Twitter is a social networking service that allows users to send out text based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets" to their subscribers, known as "followers". If you are familiar with Facebook, it is similar to status updates that your friends can see. Although Twitter is very popular among young people for entertainment purposes, with some basic background knowledge, it is an extremely powerful tool you can use to market your website and get more traffic. There are over 70 million active users that you can reach out to. You can get HUGE exposure for your business, all for FREE.
If you run an online business, regardless of what you are selling, start off by going to twitter.com and signing up for an account. It's very easy. Once that's done, you will need to start getting followers (people who will see your tweet). You need a substantial number of followers to get the full marketing potential of this tool. The more followers you have, the more your message gets out.
Here are some tips to getting more followers:
- Make a detailed profile, and outline your business, and be sure to include your website addresses. Share as much information as you can on your profile, as this helps you get relevant followers.
- You can click on a "follow" button beside any user's name to follow their tweets. Follow as many people as you can, as they will usually follow you back, and see your messages in return.
- Once you join, follow a few random people to begin with. You should also get a few people welcoming you to Twitter, who will follow you automatically.
- Once somone follows you, follow their tweets as well. Try to follow anyone who follows you. Users will high numbers of users following them generally follow many users themselves.
- Partcipate in the community. Join in on discussions. Send people messages. Send tweets out to your followers on a regular basis to stay active.
- Don't make every tweet a direct advertisement for your business. Try something like "new layout - mysite.com - what do you guys think?". Just get people to your site somehow other than just by soliciting. Occasionally however, do send out tweets advertising your specific product or service. Just don't do it all the time, or people will get annoyed and may stop following your tweets.
- At least half, if not more, should be something totally unrelated to your business - something random, funny, or interesting - even if it's totally unrelated to your business. That will get people interested in your tweets, and this get you more followers. If people find one of your tweets interesting, they may very well click on your profile, and this is where you have your business information laid out.
- Search online for Twitter tools, such as MrTweet, which will recommend people you should follow who have similar interests and ideas. By following real people similar to you, you are more likely to generate relevant traffic to your website.
If you follow these tips, you should soon have a huge list of followers.
Everyday there will be more people following you, and everytime you send out a tweet, that's more people you're getting your message out to. Eventually your followers could be in the thousands. Everyday you can send out a unique message to them, saying whatever you want. This is a huge advertising tool - which is available to you for free.
Another alternative is to pay someone to send out tweets for you. On eBay, search twitter and usually you will find people with Twitter accounts that have thousands of followers selling tweets. For usually a couple of dollars or less, they will send out whatever tweet you want to their followers everyday for a week usually. You can follow the seller on Twitter and make sure they are actually sending out your tweet. This saves you the trouble from getting your own account and maintaining it, as for a reasonable fee you are getting your message out to thousands of people.
You entrepreneur types are right in thinking that you can actually MAKE MONEY with your Twitter account eventually. When you get enough followers, sell tweets just like these people on eBay are. It takes hardly any effort at all to send out a tweet. Once you get over 1000 followers or so, make a buy it now auction on eBay for $2 or so saying you will send out tweets everyday for a week.
Getting a Twitter account with a large number of followers gets your advertising message out to thousands of potential customers - and you could end up getting paid for it too!
So go sign up right now - and be sure to follow us on our new
account @IMdigest
Thanks for reading and happy tweeting!