You might be asking yourself, how can I use Twitter effectively, and maybe even why would I want to use Twitter. Twitter is a great tool of social media. Twitter is a great way to stay in touch with other with common interests. It is also a great way to find people that think similarly. As you can search peoples tweets and see what they have to say. A tweet is a 140 character message, so you have to be skillful, and learn to use the backspace key to get out a concise message. The first thing you need to do, is to go to Twitter, and sign up for a free account there. I recommend picking a login name as close to what you want to promote.
I must be honest with you, twitter has one of the worst interfaces imaginable, so I prefer to connect to twitter using Hootsuite, this is a *FREE* application. So you can sign up, for free. Why use Hootsuite? I have a lot of followers, I have over 25,000 people I follow, so I categorize them into different interests, and then when I am interested in a particular subject, I scroll through that particular interest. I can also schedule my tweets, and send out messages when I think people may be interested in them. Not too many people are awake at 12 midnight, but lots of people are on at noon, so if I have something to say and I want feedback, I will schedule that tweet.
Ok, so now that you have a twitter account, and now that you have Hootsuite, you want some followers. I am familiar with two applications when it comes to finding twitter followers. I have used Tweetadder, and Tweetspinner, and both are good for finding people that have similar interests as you do. You simply select a few key words, and let the programs search for you, and then you follow those people with similar interests. Sometimes they follow you back. Now, if you want to use this to gain followers, you simply follow people that have similar interests, and wait a few days, and if they don’t follow you back, you unfollow them, and follow someone else.
You might wonder why you should use twitter, it is a free marketing tool. I use it to announce whenever I create a new post, I have it feed to twitter, and let people know the subject of my new post, and if they are interested they will come to my site. I also tweet about other people’s websites with similar content, and to simply sent out informative facts. You will want to become an authority in whatever you choose to talk about. It is up to you, there are many people that have thousands of twitter followers, and they all tweet about different subjects.
You may want to integrate your Twitter and Facebook together. This way you can post to Twitter, and have it show up on Facebook, two messages for 1. Here are a few links to help you integrate the two. Now, if you are promoting a business, I would urge you to set up a fan page on Facebook. (You set up a fan page on Facebook, because one day you will have more than 5,000 followers), How to Set up a Facebook Fan Page, 5 Ways to Integrate Twitter and Facebook, additional ways to Integrate Twitter and Facebook.
So we have gone over a very light overview of Twitter. First you need to sign up for a Twitter account, and then to really start utilizing Twitter, I suggest using a client like Hootsuite to interact with Twitter. If you are anxious to find followers try using a third party client like TweetAdder, or Tweetspinner, to find new followers. TweetAdder is very easy to use, and you will be finding new people to follow in no time. Then I suggest you integrate Twitter and Facebook together. Another big tip I suggest is in all of your official communication that you include your Twitter ID, for me that would be @copykatrecipes. Put this on your stationary, your business cards, and on your website, so when you meet someone, they can follow you.
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