Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to place brief bits of information up ( called tweets ) which people who have opted to follow you can see.
For the purposes of increasing your search traffic and getting more people to your store, it has the following going for it:
- You can place links to whatever you want in your tweets
- Those who want to see what you are doing will see them
- Twitter has a pagerank of 9, which is about as good as it gets
Most of the excellent internet marketers I know who use twitter note that they get the best results when they mix both business and personal information. For example, instead of just listing products, sales, etc., they also give bits and pieces of information detailing what they are up to or interesting things they have seen.
Creating a Twitter Account
- Go to the Twitter signup page
- Fill in the form provided
- Full Name
- Username
- Password
- Whether or not you want email updates
- The Captcha
- Select "Create my account"
- This will take you to a page where you can search for existing friends on other services
- I tend to skip this step
- Select "Skip this step"
- Or see if you have friends on Yahoo, AOL, or Gmail
- Uncheck any of the default people to follow who you don’t want to follow
- I just uncheck the select all box and uncheck all of them
- Select "Finish" or "Skip this step"
- Your twitter account is now created!
Setting up your Twitter Account
Once your twitter account is setup, you can start using Twitter right away and/or setup your profile and options.
On your profile page, you can add a photo by selecting the "Add a photo" box near the top right.
On your settings page, there are various tabs with different information. Some of the more important ones are listed below. Be sure to select Save on each page to save any changes.
- "Account" → "More Info URL"
- This should be a link to your store traffic site (or online store)
- "Account" → "One Line Bio"
- About your or your store, in 160 characters or less
- "Design"
- You can customize the look of your twitter page here.
Using your Twitter Account
Now that you have your account setup, a picture, a link to your website, and a short blurb about your site setup, it is time to start making use of twitter.
Your first "Tweet"
To start with, I’d place up a simple tweet linking your site.
- Select "Home" from the twitter nav bar while you are logged in
- Enter a link to your site in the "What are you doing?" box
- I recommend a description in there too…at least as much of one as you can fit in 120 characters.
If you want, you might consider using one of the widgets or plugins made for twitter. A few can be found at The WordPress page on the Twitter Fan Wiki.
Going forward, you should consider creating "Tweets" for articles you write while doing article marketing, specials you are having, interesting new products you are offering, free resources you put up, contests, and even random thoughts you find interesting.
My Twitter Page
My twitter account for this site is privateerweb, so fell free to follow me by visiting http://twitter.com/privateerweb if you want updates on various things as I do them.
Gaining followers
One good way to get twitter followers is to start following people. Use the search functionality on the right, look over the results, and follow whomever you want. With this account, I will be following Bonanzle sellers *grin* and people talking about internet marketing.
