Next up -Twitter Tools!  Using Twitter to grow a list of responsive and targeted subscribers is also relatively simple, regardless of your niche market or current experience. In fact, building massive lists of targeted prospects is easier to do with Twitter than with 99 percent of other methods online.

Twitter is an information network, but it’s also a social community, which means you need to market yourself and your products differently than you would with traditional marketing. Here’s how to do it.

Hint: Skip the automatic welcome message. For instance, although many marketers recommend that you add an “automated welcome message,” which is sent to your new followers, I strongly encourage you to skip this option. It just adds to the online clutter and most people don’t appreciate these messages in their mailbox.

It’s always important to reciprocate when people follow you, so that you can build relationships with your target market. You’re not, however, required to follow every single person who chooses to follow you. After all, you want to build a targeted list of followers who are likely to purchase your products and follow your tweets. You can choose to be picky.

Remember, too, that people don’t join the Twitter community with the intention of buying. Nor do they want to be constantly marketed to. You need to balance your tweets so that you’re offering something of value or interest to your followers, as well as consistently building your brand. If you aren’t sure how to do that, take some time evaluating the way that seasoned Twitter marketers have created their system. While they effectively use Twitter to maximize their exposure, establish new business, and keep their brand in front of a captive audience, they also focus on giving, rather than taking, with valuable tweets and helpful advice. When they do this, they stand out and more and more people will follow them, re-tweet their broadcasts, join their lists, and buy their products.

Don’t start selling too quickly!

Let me reiterate – People join social networks to make new friends, connect with old ones and, from a business perspective, to possibly network with others in their markets. They do not join social communities to be sold to, and you need to remember this so you can approach from a different, less aggressive angle. You have to focus on warming up your following base as you would an e-mail marketing campaign. Show people that you’re interested in getting to know them, what they’re interested in and what they’re looking for.

For instance, why not offer your followers a free report or product sample to warm them up? Promote it via your tweets by emphasizing that your offer is available only to fellow Twitter members. Focus on giving, more than receiving, and you’ll quickly discover just how effective Twitter can be in helping you further your brand and build your online business if used correctly.

Free Twitter Tools.

Even though posting entertaining and useful tweets is an important part of successfully building your online business with Twitter, you still want to spend your time wisely and ensure that each tweet is productive in helping you further your brand, right? One way to expose your website to new business is to add your Twitter account to the free directory available at www.twellow.com.

Twellow offers the option to search through specific groups of Twitter users, based on category. This makes it easy to locate potential prospects in your market, as well as maximize your exposure by including your own Twitter profile within the directory’s feature page. From Twellow.com’s main page, click on the search box in the top menu, and then enter in relevant keywords that describe your market. Just by browsing through existing categories, you’ll be able to find hundreds of people who are interested in your niche market based on the keywords that appear within their description and bio fields. Since you’re focused on building a relevant following base, this is a great technique to jumpstart your campaigns. To follow someone, just hit the “follow” link.

Other Twitter Follow Tools

And also check out www.wefollow.com There’s a similar directory at http://www.WeFollow.com that showcases Twitterers based on the categories and descriptions they assign to themselves. This is another excellent way to generate traffic to your Twitter profile and maximize your exposure; just be sure to choose relevant keywords when creating your description and account summary.

And of course, I’d love to have you follow me on Twitter. I’ll do the same in return! www.twitter.com/DocYankee.

Twitter Tutorial PDF

All the lessons in this Twitter Tutorial are available in a downloadable PDF. Click here for details.

To read Part #1

To read Part #2

To read Part #3

 Once you have a handful of people following you on Twitter, or people you are following, it’s relatively easy to build up a network quickly by simply browsing their friends and followers and adding people who interest you, or who are involved in the same or similar industry. Follow these steps and you’ll be on your way.

On the main page of your Twitter account you’ll see your status bar on the right hand side. Click on “Followers,” and a screen will open. This area consists of a graph box that shows tiny photo clips of who’s following you. If you click on any of these photos, you’ll see how many people they are following and who’s following them. Twitter lets you quickly add who your followers are following to your Twitter account by following them back.  Piece of cake! And here’s how to do it…

…simply click on the image of anyone on your list to load his or her profile page.  Then, on the right hand side, view the section that contains their stats. You’ll be able to click “Following” to load a list of every person this specific user follows. It’s an easy way to locate other people you know or are familiar with in your industry.

Once you click on the “Following” link, you’ll be able to click on every person you wish to follow and they’ll be automatically added to your list. It’s a very fast way to follow a ton of people and, in exchange, encourage people to visit your profile and perhaps follow you in return.

This page displays 20 people at a time.  Click the “Follow” button to begin following people, and when you’re finished with one page, click the “Next” button to load a second page, or go back to your profile to choose someone else.

There’s many ways for adding followers on Twitter. You can also find people to follow and to follow you back by clicking on the “Find & Follow” tab on your main settings page.  This search area allows you to find fellow Twitter contacts from your e-mail address book and includes Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and AOL.

Retrieving a list of people who you’ve had previous contact with via e-mail and who also might use Twitter is a super-fast way to locate instant contacts. Another useful way to locate potential contacts is by using Twitter’s own built-in search function. Here you can enter in keywords that will produce a listings page featuring Twitter profiles that contain those keywords within their bio field, website URL, or from their overall Tweet history – this is a fantastic way of quickly finding potential prospects and relevant leads.

Simply enter in a keyword phrase or individual keywords that describe your niche market and browse through the results window, following people who share the same interests.

More Followers  -Standing Out on Twitter.

 There are many things you can do to stand out from other marketers attempting to use Twitter to grow their lists or attract new customers.

Aside from making sure you remain active within the Twitter community, you should spend some time developing a reputation among your “followers.”

Instead of posting links on Twitter to your website or blog only to send your followers to a landing page for a new product, write a few articles on current news topics, gossip, controversial or comedic subjects, and entertain them so that they begin paying more attention to your tweets.  The more active you are, the more exposure you’ll receive, and the more entertaining or useful your tweets, the more likely people will continue to pay attention to the broadcasts you deliver.

Hot Topics? You Bet.

Some of the most successful Twitter marketers know that if they focus on sending out tweets that consist of current hot topics, people will notice them and essentially check out their profile to find out more about them and the products they sell.  It’s like any other social community in which you need to take an indirect approach to marketing rather than a direct aggressive route; like you would with a sales page or list building campaign.

Twitter Tutorial PDF

All the lessons in this Twitter Tutorial are available in a downloadable PDF. Click here for details.

To read Part #1

To read Part #2

To read Part #4

Why set up a Twitter account if you’re not going to use it?

Granted, writing that first tweet can make people a little anxious, especially since once you post a tweet, everyone who visits your profile or chooses to follow you will be able to see it.  But don’t worry … too much … if you ever want to delete a message that you previously sent out, all you have to do is click on the tweet, look for the trashcan icon, and click it to delete your message from the timeline.

There’s also the option to mark specific tweets as favorites, which will make it easier for you to locate those tweets later on, once you have multiple messages in the timeline.

Jump right in. The Twittin’s fine.

Seriously, when it comes to writing your first tweet, don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether it’s creative enough, witty enough, or interesting enough.  That’ll come later. Once you’ve become an active member of the Twitter community, you’ll find it easier to think of entertaining and useful tweets, and you’ll also be able to respond to ongoing discussions from the people you follow and those who follow you. For now, post whatever’s on your mind.  Working on a website?  Post about it. Perhaps you’ve found an interesting website or news story, post about it.  The idea is to simply post enough so that you become comfortable with the Twitter system, and more importantly, so that your profile page shows activity before you start inviting people to follow you.

Building a Presence.

Once you’ve posted your first tweet, then it’s time for you to start following people on Twitter, so that you can build up your Twitter presence and encourage people to follow you in return.

Don’t just sign up and blast out ads every few minutes expecting to achieve anything but annoying people on your list.  Take time to talk to people individually by directing messages to specific people and posting useful information or links to free products and resources that people in your various niche markets would appreciate.

Just like anywhere else, you need to develop a reputation on Twitter as someone who’s interested in helping others, while at the same time developing your own Twitter presence.

Posting subtle little updates about your current projects, websites, blogs, and products is an easy way to keep people up to date on what you’re doing … even people who otherwise might not know who you are or what you do.  The way you present your Twitter updates and the frequency in which you do it is critical to staying current and helping your brand become memorable and noticed by the community. Think of it as building your very own “fan club.”

How to Build Your Twitter Following:

Twitter revolves around following people who interest you, and encouraging people to follow you in return by offering quality tweets. In my book, a definition of quality tweets would be those that serve as entertaining, useful, funny, or helpful in some way.

It’s easy to build a massive following if you simply want to add everyone you see but, not only is that time consuming, you’ll end up clogging your Twitter page with useless messages, all of which will take away from your Twitter experience and make it even harder to effectively market yourself and your business.

Shoot for quality…not quantity.

Of course you want a large following but it should consist of people who are actively involved or interested in your market. After all, you’re on Twitter to market your business, communicate with buyers, and network with others within your market.

If your following base isn’t directly interested in your market, it won’t matter how much time and effort you put into writing quality tweets or staying involved within the community; no one will pay attention to your messages and your exposure will be minimal.

It’s actually rather easy to find people to follow based on your target market and to subsequently encourage these same people to follow you in return.

If you have a mailing list of existing customers, e-mail them with information about Twitter, encouraging them to join and follow you, or if they already have a Twitter account, you can notify them directly that you too are now using Twitter. A quick reminder about how easy Twitter is to use may encourage your customers to join the site and stay up to date on your posts. Keep in mind that you may need to ask several times before most people will take the action you want.

If you don’t have an e-mail list of existing customers, you can still find people worth following by using Twitter’s built-in search tool.

Search on Twitter.

When you log into your account, you’ll see the search box at the very top of the page.  Entering in someone’s name or location is an easy way to locate that person. If, however, you’re not sure what username someone uses on Twitter (since not everyone uses his or her real name), you can look through Twitter’s search directory or visit websites that serve as a Twitter directory, such as twitterholic.com.

Adding people who are associated to your market is the key to building a profitable Twitter network. Once you have a few people on your list, you’ll be able to find even more to follow by viewing those who follow them. While time-consuming at first, once established, a Twitter network can help build your brand and increase your market.

Get the Complete Twitter Tutorial PDF

All the lessons in this Twitter Tutorial are available in a downloadable PDF. Click here for details.

To read Part #1

To read Part #3

To read Part #4