Think Twitter is a Waste of Time?

If you're not convinced that the social networking site Twitter can be useful for your small business, you're not alone. Twitter may have started out as a novel way for users to share random details about their lives (like what they had for breakfast or what movie they're watching), but that is changing very quickly. Businesses of all sizes are finding Twitter to be an effective online marketing tool, and there is growing evidence to suggest that the major search engines (like Google and Bing) are now starting to add Twitter "tweets" to their search results for users.

Why does that matter to your small business? Because using Twitter in your marketing mix means that it could also improve your visibility in the search engines. It's another way to gain exposure for your business, get your business listed higher on the search results pages, and get your brand mentioned more often in the web resources that users still turn to the most - the search engines.

Here are a few reasons Twitter has become so valuable as a small business marketing tool:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Like most small businesses, you probably have invested at least some time, money, or both into optimizing your web site for the search engines (and if you haven't, you already know that you should!). Being active on Twitter can support those efforts and make your investment in SEO even more valuable.

Studies show that nearly 80% of people still turn to search engines first (mostly Google) when they look for products and services on the web, and that's not likely to change any time soon. Getting your business to show up for your most important keywords and phrases is just as important as ever, and using Twitter can help attract the attention of the search engines, and improve the chances that they will include your business in the search results.

Qualified Traffic - Often, the traffic that comes from being active on Twitter is highly qualified, since users have already opted-in to follow you and are interested in what you have to say.

Real-Time Search - Social networking sites have really pushed the search engines into focusing on how to add real-time search to their results, since sites like Twitter are excellent at providing users with news as it happens. On Twitter, users can search for news and events and get instant, up-to-the-minute results, where a search engine's results may be hours, days, or even years old. It's only a matter of time before the search engines have real-time search rolled into their results, making your Twitter activity more powerful.

Viral Marketing - Because social networking is so popular with users, the information you provide to your Twitter followers can travel all over the web as they share your "tweets" with their networks of friends and colleagues, who then share with their networks, and so on. Your tweets are also not limited to Twitter users, either, since people can pull your tweets into their Facebook pages, link to them on a blog, put them in their bookmark lists on Delicious, etc.

Building Relationships - Twitter, as with other social networking sites, is all about providing something of value to your followers, and being a part of the overall conversation happening online today. Customers want to connect with the companies that they do business with, and they are participating with businesses in a whole new way. Twitter can help you build those strong relationships with customers that can increase brand loyalty and help you stay top-of-mind.

Constant Innovation - The speed with which new social networking applications, ideas, and features come out means your small business must find ways to stay in front of customers, no matter where those customers are. Twitter has only been in existence for a couple of years, which means it is just getting started in building up its repertoire of gadgets, widgets, and applications that people will find useful. By using Twitter now, your small business will be poised to take advantage of these new innovations as they come along. It can also give you a significant advantage over competitors who may have to play catch-up with building up followers and establishing their own presence in the social space.

No Time to Waste Twitter, like many other social networking sites, is changing the way small businesses market online, and it's a change for the better. Twitter is a free service, it's easy to use, can be customized, and is a great way to boost your presence online. Your Twitter efforts can also increase your customers' loyalty to your brand and your company, and meets a need that consumers themselves revealed to you by opting-in to follow you in the first place. And now that Google and Bing have announced the upcoming inclusion of Twitter "tweets" in their search results, Twitter can support your SEO efforts like never before as well.

Clearly, Twitter can be categorized as many different things (a viral marketing tool, customer service channel, SEO strategy, etc.), but a waste of time? Just the opposite.

Written by Lauren Hobson

Boost Business Opportunities Using Twitter Marketing Strategy

Twitter is one of the most well known social networking website that is based on a micro blogging platform. Most web marketers are limited with financial resources. If you want to be a successful businessman then you have to learn how to generate sales while minimizing business costs. When we talk about online business, more sales come from more traffic .Social networking sites are freely available online and one of the most popular among them is twitter. I am pretty sure that you have already created a Twitter account, now it's time to contribute & meet some new people on twitter.

How to begin

For the first few days you should follow people in your industry or interested in your business so that you build a relationship with like minded individuals, the first step of twitter marketing strategy. Though Using Twitter as a marketing tool for business is still new in Internet marketing field, but twitter marketing strategy has proved to be beneficial for many web marketers.

The next big step

Start posting on Twitter about interesting and informative topics. Update your subscribers with your daily business activities. Schedule useful quotes for weekdays. You will notice an increase in number of your followers as you add more valuable content. The more valuable are your Tweets the more followers you will gain. Tweeting useful content that your followers might be interested in is vital for twitter marketing strategy.

Tweet Value

As you start tweeting valuable links your interaction with your followers and potential customers will really be stepped up a level. At the end of the day, your customers are what it is all about why you are using twitter. You can use free services like Google Alerts to track your favorite topics & keywords related to your nice. Thus you can put Google Alerts to work as twitter marketing strategy. Check through your Google Alerts daily & post URL links to the most compelling & valuable content you come across. Schedule your posts to a later time using Tweetlater and get more followers than ever before. These twitter marketing tools work by using basic Twitter techniques, related services & apps to build mass follower base for your business. They also help develop inter-communication among followers, target them with content & use automated feed contents to drive targeted traffic to URL links contained within Twitter updates.

Written by Sourish Nath

Make Money With Affiliate Marketing On Twitter

You have probably heard a lot about affiliate marketing but have you heard about Affiliate marketing Twitter style? For those of you who are unsure about affiliate marketing, it is simply a case of promoting a companies product or services and if someone clicks on one of your affiliate links, which are provided by the company you are promoting, and then makes a purchase, you are automatically credited with a commission payment. Lets say that you have built up your Twitter following to around 2000 and you have become known for offering helpful advice and encouragement along the way. Lets us also say that the theme of this Twitter account is internet marketing so it would be safe to say that this is the subject that the majority of your followers at least have a passing interest in. As an example, if you have been using a particular keyword research tool and you are impressed by the results it is coming up with you could sign up to this products affiliate programme and mention to your followers the great results you have experienced with it. They will want to know more about it and you can direct them to the website through your affiliate link, hey presto, if anyone decides to purchase you get the commission. As long as you are only promoting products that are relevant to the market that you are twittering about and not bombarding your followers with constant links to affiliate sites you will find that the results will be extremely pleasing.

Written by dsmpublishing

How To Make Money Online Using Twitter

Many people these days are looking to make money online. But most people can't afford to put in the time or effort necessary in order to be successful. So wouldn't it be amazing if you could make money online with almost no effort or time involved? Well, by mastering twitter this is very possible. Here is an overview of how it's done.

First, you need to get a free twitter account, which can be done by going to the twitter website. Once your account and profile are set up, you need to start following people in hopes that they follow you back. Usually if you follow someone, they will follow you back out of courtesy. The more followers you get, the more money you can make. So be sure to make yourself look interesting by posting unique tweets. You can start making money once you have a few hundred followers, but you want to continue to grow the number of people who are following you.

Second, set up an account at clickbank.com for free. Clickbank allows you to sell products as an affiliate and receive a commission for doing so. Once again, this is free to sign up and only takes a few minutes. After signing up, you can browse the marketplace and choose some products that you find interesting and that you would like to sell. Once you choose a product, clickbank will give you your "affiliate link" so that whenever someone clicks your link and buys the product, you get credit for the sale.

And Finally, the last thing is to use twitter to make some money. Everytime you tweet something on twitter, it shows up on the homepage of all the people that are following you. And now that you have a big group of followers who are interested in you, you can start making tweets that include your "affiliate link". Now do not just tweet all your links and expect everyone to click on it, because everyone will think you are now spamming them. But instead, continue tweeting as normal to keep your followers interested and everyone once in a while post your link telling everyone to check out this new product you just tried. Everyone will be curious to see what the product is and you can make a lot of money.

So you see, it is pretty easy to making money online using twitter with only 3 easy steps. For those of you who already have a twitter account, you have already completed step number 1. Just make sure you have a lot of followers. As you see, the more followers you have means the more people who have the opportunity to click your link, and therefore, the more money you will make.

Written by John Wenhold