Twitter

There is so much to say about these two marketing forms that you could write 10 eBooks on each of them so I am only going to deal with the very basics of marketing on Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter is a public social media site that allows people to publish micro blogs. You can write posts up to 140 characters long and send them around the net.

Twitter for beginners/getting started on Twitter
Skip on to how to get more followers if you are already signed up on Twitter

When you remove all the unnecessary stuff that make Twitter complicated than what it is, then explaining Twitter to beginners is actually fairly easy. This article will cover the very basics that every beginner needs to know to quickly get started on Twitter.

How To Sign Up

Before signing up, you need to have an email address. If you don’t, you can get a free one from Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo. Once you’ve got an email address, simply go to Twitter.com and click on the green Sign Up Now button. Enter your full name (you can choose to not use your real name), enter a unique username as well as a password and your email. Once you’ve done that, type in the characters to verify your humanness and then click on Create My Account.

How To Find People

 

There are 2 ways to find people: by name or by keyword.

If you want to find people by name, click on Find People at the top of the page and then type in the name of the person you are searching for. You should then be shown at list of results, one of which may be the person you are searching for.

If you want to find people by keyword, stay on your homepage, and use the search function on the right hand side bar. If you want to find someone who shares your interests, type in that keyword and a list of latest people who have used that keyword in their tweets will come up. There’s a good chance that if they used that keyword, that they are interested in that topic.

How To Follow

 

Once you found someone you’ve been looking for or shares your interest, you may want to follow them so that you can follow their tweets.

If you want to do this, simply click on their username and you will be directed to their page. Then click on the follow button underneath their profile picture. You should get notified that you’re following them. It’s that simple.

Sign up for Twitter right now and follow some people you already know. Then search for the experts in your field and follow them too.

The best way to learn is by doing so write a few tweets and get to know the different functions on Twitter. When you have done that return here and get some followers.

How to get more followers

 

Now that you are signed up lets start seeing some results from Twitter

The key to being successful on Twitter is to have lots of followers. Followers are people who subscribe to your feed and get all your Tweets in their Timeline.
That is the question everybody is asking. Some people use automated tools and others follow people they know follow back automatically. But these schemes to get followers are useless.

Why automated and follow for a follow tactics don’t work

Your timeline will now be filled with piles of tweets from people they have no interest in. Thus the value of link sharing and communicating with the people you follow is wiped out.

The same can be said for the people who followed you. They only followed you because you followed them. Thus they put no value in their timeline or they filter out your Tweets. So the value of having followers (more people seeing your tweets) is non existent.

The amount of time it takes to manually do this following and unfollowing is extremely high. This time would be better spent writing content, articles or Tweets and they would get more traffic and valuable followers that way.

The perfect follower

You want a follower with a perfect “follower profile”. Let me explain what I mean by that, a perfect follower profile is the ideal user who follows you. Here are some things you want in a Twitter follower:
üA user who doesn’t follow lots of other people: this way your tweets

are more likely to be seen by your follower.
ü A user who followed you because they are interested in your niche,
your website, products or services: you are more likely to make sales
through Twitter.
ü A user who is conversational: having conversations on Twitter is a
great way to build relationships.
ü A user that regularly retweets and shares your information: the viral
marketing power of Twitter.

How to get more “perfect followers”

Of course you can’t control who follows you, and any follower is better than no follower but these four organic methods for getting followers will get you a bunch of perfect followers as well as the average follower:

1) Tweet, tweet and tweet some more. Never tweet for the sake of tweeting but being a regular contributor with useful and insightful tweeting will gain you followers who are only interested in your tweets.

2) Answer questions. Starting out on Twitter with no followers can make it hard to get the ball rolling. Many people tweet questions about topics related to you. Use Twitter search to find these questions and then answer them using the reply function. The person who asked the question will be grateful and may follow you.

3) Use your website and blog. Link to your profile from your website and your blog and you will receive a steady flow of new followers. This gives you a chance for increased exposure with these visitors meaning more chances to sell your products.

4) Put it in your sig file. You know the list of links and positions you see at the bottom of many emails. You can create one of these with links to your Twitter profile. It’s a great way to use your existing contacts.
So clearly the key to building valuable Twitter followers is to do it naturally. By employing these techniques you will soon have plenty of followers and you will see the benefit of Twitter marketing.

Twitter marketing interview with Marko Saric of www.howtomakemyblog.com and author of the Twitter Marketing eBook.

Marko is a prolific Tweeter with over 20,000 followers so he certainly knows what he is talking about. Before I even started Tweeting I read Marko’s book and it convinced me to sign up for Twitter and now I can’t get enough of it. Thanks Marko for the inspiration and the fantastic interview.

1)Why is Twitter such an effective social marketing tool and what kind of results have you seen from it?

Comparing it to other networks like Facebook, Twitter is more about sharing external links so it is a great source of traffic. If you can get few of the Twitter influential to retweet your blog post it can easily spread and send you thousands of visitors so that is mainly how I am using Twitter - as a traffic tool.

2)What are the big mistakes you see people make when they start tweeting?

People think just by starting a Twitter account they can get traffic. It doesn't work like that. You need to spend a lot of time connecting with relevant people and influencers and you need to create value daily by sharing quality links and being part of the discussion. So biggest mistakes - expecting results before doing any work first.

3)Wow Marko you have over 20,000 followers on Twitter how did you get them/What are your top 5 tips for getting new followers?

You basically have to promote your Twitter page like you do your blog. Put itwhereverit is relevant. Also make sure to create value in your tweets as retweets can give you new followers. Also connect to people first - follow them, @reply them, interact with them and they will follow back.

4)What are your most retweeted/popular types of tweets?

 

Same with blog posts headlines - "how to" or "top tips" kind of headlines work best even for retweets.

5)I know promoted tweets and trends are still in beta and aren’t quite open to the public yet, but do you think they will be a successful way to promote your profile and will you be using them?

I haven't really tested any of them and am not sure how expensive they are. For small time bloggers and business owners I think it is best to focus on organic way of promoting your Twitter profile as we have spoken about already.

6)At what point did you start seeing your followers and traffic snowball and contribute largely to your blog?

Probably somewhere in late 2008, early 2009. Twitter was fairly new back then and people didn't see it as a traffic building tool. I wrote a series of articles on it back then and showed some great stats to my readers and I got a fair amount of retweets / traffic from Twitter back then.

7)Is Twitter #1 for social marketing and should it be used alongside other tools like Facebook and YouTube?

Twitter is just a part of the whole package for me. Depending on what your audience does / where they hang out online, you could have a Twitter stream, a Facebook page, a Youtube channel, a Flickr account and so on. Depending on your audience, each of them can be a nice source of new traffic and can help you spread the word about yourself.

8)If you could start again what would you do differently?

 

Maybe join Twitter even earlier. Even though I joined in late 2008 I was stillfairlylatecomparedto some of theinfluentials.

 

9)Are there any secrets to Twitter marketing?

Not really. It is like anything else. You have to join it, learn about it, spend a lot of time on it connecting to other people and providing value and slowly you will see the results coming in.

10)Tell us about your blog and Twitter marketing eBook?

I blog about blogging at How To Make My Blog at
http://howtomakemyblog.com/. Twitter is one of the bug sources of traffic for me, so I have written a series of articles on it and eventually converted them all into an e-book about how to promote your site on Twitter. E-book link is
http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/ebook/whats-the-twittermarketing-e-book.

I have read Marko’s fantastic eBook and it really helped me get started on Twitter. I would recommend heading over to his blog and checking out the eBook
http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/ebook/whats-the-twittermarketing-e-book/

It’s more than worth the investment.