Twitter is that quirky website where it asks “what are you doing now?”, and then gives you 140 characters to respond. It takes only a few seconds to register, and another few seconds to post your latest activities.

Lately, marketers have been discovering how powerful Twitter is for marketing things online. People like Mike Filsaime and Seth Godin are ‘twittering’ now, and building a following of people who get every update they ever post.

Now, no one wants to hear what you have had for breakfast, or any of the other hundreds of boring things we all do each day. Yet there are a growing number of people who have learned how to post very interesting things on twitter, and have in turn developed a following of thousands of people who actively track what they say. Obama Barack is one such person who uses twitter to announce his public appearances and speaking engagements. Doing this has grown his fan base, and increased the number of people who learn about him, and now support him. In short, twitter is a powerful marketing medium when you use it right.

Here are 4 secrets to get you started marketing with twitter:

1. Refrain from posting what you are doing right now! That’s right, don’t post everything you do, but rather just the things that are interesting to others, or things you want others to see. It could be something in the news, or an event that is happening, or an offer you are making – just anything that could benefit someone else and not bore them. It sounds interesting, but it becomes a little challenging to do when you get excited or angry. So be sure to ask yourself the question “is this useful to my followers?” and only post if the answer is yes.

2. Find interesting people and follow them. To do this, you simply search twitter for something that interests you (anything, really), and then look at what others are twittering. After a while, you will find some people that have interesting things to say, and when you click on their username, twitter will show you a button called “follow” that lets you follow that person from now on. By following a person, everything they post will go into your personal timeline – the thing you see when you login to twitter. If you decide you do not wish to follow someone any longer, simply click on their name and then on the “unfollow” link.

3. Go to quotably (a free website) and search for stuff posted on twitter. Quotably shows you everything in conversation mode and lets you reply to peole simply by logging in with your twitter details. In short, you can enter the conversations of others at that site, and find other interesting people to follow.

4. Use a twitter agent to have all your essential twitter information at hand at all times.

Twitter is a powerful tool, and more and more people are learning how to use it to develop their contacts and business. Now you can, too.

Targeted Web Traffic is getting visitors to your site who are interested in what you have to offer. These visitors have to be able to find your web site first. The two most common ways visitors will find your site is by typing in a word phrase into a search engine or linking to your web site from another web site. There are several ways to get your web site on the search engines results page and on other web sites. Many of these ways are free. Here are three free resources you can take advantage of to get targeted web traffic to your site.

Writing articles and publishing them on article web sites is a great way to bring attention to your web site. And sometimes these same articles will quickly rank on search engine results pages. This gives you another opportunity for visitors to find your site. These articles should have keywords or search phrases in them that visitors use to find information on your website topic. For example, if you have a website on aquariums. You would want your article to have phrases in it about aquariums or fish. These keywords should be considered in all three ways I discuss to get web site traffic.

Keep in mind, one article will not get the amount of targeted web traffic you are looking for. You will need to write and submit several articles focusing on the topic or niche of your web site. Most article web sites do not allow you to put links to any web sites in the body of the article. However, they do allow a bio box about the author to be used and a link can be placed in this text that points to your web site. Before publishing any articles, review each article web site’s policies.

Social media sites like Squidoo or Hubpages are sites where the members create and provide most of the content for the site. These types of sites allow you to directly link to your web site. So, you can create a page on the site that discusses the topic that your web site is about. You can include links to your web site allowing the visitor to the social media site to follow the link or click through to your site. This then brings targeted web traffic to your web site because the visitor wants more information on the topic of your web site. As with all 3 of these web site traffic ideas, these social media sites want good content and not one big advertisement. Being spammy and not providing any useful content may get your page deleted. And there goes all your hard work.

Blogging and Microblogging are similar and are both ways to get targeted web traffic. Blogging can be done by having your own blog web site or using a community blogging website. Wordpress has both types. I believe it is better to have your own blog so you are in control of the blog contents. Blogging is a platform that encourages the question “What’s on your mind?” to be answered. This type of site allows you to put in your own content, create links to your sites or other sites, similar to social media sites. Updating your blog weekly is a must. The search engines love new content. These updates can be short. Microblogging are sites that encourage very short entries, some only a couple of lines. One of these sites is Twitter. If blogging asks, “what’s on your mind?”, microblogging asks, “what’s on your mind right now?”As with blogging, you can link to your web site with microblogs, but be sure to provide good, informative content.
Using all three of these traffic generating ideas together will help bring in a steady stream of traffic. All of these ideas should be done on a consistent basis to keep the flow of targeted web traffic going to your site. Although I have only listed a few resources, there are almost unlimited resources that can be used to get web site traffic.

I hear it all the time. The people on twitter are twits, twittering tales of hairballs and haircuts. Bloggers have been moaning about the noise on twitter, and predicting the date the site will close down, yet twitter remains a powerful communications force in the online world.

I think it has something to do with that thing they call API…the stuff programmers use to talk to twitter and make other tools that use twitter information for something else. I didn’t really understand what use it would be to aggregate all these useless posts, until I noticed that some people are posting really valuable stuff. Like the BBC and CNN! Yes, these news sites twitter their top headlines into their twitter account, for all the world to see.

Now, things like twittervision are interesting, and give you a glimpse of world twitter activity, but it sure can waste time too…kind of like what a twit would do, right?

With a little thoughtfulness, you might be able to imagine twittervision done right – showing only the twitters of your friends or a region. So far, that’s not happening. But there are a lot of powerful tools being developed to make twitter more personal and available. Like the SMS integration, which lets you read and respond to twitterings from your cell phone. Or twitterfox, a firefox browser plugin that lets your twitters pop up while you surf. This latter tool is even more powerful now, by filtering the replies from your posts, so you can scroll through the responses from others, and respond to them with one click of the mouse.

Other people are using twitter for business, and developing their reach even further simply by posting some of their work on twitter. Lately, I have found poets, reporters, marketers, ceo’s, and others, all focusing their twitters to provide useful content relating to their specialty. It makes me think that soon all the major business communications will be carried over twitter, as a new medium to reach a wider audience.

The beauty of twittering is it is like instant messaging, without being instant. People don’t expect an immediate response, don’t see if you are online or not, but do get to see your response when you post it, so they can catch up to the conversation whenever they want to, and respond to things without worrying about the interactive requirements of a phone conversation or instant messaging session (big time wasters in this world of ours).

Still, there are millions of people using twitter, and many of them are twits, twittering about toilets and termites that no one else wants to hear about. I like people who do something to fix this problem, and one free tool is at Quotably, and lets you search twitter and group responses into conversations that you can read and respond to. It’s quite powerful when you think about it, and perhaps it will help you to see where twitter might go in the future.

It’s an exciting world for the twitterers of today.

If you’re someone that uses Twitter on a regular basis, then you may want to consider monetizing Twitter. Many people out there would love getting paid for every minute they spent on Twitter.

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.

These days one way to really get the word out about your small business is to have some kind of social media presence. Social networking platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn can help put a virtual ‘face’ to your company, its products, goals, etc. However, the micro-blogging service Twitter, which is a free service that allows you to post messages up to 140 characters, is really helping small business increase their online reach.

No matter how small your business, it is not only important to tap into all the various segments of your personal network, but to also belong to an online social network where others can find you. However, before you even sign up for a Twitter account it is essential that you have a social media strategy. Although it can be a great free way to advertise your services and be in touch with customers (existing and potential), you do have to put some effort into identifying your goals and the kind of online image you’d like to create.

Some Advantages to Twitter for Small Businesses:

Free, Simple to Use

One of the best things about Twitter is that it is free marketing. There is no cost to open the account. You can easily post updates or even links to news, upcoming events, new products, etc. as long as it does not go over the 140-character limit.

Spread the Word Quickly

Word can spread like wildfire on Twitter. If one person raves about your services/products then everyone in their social network will know about it and you can be well on your way to increasing the number of Twitter followers.

Building a Network

Twitter can also be a great place to network with those in your market or to potentially find partnerships with suppliers/manufacturers. Also, you can reach potentially reach those outside your local area, increasing the amount of customers you reach.

Detective Work

You can easily conduct a search to find out who on Twitter has been talking about your business or may be talking about products that you offer. You can then start following and post updates about your company. Further, you can also use Twitter to search for what others are saying about your competitors.

Instantaneous Updates

Unlike promotional flyers, brochures, or email newsletters, you can send Twitter updates frequently throughout the day or week. Some small businesses use it to send out promotions or alert customers to new products.

Some Twitter Tips:

? Spend some time following those in a similar market or those companies that have enjoyed huge Twitter success and observe how they use Twitter. These can be great case studies that you can also apply to your business.

? Do not overwhelm your followers with updates. Sending too many may be annoying, causing some not to follow you anymore. So do not send Twitter updates every hour. Aim for a couple a day or week.

? If someone follows you, make sure to return the favor and follow them back. This is good Twitter etiquette.

? Do not only post updates to advertise your business. You can also share things about your area, community, useful links, etc. Or use it to start conversations with others.

? If you have employees, have them sign up with business Twitter accounts, as they can offer different perspectives on your business. Plus, can save you the time of always being the sole Twitterer.