Twitter Step-by-Step: Get Started Now!

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Step-by-Step How-to Guide for Marketing on Twitter

One of the online marketing pros I know was on a great Twitter Marketing panel with Dave Snyder, Lee Odden and Dan Zarrella at PubCon South 2009. His presentation focused on how to get started on Twitter, and how to best engage it to market your business. I love how qualitative and concise his info was. This article includes the notes and links that were in the presentation, truly news you can use. Enjoy!

Getting Started with Twitter

• Pick a good name. Free_ebook_4success is not a good name!
• Fill out your profile. Upload a profile image, change your background image (customize it), fill out your bio and don’t use the word Expert or add a link that goes to Squidoo!
• Don’t start off by “pimping” yourself or your company’s services

Finding Friends to Follow on Twitter

• You have no friends (sad but true)
• You should follow your “real” friends
• Follow your friends’ friends
• Follow influencers and their friends’ friends
• Search Twitority for influencers
• Use Twitter Search to find interests, brands and competitors
• Follow RSS feeds from Twitter Search results
• Use User Directories like Twibs

Keeping Your New Friends on Twitter

• Auto-replies are the quickest way to solidify or ruin a relationship
• Don’t do this: “Thx for following me, check out my 10 Steps to Riches at spam.com”
• Do this: “Hi, thanks for the follow. Honored to be part of your network.”
• Don’t over follow to quickly
• The follow/nofollow technique (don’t do it!)
• Manage new followers with Twimailer or Topify

Participating In & Starting Conversations on Twitter

• Find recent conversations at Twitter Search
• Visit buzz aggregators like Tweetmeme
• Notify users or Reply to their tweets using @username at the beginning of the tweet
• Retweet tweets that you find interesting using RT @username tweet message
• Use 3rd party tools, like TweetDeck, to stay engaged in conversation threads

Best Time to Tweet on Twitter

• Twitter users are most active on Wednesday
• Best day to tweet in order to get retweets is Monday and Wednesday
• Best time to tweet in order to get retweets is 5AM-4PM
• Twitter users are most engaged during 8AM-4PM

Using Keyword & Hashtags on Twitter

• Use keywords in tweets that you want people to find you with
• Keep most of your tweets non-promotional, with rare exception
• Use hashtags to participate in and help Twitter users follow events, subjects and groups

Using & Tracking Links on Twitter

• URL Shorteners let you say more
• They are not created equal
• Use 301 Redirects that pass link juice
• Provide traffic statistics
• Can handle lots of traffic
• Favorite URL Shorteners are kl.am, bit.ly, cli.gs and is.gd

Promotions & Giveaways on Twitter

Twitter is the perfect environment for:

• Beta Invites
• Promo/Coupon Codes
• Free Swag
• Limited Time Offers

Favorite Third Party Applications for Twitter

• TweetDeck
• Friend or Follow
• SocialToo
• HootSuite
• Splitweet
• TweetStalk
• Topify

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