What used to be a script a team of web developers used to communicate while working on team projects is now the largest micro-blogging platform and the fastest growing social network on the planet.

Throughout 2009 Twitter has grown tremendously. In March, Mashable reported that twitter has grown 1,382% year-over-year compared to 2008.

Many social media experts believe that in 2010 Twitter is going to outgrow Facebook size of which accumulates to 22% of Total Internet Audience.

In February 2009, when I first started using Twitter, I had no clue it will change the way I market online.

Twitter has dramatically improved my business during the course of 2009 and in this post I want to share 10 specific ways Twitter allowed me to run a more profitable Internet Marketing Campaign.

1. Connections

In 2009 Nokia is not the one that connects people-Twitter is. Thanks to Twitter, I met hundreds of interesting, exciting, uplifting and fun people.

Via Twitter I connected with hundreds of internet marketers, just like me, which inevitably led to a series of great connections that my business benefited from.

Twitter also made it easier for me to connect with individuals I otherwise haven’t had a chance to reach. Celebrities are in love with Social Media and they try to reply to anyone who comes in contact-so the rest can see how cool they are (e.g.: Ashton Kutcher, Darren Rowse, Shaq, etc.).

2. Traffic Generation

I learned to leverage Twitter for traffic before I even understood what “SEO” meant, and it gave my blog the start up boost it needed to get off the ground. For that I thank Twitter.

Besides being a connectivity tool, Twitter is a great way to generate traffic to your blog.

Twitter is responsible for approximately 25% of all IgorHelpsYouSucceed traffic. That’s a lot!

3. Information Sharing

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, but Twitter should stand for “Easier then RSS and Email syndication” because it makes information sharing as easy and as viral is it gets.

Throughout 2009, Twitter has helped me to discover hundreds of great information sources as well as profitable data I could apply in my business and make more money as a result.

4. Inspiration and Motivation

Twitter is probably one of the best tools to use if you want to spread inspiration online. 140 characters are perfect to fit in a quote or a call to action.

I can recall dozens of times when I was discouraged by a set back and Twitter cheered me up with an insight or a quote that one of my followers shared.

Since then, I regularly tweet quotes because I know that there’s someone out there who’s waiting for a flash of inspiration to turn things around once again.

5. Reach Increase

If you’re using Twitter to market-you can say that you have an unfair advantage over anyone who does not.

Having a Twitter account is like having really long arms that you can reach further than most people can with.

Twitter opens many doors that you couldn’t have opened otherwise or that would have cost you hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars.

I know that I am being general here, but that’s only because I don’t want to give away the ace up my sleeve .

6. Writing Skills

Another important way Twitter improved my business is the fact that as a result of sending out 140 characters tweets, I became a better writer.

Prior to Twitter, there wasn’t any social network that would limit you in your status updates. Twitter completely changed the rules of the social game when it introduced the 140 character limit and the micro-blogging concept.

As a result I had to adapt a new writing style where I had to express the same feeling, idea or thought with less words.

It wasn’t easy at first. For a while I had to re-write my tweets dozens of times for them to convey the right message. However, within couple of weeks I mastered the skill of Twitter-Writing and as a result, now I can squeeze the same amount of information in 140 characters that I can in a paragraph of text.

Twitter’s limitation allowed forced me to cut the needless babble away from my writing and as a result my writing is a lot sharper then it used to be a year ago.

7. Authority

Authority is the number one factor in business and marketing that determines whether people will do what you tell them to do (e.g.: buy from you).

Since Twitter is completely open source-everyone can see your activity. By leveraging Twitter in specific ways, it is possible to generate instant affection, authority, sympathy and a whole spectrum of emotions to influence people.

People who joined Twitter immediately get the idea who is the “popular kid” simply by looking at the followers/following counter in people’s profiles.

I leveraged this fact to manufacture a higher social status to my followers which increased optins and sales.

I have also used Twitter to gather testimonials for my Mindset Course which resulted in 2.5% sales increase and 25% visitor to subscriber ratio.

8. Link Building and SEO

Did you know that every tweet you send out generates a separate page on Twitter?

It means that if you include a link in your Tweet, you have a backlink pointing back to your site which is crawled by the search engines immediately.

Although the link is a NoFollow, it’s still a valuable asset, because it’s a LINK!

Google loves Twitter as much as it does EzineArticles, YouTube, Digg and the rest of the “social networking mafia family”, therefore a dozen of backlinks from Twitter (a day) is a valuable asset to your SEO campaign.

Many SEO experts probably won’t support this statement, but you never know for sure. In 2009 social media was given a huge SEO authority by Google, Yahoo and Bing. That is why I believe that building links of Twitter is as important as submitting articles to EzineArticles and uploading videos to YouTube.

9. Social Media

Before Twitter came along, I used to hand out only on Facebook and a little bit on YouTube.

What Twitter did for my Social Media Marketing Campaign in 2009 is definitely worth mentioning in this post, because via Twitter I managed to drastically increase my social media activity on Digg, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Facebook, Mixx and Reddit.

I used Twitter to create my own Social Media Marketing circle. By connecting every social networking site I am on with Twitter, I increased my “seen activity”, authority, publicity and productivity.

10. Content Creation

You know what they say-content is King. It’s probably only a Prince, because Marketing is important too.

However search engines love fresh content which is probably the reason I try to update this blog every day or at least once in 2-3 days if I am busy working on a new project.

Twitter is the topic of 22 out of 170 posts I’ve written for IgorHelpsYouSucceed. And there are also 48 posts devoted to social media marketing, which means that Twitter is mentioned in at least 68 articles on this blog alone. Twitter is responsible for 40% of content on this blog which means it’s the main SEO traffic generation resource I have.

Another interesting fact is that Twitter related posts tend to get most responses from my readers, which means that I should write more about Twitter than anything else.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/home-business-articles/10-ways-twitter-improved-my-business-in-2009-1618056.html

About the Author

Just as I used Twitter to improve my business in 2009, you can too. I am not a rocket scientist or a web genius: I barely know how to use html codes to align my pictures to the left…

To find out how to use Twitter to generate traffic, I have prepared a special guide for you here.

Knowing how to apply the Twitter network marketing formula is going to determine your success within Twitter. The twitter formula is quite easy, but most, not only don’t know how to use it, but also don’t know what it is. Essentially, this marketing formula encompasses a number of things.

As a new twitter user, the first thing you should do is to setup your profile. This is so that those individuals visiting your page see that you are active within the community and are far more likely to follow you.

One of the biggest mistakes that new twitter network marketers make is in immediately adding contacts to their following list, without having issued out tweets, updated their profile or uploaded a photo of themselves.

This makes sense if you already have an online presence and are simply incorporating your current contacts from your address book or mailing list, but if you are currently working to establish your brand or grow your business, it is critical that you develop your twitter presence first, and then add or invite new followers.

This begins with your profile page, the entry point that every potential follower visits prior to adding you as a contact.

You need to make sure that you complete your profile and that you provide useful information about yourself so that people can either identify you or know what you are offering, involved in, or are interested in.

There are a few different fields relating to your profile that should never be left out, including your full name and your website URL.

Since your user name becomes part of your twitter profile’s URL, you should also make sure that you use a user name that is relevant to your market, niche or represents your business.

You can choose to use your name, if it is available for registration, your website URL, business name or simply keywords representing the market you are involved in. Personally, I recommend that you use your full name as your twitter username. This is so that your profile URL is structured like this:

http://twitter.com/Jane-Doe or http://twitter.com/JaneDoe

One thing that many people don’t know is that keywords featured within your actual twitter profile URL tie directly in with twitters built in search utility, meaning that whenever someone searches for information using specific keywords, twitter searches through profiles and usernames to pull relevant search results.

This means that you should always include your primary keyword within your profile fields, including your bio area, so that you are far more likely to be included in search results each time someone enters a relevant keyword associated with your market.

It’s important to determine what brand you are creating within the twitter network. If you run multiple websites or businesses, use different names (pen names) for business names, you will need to consider the best approach to take.

Do you want to create a single twitter account that serves as an all-in-one contact center for your different markets, or is it better to create multiple twitter accounts, each one focusing on your different businesses and markets?

Even with twitter’s simplistic structure, and the vast amount of tools that are available to help automate your activity and in building a following, you will still need to spend time actively participating within the twitter network community. This is only if you want to further your business and maximize your exposure.

This can be exceptionally difficult to do if you are running and managing multiple twitter accounts, so take that into consideration when you are developing your twitter account and choosing your main focus.

I recommend that you separate your tweets and activity for each of your main markets does help keep things organized and on track. This means to run each of your twitter accounts independently from each other.

By doing this, it will allow you to send out multiple tweets (messages) for each of your markets, rather than confusing potential buyers by using one account that randomly broadcasts messages covering multiple niches.

Twitter has no problem with people opening multiple accounts, however, you must actively use these accounts in order to keep them.

If you allow an account to become inactive for a period of time, twitter reserves the right to terminate the account and open up the possibility of someone else registering that user name. Thus, if you do not intend on creating multiple twitter accounts, make sure that you log in regularly to keep them active.

From within your twitter account, you will be able to add in a short bio. This field is exceptionally important! Once again, with twitter’s search function, it pulls information from the users’ bios to match them up with keywords entered into the search engine.

This means that you should include keywords that are relevant to your niche market, so that you are able to maximize exposure by being included in search results whenever another twitter user enters in those keywords.

Your bio shouldn’t showcase just keywords. You also want to ensure that you provide a bit of information about yourself, so that people who aren’t familiar with you can get to know who you are, and consider following you.

Your bio field, just like any twitter broadcast you send out, is limited to only 140 characters, so you’ll need to take some time to determine the best terms to describe yourself and your business.

Separate keywords with commas so that each keyword is individually placed.

Example: twitter network marketing, twitter network, twitter

When you are satisfied with your account, it’s time to write your first tweet. This can make people a little anxious, especially since once you post a tweet, everyone who visits your profile or chooses to follow you will be able to see it.

With twitter marketing, if you ever want to delete a message that you previously sent out, all you have to do is click on the tweet, look for the trash can icon and click it, to delete your message from the time line.

There is also the option to mark specific tweets as favorites, which will make it easy for you to locate the tweet later on, once you have multiple messages in the time line.

When it comes to writing tweets, don’t spend a lot of time worrying whether it’s creative enough, witty enough, or interesting enough.

Once you have become an active member of the twitter community, you’ll find it easier to think of entertaining and useful tweets, and will also be able to respond to ongoing discussions from those you follow and who follow you.

For now, post whatever is on your mind. Working on a website? Post about it. Perhaps you’ve found an interesting website or news story, post about it.

The idea is to simply post enough so that you become comfortable with the twitter system, and more importunately, so that your profile pages shows activity before you start inviting people to follow you.

Once you’ve posted your first tweet, it’s time to start following people on twitter, so that you can build up your twitter presence, and encourage people to follow you in return.

Don’t just sign up and blast out ads every few minutes expecting to achieve anything but annoying those on your list.

Take the time to talk to people individually by directing messages to specific people, post useful information or links to free products and resources that people in your various niche markets would appreciate.

Just like anything else, you need to develop a reputation on Twitter as being someone who is interested in helping others, while developing your own Twitter presence.

A great thing about Twitter network marketing is the ability to quickly locate other people who are involved in your target twitter market, or industry.

For example, if you are looking to find people to interview who may be experienced in specific things, you can find many people who are involved in nearly every topic and subject online.

It’s like a rolodex of the entire online business industry, and as Twitter continues to grow, more and more people are jumping on board, so expect to see Twitter evolve and change to improve their system and add more interactive, productive features that will make it easier to use and to reach out to others.

Posting subtle little updates about your current projects, websites, blogs and products is an easy way to keep people up to day on what you are doing, even people who otherwise might not know who you are, or what you do.

The way you present your updates and the frequency in which you do it, (avoid Twitter spamming) is critical in staying current and helping your brand become memorable and noticed by the community.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/online-business-articles/twitter-network-marketing-formula-2087470.html

About the Author

Lawren is a online network marketer who has helped many people overcome their struggles in network marketing. Generate More Leads & More Money Using This Network marketing Formula. Learn more about Social Network Marketing Here: Network Marketing Secrets.

According to Twitter.com, Twitter is “a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.” Often referred to as a micro-blog, twitter users post updates that are 140 characters or less (roughly equivalent to a sentence or two) – much like status updates on Facebook.

Twitter’s Impact and Ability

When it comes to Twitter, it is more than just a fad. At first, Twitter was used to relate what a user was doing at any given time and to see what others were up to on a moment-to-moment basis. Although the “what are you doing now?” aspect is still pretty central to Twitter’s culture, the site has since evolved into a news sharing, brand-building and information-gathering tool.

We can see twitter’s impact and ability to share information from the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Eyewitnesses sent an estimated 16 tweets every second. Twitter users on the ground helped compile a list of the dead and injured. In addition, users sent out vital information such as emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals needing blood donations. CNN called this “the day that social media appeared to come of age” since many different groups made significant use of Twitter to gather news and coordinate responses.

In addition, by using this micro-blogging service, you can find talented future employees and promote jobs openings. Many job searchers are now using twitter to get to know their potential future employers and look for interesting employment opportunities. In fact, there are entire websites dedicated to helping brands and candidates connect via twitter. Here at Yodle, we dedicated our Monday twitter postings to promoting all of our open jobs and hiring events.

Twitter’s Users
Among social networks, Twitter is unusual because it began as a tool used mainly by adults. But that has changed somewhat: at the end of 2008, thenumber of people under the age of 25 using Twitter was about 20%; at the end of 2009, that number rose above 30%. Still, there is a significant “older” demographic when compared to other social networks.

Additionally, the average household income of a Twitterer tends to be on the high end. According to statistics compiled by Website-Monitoring.com in April, 2010, 28% of Twitter using households have incomes in the $60-100k range, and 30% exceed $100k, which is roughly twice the median American income.

While all kinds of people use Twitter, there is a rough profile one can draw. Twitter users tend to be media savvy early adopters who are upwardly mobile. Whether or not you should use Twitter to promote your business, depends on whether the type of person that uses the micro-blogging phenomenon is a good potential client. If that person is your target demographic, it might be worth the time investment.

How to Start Twitter
Once you’ve decided that your customers might be the type of people that use Twitter, you may want to go about getting started. The service is free, and signing up for Twitter is pretty simple. All you have to do is log onto twitter.com, provide an email address and password; and think of a good handle (screen name). Using your name or your company’s name is a good start. In Twitter, you can find a great list of business best practices for brands and companies as well as some good examples of companies using twitter.

On your Twitter account, you will find “followers,” people that are following you, and “following,” people you are following. On your home screen (depending on which Twitter application you use), you will see a running feed of updates from all those people you are following; your followers will, in turn, see your updates. A “retweet” is the reposting of a tweet that a tweeter sees in his or her newsfeed. If a tweet is particularly interesting, it could lead to several retweets and sometimes will result in several new followers. It’s part of what makes Twitter so viral and differentiates it from other social networks.

What to Use Twitter for
Twitter can be a great tool for listening to conversations and identifying potential customers when they are talking about a need or looking for a service that you can fill. That is why most companies use Twitter to promote their company directly to current or future customers. It is also a great way for local businesses to send real-time information to customers in need and share discounts and deals with current customers. Twitter’s culture, partly because of the casual word abbreviations that the 140 characters limit creates, is very informal. Be careful not to be too blatant a marketing vehicle or you will turn people off.

Twitter is also used for inbound signaling. You can use Twitter to see what people are saying about you, your competitors or your industry in general. You can enter search terms to see who has been tweeting about that particular term (in Tweetdeck, you can dedicate an entire column to feeding you information about that search term). There are also services available to help you keep track of trends on Twitter like twendz.

Using a Twitter application like tweetdeck, or another desktop twitter application, is a great way to organize your followers, messages, etc. For example, on the original version of Twitter, you have to manually shorten URLs by using services like TinyURL or bit.ly whereas Tweetdeck shortens the URL automatically.

Finally remember, your aim should be to share interesting information that you think your followers will appreciate. Twitter is not a short sell, instead, it’s a long-term process during which you consistently share and interact (make sure to retweet; tweeters appreciate the shout out and are more likely to retweet you in turn). If people like and appreciate what you say, if feel that you’re genuine, they will be that much more receptive when you tactfully tweet about your company, products and services.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/know-more-about-twitter-and-how-it-can-help-grow-your-business-3183247.html

About the Author

Yodle – About Author:
Yodle is a leading provider of local online advertising that provides businesses with a simple and affordable way to get more phone calls – and new customers. Follow <a href=”http://twitter.com/yodle”>Yodle on Twitter</a> today! Check out <a href=”http://blog.yodle.com”>Yodle Blog</a> and you will read more about online advertising and social media advertising.

Twitter has grown by 974% in the last 12 months and shows now signs of slowing down. It’s hitting the UK’s press almost everyday and now everyone seems to want to get on Twitter.

Since the turn of the year Twitter users in the UK have trebled. Last week Twitter became one of the 100 most visited websites in the UK for the first time. It ranked 91st placing, above online heavyweights such as Expedia UK (96), Gumtree (100), easyJet (101), Digital Spy (103) and Money Supermarket (105).

However, the service is likely to be even more popular than the numbers imply, as figures are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications (such as Twitterrific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were included, the numbers would be even higher.

We thought as digital marketing experts, that it would be a useful exercise to twitter you through “How to set yourself up with a Twitter account.”

It doesn’t take long to get set-up with Twitter, but it helps if you know the basics. There are just a few easy steps to getting yourself Twittering within the hour….

How to set up your account

Go to Twitter.com and click on the Get Started-Join! button. Enter a username, password, and email address. Click on the I accept. Create my account button.

Twitter will then ask if you would like to see if some of your friends are on Twitter already by checking your online address book. However, your contacts will have to be in one of the recognized and supported services: GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, or MSN.

This wasn’t that helpful to me initially, since most of my contacts in Outlook. However, I do have a GMail account, so I just exported my contacts from outlook and then imported them into GMail. It worked flawlessly. However, if you get stuck or are unsure of how to do this, forget this step. You can have loads of fun adding and finding your friends later.

Check your settings. Make sure you are on your Twitter home page: Twitter.com/home. Click on the Settings link. Now enter your full name in the “Name” field. Make sure the “Time Zone” field is set correctly. Enter your location. Do not tick “Protect my updates” unless you only want those people who you approve to be able to receive your twitter updates, if you tick this, it will seriously limit the enjoyment and excitement of twitter.

Now upload your picture. Verify that you have a digital photo of yourself on your computer. A 150 x 150 pixel head shot that I use for all social networking sites. (You can use iPhoto, Skitch, ImageWell, or any other photo editor to crop and size your image to the proper proportions.)

If you are still on Twitter’s home page, click on the Settings link. Now click on the Picture tab, select your file, and then click the Save button. You have now set up your account and are well on the way to sending and receiving your first twitter.

Set up your phone. Twitter is much more fun if you connect it to your mobile phone. By doing so, you can receive updates from those you are following (or just some of them) as well as send your own updates. It’s all done through text messaging (eg SMS).

However, be forewarned: while Twitter doesn’t charge anything for this service, your mobile phone service provider might. It’s a good idea to check with them and make sure you are on an “unlimited text messaging plan.” You don’t want to be surprised with a giant phone bill.

Again, under the Settings link, click on the Devices tab. Enter your mobile phone number and click on the Save button. Now take your mobile phone and text message the code Twitter gives you. Then you need to wait a while, eventually, Twitter will confirm to you that your device is registered.

Now, while still on your mobile phone, set up a contact named “Twitter.” For the mobile phone number you were given, now every time you want to send a Twitter update, you just need to send it to this contact name.

Almost there now!

Time to follow some family or friends. If you haven’t already done so, start searching for your family and friends by clicking in the “Search” field at the top of your home page. You can either type in a name or a location. When you do, you will get a list of all the people on Twitter who match your search request.

You can begin “following” them by simply clicking on the Follow button. If you want to also follow them on your cell phone, then you can turn the “Device Updates” to “on.” This allows you to choose who you want to follow on your mobile, but regardless of this, you will be able to see everyone you follow on your Twitter home page.

It’s useful to learn the basic commands. Think of Twitter as you giving a questions and answers session to a room full of people, it is all about the conversations that will evolve. So, when you update your Twitter status, remember you are speaking to the whole room, everyone can hear what you have to say.

If you want to “Reply” to a Twitter, you are actually directing your comments to one specific person in the Twitter room, but loud enough, that everyone else can hear, when you use the “Reply” function, you automatically address the person by using their Twitter user name preceded by the “@” symbol.

For example: @jeremy_dent – I suggest that you call into The Red Bull Stockport tonight at 8pm to discuss this.

Everyone who is following me will see the message, but I am specifically directing it to jeremy.

You can also use the Reply function to refer to someone by name.

For example:I’m headed to the Red Bull Stockport now with @johnsmith and @davejones I am looking forward to seeing their new creative ideas.

The thing about @replies is that they are “clickable links.” If someone who is following me, clicks on one of the names, they will automatically go to that person’s Twitter page. This will give them the opportunity to follow that person, too if they know them or feel that what they have to say would be interesting.

Direct messages

Continuing with the idea of a conversation with a room full of people, you can also use the “direct message” function. This is like whispering in one person’s ear. They can hear you, but no one else can. You are directing the message to them and only them.

For example: d jeremy_dent Can you bring my laptop with you to the presentation please?

Or: d davejones tied up with this presentation for tomorrow, count me out for a drink after work.

To stop all Twitter updates to your mobile phone, send:

off

To turn them back on send:

on

You can find loads more questions, answers and functions to help you get more out of twitter on the FAQ page on the Twitter site.

Start Twittering. So now the fun begins, you are all setup. It’s time to start Twittering. You can do this from your Twitter home page or from your mobile phone.

The only thing you need to remember is that the message you want to send can be no longer than 140 characters. If you use the Web page, the entry field will automatically count your characters. As you use Twitter more and more, you’ll unconsciously know how long this is. But if you do go over 140 characters, it’s no big deal. Your message will just be automatically shortened.

How often should you Twitter?

That’s the 30-character question! Some people say “Don’t Twitter more than six times a day.” As bosses will start asking how you get the time!!! Others think 10-12 including leisure time periods and replies should be the upper limit. Obviously, there’s a personal balance here. You will see when you start to follow friends and business influencers that some people Twitter all day, everyday!!

The real point is whether or not you are adding something of value to the conversation everyone can hear!. No one wants to hear the hour by hour account of your life. However, some interesting or useful knowledge you pick up that is cause for comment is good. However, there are no hard or fast rules governing this, but if you only twitter drivel people will stop following you.

Ideally you should consider every Twitter update as a branding impression. You are developing a reputation with your online friends and followers, so always make sure you are adding something to the conversation.

Remember – Be careful. You always need to be cautious when Twittering. It’s probably not a good idea to say something like, “I’m going away to the sun with the lads for a week of fun, at the airport now and forgot to lock my house up.” Bad idea, for obvious reasons.

You need to think about the fact that strange people and criminals have Twitter accounts, too. You really need to be cautious about sharing too much private information that could compromise your safety or that of your family or possessions. Some women have also had experiences with stalkers, so it may be safer sometimes to Twitter after you have been somewhere, not before. Otherwise, you might find people showing up to watch you, its happened, be careful!

Start to add some Twitter software. There are now loads of applications to enhance the twitter experience, just Google them or look on the twitter site, here are a couple that you might want to look at first:

Facebook has a number of applications that automatically add all your Twitter updates to your Facebook wall. Once you set this up, you won’t ever have to make another Facebook update.

Twitteriffic. This is a piece of desktop software for monitoring and updating your Twitter account

Twhirl. This is similar to Twitteriffic.

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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/how-to-set-up-and-be-twittering-within-the-hour-3785481.html

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In this article for the business owners of professional service firms we’re looking at the simple question: Should business owners of professional service firms be using Twitter for business development purposes?

The answer is a qualified Yes and the reason for this is that the use of twitter must fit in with some clearly understand reasons for exactly why you are using it;

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows anyone to say anything to anybody in 140 characters or less.

What use is that?

Well, twitter is now being used by many of the largest hard nosed commercial firms to achieve clearly defined business objectives, the world over; make no bones about it, you should too because it works just as well in the local/regional context.

So how do you get started with twitter?

If you haven’t got an account then sign up for one. It’s free at: http://Twitter.com/account/create

When you have an account you’ll be given a home page and a profile page; my profile is
http://Twitter.com/skember and my Twitter handle is @skember.

Get yourself an avatar of 100 x 100 pixel image, to use on your profile; this will be useful for many other social media sites, so save a copy.
.
Why use Twitter?

Many professionals scorn the idea of using such a seemingly limited tool used by millions to tell seemingly mindless others about what they had for dinner!

But stop. Maybe there are certain business development objectives that Twitter might be able to help you fulfil. If it does then this might be a useful starting point from which much else might flow.

Could Twitter be a valuable tool for the direct promotion of your business? No. Hardly at all.

But you might be able to use it in a number of other hugely valuable areas.

It can be very useful:

1. if you want to network with others in your sector or in a specific geographic area?
2. Or to get up to date access to what’s being said about your firm, your people or your services? ……………. Or nothing at all, who was it that said there’s only one thing worse than being talked about behind your back and that’s not being talked about at all!
3. You can use it to auto-publish links to your new articles, new blog posts, new videos, and pod casts.
4. You can use it to gain ideas, content, links, resources, and tips focused on area where you need to know more or where you want to keep up to speed by hearing from sector leaders?
5. You can use it monitor what’s being said about clients and their services? And,
6. You can use it to extend the reach of your thought leadership, blog posts, videos and other content?

If there is just one example from this list then it makes good sense to get in there and start using twitter.

Developers are by the day creating evermore apps that allow users to use twitter in evermore functional and creative ways; this is a marketing resource that looks for the minute as if its just going to get better and better.

Twitter can be used to subscribe, share, friend, or follow as many Twitter feeds as you like. In addition, Twitter have a really useful tool that you absolutely must place on your website, it’s the tweet button. This allows you to enable people who find something interesting on your site to immediately tweet it with the click of a button

One of the big questions you must ask of yourselves is How do we decide who to follow? Andhow do we get those we want to be talking to follow us?

Using Twitter to best effect is therefore a double edged issue.

Following someone means that their tweets show up on your home page and vice versa.

Many make really hard work of twitter and as a result they become inundated as they build a huge list of persons they are following and who follow them, don’t do this from the outset unless you have a clearly defined reason for doing so.

This said I have used it to good effect two twitter based services to do research and help locate people that are of direct interest or value to us as a firm.

The first of these is Twellow. This is a twitter directory that sorts people by industry and tells you a little about each person, including how many followers they have.

Twellow provides a link to each person’s profile on twitter so you can click on the link and then go to a Twitter page to register to follow the person and then revert back to Twellow to keep on looking for more people you want to follow.

The second is Tweepsearch it too focuses on searching through twitter bios and profiles to help locate people you want to follow.

Twitter themselves in July 30 2010 announced another service that you should take a look at. Its called “Suggestions for You”. this suggest people you don’t currently follow that you may find interesting. The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow.

As ever beware of becoming inundated by following too many!

So what to do to get started?

At the beginning the main purpose in using twitter should be to focus on just one or two objectives and not to get bogged down in a mass of content that is not relevant to your purpose

A good way to start things going is to try to get feedback having secured a small group of persons who are following you by asking questions which can stimulate a conversation;

You might ask about issues folk would like to hear covered in your blog; or in a video or maybe you’re thinking of holding an event, or speaking at a conference or a luncheon and are looking for ideas for presentation content; twitter can be great for such things

It’s a good idea to do some filtering to track what’s being said about any search term you like:

By doing so you could for example can see about what is being said about you personally, your company or services your competition or any other matters you have an interest in.

Using Twitter search you can focus on keywords such as your company name or a product or service and twitter will provide you with tweets on these subjects as they happen in real time.

This enables you to respond [should you wish to] immediately;

With Twitter search you can create RSS feeds from your searches so you can have them sent directly to your RSS reader; but again focus on priorities; keep it manageable

If you are to make the most of twitter you have to get to grips with mining it for the information and contacts you’re really interested in because if you don’t and you just let things run and run you’ll soon be swamped, you’ll be getting nothing out of it of value as you’ll be disregarding the vast amounts of tweets that will be coming in!

If you are to mine twitter then you should use their advanced search facility.

This superb as it: really helps you to drill down to generate searches relating to exactly what you want to hear about at the level of your town or city, niche, people, company or service. And it helps to identify really hot leads really easily

People are asking questions all the time and love to hear from someone who can provide an answer locally.

Work at it and you can set up a series of tweets that might turn up leads; that’s to say people with needs you can satisfy; but take care not to spam; do this by opening up a conversation with folk and answering their questions appropriately;

Remember as with all social media sites they’re all about build rapport and relationships. This builds trust, trying to sell using the social media kills it and risks you getting banned

So how do you Control your Twitter account activity? Having got going you simply must take control of your twitter activity.

One piece of free software that might help is TweetDeck, which has many other functions you may wish to take advantage of. It can be used as your personal real-time browser, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, , LinkedIn, and other social media sites you use.

This software runs on your desktop. You can post tweets from it, respond to replies from others and, set up searches as well as get updates in real time when someone tweets on a subject or phrase you are researching or wish to keep tabs on;

There is another really useful tool in Twitter called a hash tag. When you use a # tag it, it acts as way to create categories, groups, or topics for tweets that others can use as well as you at the same time. Using this tool tweets can be grouped together when using the search.Twitter.com feature.

Anyone can create a hash tag by simply using a # in front of a phrase, This can prove really useful in a number of ways:

1. Let’s say you’re attending a conference and tweeting notes in real time. If everyone at that workshop were asked to add something like #cf123 to their tweets, everyone present] can view the notes and share in the insights, all at one place on twitter.
2. You can also promote your events or service launches using the #tag;
3. You could use hash tags as a way for remote employees to use Twitter as a communication tool for all the stuff you want people to stay on top of; and
4. You can use a hash tag for any live webinars you run and afterwards tweet attendees to ask questions via Twitter.

You can see many more articles like this at our Online Video for Professionals blog.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/should-business-owners-of-professional-service-firms-be-using-twitter-for-business-development-purposes-4090417.html

About the Author

Stephen Kember is Proprietor at Online Video For Professionals; a firm dedicated to supporting the business owners of professional services firms in the UK and France with their online marketing using online video and the social media to establish relationships, build trust and get more of the right sort of clients.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chairman of Twitter,Inc.

Said that the definition of Twitter was “a short burst of inconsequential information,” and “chirps from birds,”1 which was exactly what Twitter was. But instead of just chirping, the micro-blogging social network service has become one of the biggest buzzes in 2009, capturing countless media headlines and stirring up conversations worldwide.

Apart from Twitter, the economy is also a main topic this year. While companies find their customers are spending much less money during the economic downturn, they turn to Twitter to help build their brands, promote their products or services, and keep in touch with both loyal and potential customers.

So how do companies use Twitter to build their brands?

To answer that, let us first learn some facts about Twitter.

Twitter, founded in 2006, is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as “tweets”. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers, known as “followers”. The three-year-old Twitter, whose popularity is still proliferating as we speak, is already the third most popular social networking site in the world behind Facebook and Myspace.

Twitter is different from other social networking services because users do not need to send requests and get approved before they can follow others. A simple click is enough for a Twitterer to follow or unfollow any other Twitter users, who may be a celebrity, a politician, a company or an individual. Not only can users send private Direct Messages (DM) to a follower, they can also send public replies to whomever they want in the Twitter-verse. Because Twitter is text-based in nature, users must post pictures or videos through URL links, which enables Twitter’s interface to stay simple and clean. Even though Twitter does not and will not put any advertisement on its website, it is still a free service, which means businesses do not need to pay a dime to promote themselves and communicate with tens of millions of potential customers.

Labbrand believes that brand equity includes brand strength and brand stature. While brand strength is determined by brand differentiation and brand relevance, brand stature is determined by brand esteem and brand knowledge. Twitter can help a brand build up these four pillars of brand equity through different dimensions of interaction between a brand and its stakeholders. We will address four examples to illustrate the point. While the brands cited in the rest of this article may satisfy all four criteria, we will only use one brand example to highlight each measure.

Differentiation under the Communication and Design Dimension

Businesses strive to make their brands unique. Differentiation is strongly associated with a brand’s communication and design. Given the proximity that Twitter provides, twittering is undoubtedly a highly unique way for companies to communicate with customers. However, this advantage may not last for long due to Twitter’s fast growth, because when the majority of brands have their own Twitter pages the fact that a brand has a Twitter page will no longer be unique. At least for the time being, however, Twitter can contribute to brand differentiation. JetBlue Airways, an American low-cost airline, has differentiated its brand through Twitter communication. Since problems with flights can cause a lot of headaches, JetBlue has set up a service where customers can complain about flight problems directly to airline staff via Twitter. It is no wonder JetBlue has already attracted more than 1.1 million followers since the launch of its Twitter page in the spring of 2007. Today its account is often cited as an example of smart corporate twittering. Using Twitter to create an efficient customer service communication platform will contribute to JetBlue’s differentiation and overall brand equity.

Relevance under the Market and Consumers Dimension

Brand relevance is a measure of appropriateness and relates to a brand’s appeal. Relevance both drives and reflects consumer choice. Relevance basically answers the question of why consumers choose to buy a particular product. It can be called the cornerstone of a brand. For companies new and old, including small businesses, how to make their brand relevant is often difficult in a highly competitive market with diverse and demanding consumer groups. Yet, Twitter can give a brand the chance to build relevance and even loyalty among today’s consumers.

Teusner Wines, a boutique winery in Australia’s Barossa Valley, has only three employees, but its Twitter account (@Teusnerwine) has nearly 6,000 followers. Dave Brookes, Teusner Wines’ one-man sales and marketing department, believes that using Twitter is more about building relationships with existing and potential customers than selling products. Brookes sends friendly messages to those who are talking about Teusner Wines on Twitter. After keeping casual, relaxed exchanges with followers and avoiding product promotions, Brooke saw more people coming to the winery for tours and an increase in traffic to its website. Even though shipping restrictions prevent Teusner Wines from selling directly to individuals outside Australia, a number of people from United States and Canada have asked where they can find Teusner Wines at stores and restaurants near them, demonstrating that these potential consumers find the brand highly relevant. Moreover, Twitter users might like a brand and consider it relevant simply because it uses Twitter.

Esteem under the Products and Services Dimension

Differentiation and relevance are still not enough to build a successful brand. Eventually, customers need to decide whether or not they will purchase the product or service, and how much they like the brand. Since Twitter as well as other social media are strongly interactive, they are always linked to the esteem dimension of a brand. American Apparel (@americanapparel) has more than 40,000 Twitter followers. One of the United States’s largest clothing manufacturer’s unique ad campaigns was inspired by one of its own Twitter followers. American Apparel received a DM from a freelance photographer (Ryan Marshal @ThePanicRoom) chronicling his wife’s pregnancy with week-by-week photos of the mother-to-be in American Apparel clothing. The company liked the photo series so much that they used the images as the basis for an ad campaign showing cute and comfy looks for expectant moms. American Apparel also set up its ad on Marchal’s blog (pacingthepanicroom.com). They ran a unique banner ad for baby clothes, and the blog became one of American Apparel’s top performing sites for online ads.

As you can see, Twitter helped drive American Apparel’s product promotion decisions, and at the same time demonstrated the brand’s proximity to their customers, thereby building esteem.

Internal Effects – Esteem & Knowledge under the Culture and Behavior Dimension

Thus far we have discussed external brand interactions; however, Twitter can also enhance interactions between employees and the companies that they work for. This means Twitter also has internal effects on a business and their internal brands.

Just like a twittering company would appeal to its twittering customers, it will also appeal to its twittering employees. It works the other way around too; some companies test applicants’ ability to use twitter when recruiting new employees, since Twitter is considered to be a vital tool by many marketers.

As for knowledge, it measures whether there is a true understanding of what a brand stands for. No one knows better about what a brand stands for than its own top executives who get to decide what their brands mean. Normally, only a few privileged employees could directly interact with their top executives, but Twitter can help to change this. For instance, Zappos.com’s CEO Tony Hsieh is in charge of the electronic commerce company’s Twitter account (@zappos), which has nearly 1.2 million followers. Not only can customers contact Hsieh via Twitter, so can Zappos.com’s employees. Hsieh constantly writes his thoughts on business and Zappo as a brand like “Good businesses figure out how to continuously add value. Great businesses figure out how to continuously multiply value,” and “When your work is an extension of who you really are deep down inside, it’s no longer a job or a career. It’s a calling,” so that employees can better understand the brand and better serve customers. By building esteem and knowledge internally, Zappos will build a stronger and more valuable brand overall. (In July 2009, Amazon.com Inc. announced it will purchase Zappos.com, and the deal is expected to go through in the fall. It will be interesting to see if this acquisition will affect Zappos Twitter account!)

Conclusion

From the above exploration of Twitter.

We can see that Twitter does have the potential to help businesses build brand equity. However, we are sure that the most effective way has not yet been discovered. The new-born Twitter leaves businesses a huge space to explore, innovate, and experiment with the most effective ways to twitter up brand equities.

1 http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-creator.html

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/using-twitter-to-build-brand-equity-1190061.html

About the Author

Vladimir Djurovic is the founder and Managing Director of Labbrand, a Shanghai based innovative brand agency specialized in brand research, strategic and creative services. Labbrand website at: http://labbrand.com/ is also the portal to Labbrand branding blog: http://labbrand.com/english/news_and_articles.php/
and reviews of branding related hot topics, with a special focus on China.

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Now you too can become a

Twitter Rockstar

…..using this time tested proven marketing tool, reach your perfect prospects, build your brand, and make a ton of money in the process!

If you’d like to finally crack the online money making code by using one of the internet’s most popular websites then this could be the most important website you’ll ever read.

My name is Bill Simmons and I’ve created the ultimate solution to marketing and pulling customers and prospects from Twitter, but more on that later.

You see, until recently I was just like you. I had been seeing all of the emails, advertisements, banners, ebooks, and the like which were all promoting Twitter as the next big thing in internet marketing and a godsend for offline businesses interested in reaching customers online.

When I finally got around to creating an account there I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had a burning question in the forefront of my mind…

How can a simple website like Twitter that only allows you to talk 140 characters at a time be the “next big thing”?

Well, after doing some research I found out some very interesting facts about this incredible social media website:

Out of billions of websites Twitter.com is the #10 most highly trafficked website online

There are more than 106,000,000 users on Twitter

The number of users grows by 300,000 or more each day and has been doing so for the past six months

On average about 1 out of every 350 visitors land on a website by way of Twitter

After realizing these astounding figures, I couldn’t believe the literal goldmine that we all have at our finger tips waiting anxious to be prospected.

I wanted to begin making money on Twitter, and most of all I wanted to start NOW!

But…

Twitter is a unique and sometimes confusing media that requires a unique approach to marketing.

Since the website is a social network, you simply can not go full on high pressure “used car salesman” with the selling, otherwise you’d be quickly reported for spamming and then banned without notice.

I soon realized that there are several hurdles that stop marketers like me and you from pulling profits from this website.

1st) It can be difficult to actually target people who would be interested in our products and services

Twitter doesn’t make it all that easy to find people who are interested in what we are offering. I found that I had to access several different websites in order to start building a list of targeted Twitter followers. This took an awful amount of time from my day to say the least.

And if you simply get on Twitter and start following random people, you’ll begin building a list of Twitter followers that aren’t interested in what you are offering. This is the digital equivalent of spinning your wheels in the gravel going nowhere fast.

2nd) You can only add so many users to your Twitter list per day.

This can be difficult if you want to scale up fast. Twitter has a cap on the amount of people you can add to your Twitter list per day. If you surpass this you risk being banned and losing everything that you’ve built.

3rd) If you’re marketing a local business, it can be nearly impossible to target people by location

This is the stark truth that comes along with marketing on Twitter. If I want to promote my real estate agency to a single city on Twitter it can literally take hours upon hours of digging through people’s profiles in order to find their locations. While it would be worth it for some, many marketers and business owners simply don’t have the time to do it.

I knew there had to be a way.

So after discovering all these problems, I got a little creative…

I asked myself a simple question, but the implications were staggering!

What if there were a way for me to solve all of these issues for marketers and make it completely easy to begin building big targeted Twitter followings no matter if you’re an Internet Affiliate, Webmaster, CPA Marketer, Info Marketer, Network Marketer, Consultant, or Offline Business Owner?

Well, there is and its called “Tweet Buddy!”

TweetBuddy is your man on Twitter. This revolutionary software will completely automate and manage your marketing activities on Twitter, giving you the biggest return on time invested.

Let’s take a look at some of the exciting features and benefits of the TweetBuddy software:

Automatic Friend Follower & Easy Prospect Targeting:

TweetBuddy will allow you to cut through all of the red tape and gain access to people on Twitter who are only interested in what you are offering. By using its unique technology you will be able to target prospects by what they are actively talking about on Twitter via a keyword search and build up your Twitter list on complete autopilot.

Follow Up To 500 People Per Day

- Twitter caps the amount of people you can follow per day to 500. With TweetBuddy you will never surpass this number which would put your account at risk of being banned

Divide Up The Keyword Search Between The 500 Followers

- Let’s say you’re an offline business owner who sells gardening and home improvement equipment. With TweetBuddy you can follow 250 people who use the keyword gardening in their profiles, and you can follow 250 people who use the keyword home improvement in their profiles. This capability is great if you’re in a multifaceted marketplace.

Follow Other User’s Followers

- This component of TweetBuddy allows you to follow other users followers. This can be a very powerful method to quickly build up a huge targeted Twitter following. Let’s say you own a website that sells computer hardware. You could find PC Magazine’s Twitter account and follow all of their followers. This is great because you know that anyone who is following that magazine’s account is a computer enthusiast and probably a great customer who purchases a lot of PC hardware. I hope you’re really beginning to see just how powerful TweetBuddy is!

Target Prospects By Location

- TweetBuddy also lets you target your prospects by their actual physical location within a 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 500, or 1,000 mile radius. This is great if you’re an offline consultant or bricks and mortar business owner. For example, if you run a local hobby shop that specializes in model trains you can target people who live in and around the city your shop is located in who have tweeted about model trains, or who have model trains listed as one of their interests!

We all know that its extremely easy to do business when you get in front of people who want what you have, and TweetBuddy allows you to do just that!

Automatic Direct Messaging To New Followers

- TweetBuddy will send a direct message to anyone who follows you back once you’ve followed them. This is a great way to generate website traffic or to get calls for your business. By combining the prospect targeting components of TweetBuddy, everyone who follows you back will be a highly targeted prospect. And by making an exciting offer in these direct messages everyone who follows you will be exposed to your advertising for FREE! I hope you can see the power in this! Why spend thousands on traditional advertising when you can reach your customers on their favorite social network for free?

Automatic Account Cleaner

- TweetBuddy also keeps your account organized by allowing you to unfollow people who are not following you back. This allows you to maintain a high quality list of responsive Twitter followers without your marketing being wasted on tire kickers and window shoppers.

Tweet Calendar With Time Delay

- In order to really set up your Twitter marketing on full auto-pilot TweetBuddy allows you to schedule your Tweets in advance. You can literally log into the software one time for the day, week, or even month and setup all your Tweets in advance, then TweetBuddy will login to your account for you and post your Tweets automatically. This allows you to maintain a natural Twitter presence without having to be on the website.

Tweet Token System

- This component is arguably one of the most powerful capabilities built into the software. By using special syntax you can set the software to tweet once every X amount of hours. The unique syntax is incredibly easy and simple to use and it allows each tweet you send out to be totally unique from the last even though the same information is being tweeted. With this you can make sure you reach most if not all of your Twitter list since everyone is not always logged onto Twitter at the same time. We’re talking some serious market coverage here!

Twitter Account Manager

- If you’re an internet marketer who participates and markets in multiple niches then this component was designed with you in mind. You can not only build highly targeted Twitter accounts for each niche, but you can manage them all in one place without having to remember tons of user names and passwords. TweetBuddy keeps track of everything for you.

Automatic Twitter Stats

- As business people we all love stats and figures, and TweetBuddy helps you keep your finger on the pulse of the Twitter marketplace in its Twitter stats center. All the information you could ever need including followers, direct messages sent, trending topics on Twitter, and more is available right here at your finger tips.

And Much Much More!

As you can see, this is the ULTIMATE Twitter marketing tool, and unlike anything else out there you’ll be able to use this tool with the full confidence that your account is safe and you are getting an incredible return on your investment.

By now, I know you’re probably wondering what the price is for this incredible tool…

Well, if you order right now today you can get your hands on the TweetBuddy software for a small one-time investment of only $99!

If you’re not using TweetBuddy you’re probably missing out on at least $99 in new business per day if not a whole lot more!

Don’t hesitate to get your hands on this incredible software right now, otherwise your competition might and corner the Twitter market for himself.

I know that you could easily pay $27 for a short ebook about some new wacky Twitter marketing method , but then you could easily get banned from their website, and this cool nifty $27 method could end up destroying your internet presence, ruining your reputation, and potentially end up costing you thousands of dollars.

Get TweetBuddy right now and begin your conquest of the Twitter Marketplace.

BUT WAIT!

There’s more….

And just in case you need further encouragement, if you act now I’m going to take an incredible $60off the purchase price of TweetBuddy, but you have to order right now!

That’s right you can get TweetBuddy and begin building a loyal following of rabid customers on Twitter for the ridiculously low price of just $39!

For only $39 you’re going to get a fool-proof Twitter marketing solution that is totally immune to any fly by night gimmicks, hearsay, and Twitter bans.

I’m going to be honest here, I know that I’m selling this at a discount. I’m selling it for $39 when I could easily be charging $497 or more for this software, but there’s a reason why.

I want to get this into your hands as quickly as possible and I want to make this affordable. I know that there are many people who need this product but they don’t have that kind of cash just lying around.

So don’t hesitate any longer!

Think about it. Where will you be a year from now? Will you still be struggling to make

Twitter marketing work, while your competitors who are social media savvy steal business

from you?

Or will you be enjoying the exhilarating feeling of selling your products and services on Twitter, automatically, even while you sleep?

Seriously, if you’ve read down this far, you know that you have a strong interest in making

your Twitter marketing efforts produce the kind of response and results you really deserve. All that’s left is to take the action to do it.

Twitter Classroom

Yours In Success,

Bill Simmons

P.S. – Let’s be blunt:

If you pass on this offer, will you have an incredible Twitter presence for you or your business? Probably not!

You’ll still wish and want it, but you won’t have it or make money from it. Face it. All you need is a simple to use tool and encouragement.

Get this software NOW and start building your Twitter following TODAY!

Wouldn’t you finally like to be making money on Twitter?

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/new-twitter-tool-takes-over-4047916.html

About the Author

Davis Mack is a stay at home dad. His writing is for his own amusement and can be seen at his blog. Enjoy Twitter!