Twitter is a micro blogging platform that has caught the attention of the main stream media. You share your thoughts, insights, knowledge, tips, and interesting article sources using 140 characters or less with your followers in Twitter.

It is not a marketing platform but you can effectively use it to establish your brand and promote your products and services indirectly.

If you are planning to spam your Twitter followers with your blog post URLs and affiliate links, you will not go anywhere. Your followers will un-follow you quickly. You will not get new followers.

Twitter is like any other social media site. If you share information and insights about your niche by filtering them from hundreds of blog posts published every day, you will provide value to your followers. 

If you find valuable information in your niche, share them with your followers and their number will increase.

You can also use Twitter to post latest news, hot trends in your niche, links to funny pictures, humorous video links, and other interesting things.

You have to post almost every day, preferably couple of times a day, to keep the number of followers growing rapidly.

If you are using WordPress blog platform for your blog, there are few tools you can use to automate your Twitter activities. These tools will help you use Twitter for promoting your brand.

First, you need to integrate the Twitter feed into your blog and encourage your blog readers to tweet your blog posts in their accounts.

Use TweetThis WordPress plug-in to encourage your visitors to tweet your blog post. TweetThis adds a Twitter link in every blog post you create. If needed, this plug-in will also shorten your blog post URL to fit the 140-character limit.

WPTwitp-ID plug-in adds a Twitter field to your WordPress blog comment form. When users posts comments, they can enter their Twitter user ids and the plug-in will create links to follow them in Twitter. You will be providing a service to increase the number of Twitter followers of people who leave comments in your blog.

Another WordPress plug-in called Twitter Tools integrates your blog with Twitter by pulling all your tweets into the side bar of your blog. You can also post new tweets from inside your WordPress blog.

TweetMeme Button helps retweet your post through out the Tweeter network. It also shows a count of how many times your blog post has been retweeted.

Tweeter Updater tool will send a Twitter status update to your account when you publish a post in WordPress.

You can find the web sites for these WordPress plug-ins by doing a search in Google. If you’re not using Twiteer as a brand building platform, you should sign up for a Twiteer account immediately.

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Let’s look at how you can increase your chances of meeting the tweeple. (This is just one of those new terms mentioned. It is so new that spelling checkers still think it is a mistake). Tweeple are simply people using Twitter. Why would you want to meet people using Twitter? The reason is that there is a potential to reach a huge audience very quickly. Unlike spam email the people reading your messages (or tweets) have opted in to do so by becoming your ‘followers’. This raises the possibility for Twitter marketing. 

It is not a good idea to blatantly advertise in twitter – even though many do. Apart from the fact that people may stop following you, they are also a lot less likely to click on any of your links. A better method is to tell a story. For example, you could send a tweet that said something like ‘You’ll never guess what happened to me at the shops today – find out the full story [link]’. This would arouse curiosity. The link would send readers to your blog or website where you could include an interesting pre-sell story. Not only would you get more clicks, you are likely to get higher conversions.

Of course, none of this is going to happen if you don’t have followers. There are some simple steps you can take to increase the likelihood of others following you. The simplest is to make good use of your twitter profile. You should include a picture of yourself in order to appear personal and approachable. If you have a website then you should include the URL in the profile. Twitter allows you to add up to 160 characters for your bio. This is an area you should put some thought into. As well as introducing yourself you should add something about the niche you are targeting.

An advanced tip is to change the profile background. Most people couldn’t be bothered doing this so this one small change can help you stand out from the crowd. Not only can you change the background color, you can also add a picture. This could be a picture of yourself, your product or one that just sets a theme.

If you set up your profile well and provide useful tweets that add value you are likely to build an army of followers as well as make some extra sales and get increased traffic to your website along the way.

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It’s the latest craze, and one that can make you money, build your brand, get you clients, and bring on some great joint venture projects. No one made me the Twitter police but I have noticed there are ways to work Twitter and there are ways to use Twitter that won’t get you any work.

Here are some dont’s with regards to getting followers:

1. Don’t try to amass a huge following before you’ve done some tweeting. People will not be interested in following you when they click on your Twitter page to see what you’ve got, and notice you don’t have much. You need to have tweeted more than, “Trying to figure this Twitter out” and “I think I’ve got it figured out now.” Tweet, tweet, tweet before you gather your flock. Don’t know what to say? Try “retweeting” (RT) some other peoples’ tweets that resonate with you. Reply to what someone else says and start up a conversation. Tell what you’re doing on your business right now. Those are several tweets in the making right there.
2. Don’t shoot out promotion after promotion. When others look at your timeline, they’ll notice you’re just in it for you. People want to know what’s in it for them. There are millions of Twitters to follow, why should they follow you when you’re only tweeting about your own annoying promotions?

3. Engage in conversation with your Twitter friends. If they’re your friends/followers, shouldn’t you reply to them on a daily basis? I don’t mean reply to all of them everyday, just do several replies to various tweets a day. Again, your potential followers will look at your Twitter timeline and if you don’t ever talk to anyone, it’s a big turn off. It says ME, ME, ME. So hit @reply and give attaboys, words of encouragement, comments on their blog post link or tell them how you like their latest product. Offer answers when someone has a question, which is an excellent way to brand yourself as an expert. And if someone @replies to one of your posts, it’s considered common courtesy to comment back.

The biggest advantage of Twitter is using it to build relationships. Offer value, yes, but also take the time to “talk” to people so they can see you as a real life person. Give first, make friends, and watch your business world open up – just from tweeting on Twitter.

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