Like anything, and this is especially true of working with social media, the more you give, the more you get. In other words, the more often you tweet the more activity you’ll generate. Some suggest that you tweet a few times a day, every day. Not every tweet needs to be profound. But they should all be useful.

It’s important that you don’t abuse Twitter for marketing and promoting your products, services or affiliate links. Most of your tweets ought to be about offering your followers useful and valuable information. Only once in a while should you try to use Twitter to promote something. Otherwise you’ll be perceived as a spammer, and no one wants that tag.

Imagine if you had a large number of people following your tweets? Some people have tens of thousands following them. If you had something to promote and you had a large following, you could quickly and efficiently alert a lot of people of your promo. It acts sort of like a mass emailíng blast to your house email list, but it’s a heck of a lot easier and faster. This is the power of Twitter.

One thing that I’ve noticed with Twitter is that it can seem overwhelming at times. The sheer information on Twitter, the ‘how-to’s’, tutorials and all the other ubiquitous advice on how to use and take advantage of it can seem hard to understand and implement. So here’s an easy-to-understand list of the top ten ways in which you can use Twitter to market yourself, your business and your website.

The Top 10 Ways To Use Twitter for Marketing:

1. Use it to promote new pieces of content you or your company create to drive traffic to your site. From online articles to blog posts or from videos to webinars, each time you add something to the Web that is of value, tweet about it and include a link. (Most people on Twitter usewww.TinyURL.com to take a long URL and make it short.)

2. Use it for learning new marketing ideas, strategies and techniques. If you follow the right people, and you have to be picky about who you follow, you’ll get pointed to a good amount of useful tutorials, videos, e-zines and other things that teach you about marketing.

3. Use it to get new customers. Use Twitter’s search to find people who may be interested in your product or service. There are many ingenious ways to search for people on Twitter. For example, if you sell red widgets you could go to http://search.twitter.com and find people who have tweeted specifically looking for red widgets. To do this, type the following into the search box: red widgets?

• You’ll notice a lot of the results will be of others selling red widgets. These ones will all obviously have links in them to direct people to the site they’re selling red widgets on. To weed these people/tweets out, use the negative sign like this: -http red widgets?

• Since every link has ‘http’ in it, using the negative sign in front of it will cause your search results to not include any tweets with links in them.

4. Use it to build your email list. Use Twitter’s search to find people who may be interested in the monthly newsletter you send out to your house email list. Invite these people to join.

5. Utilize Twitter plugins or add-ons such as TweetMyBlog or The Twitter Updater, which both automatically make tweets of every new blog post you publish. Also check out TwitThis. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the Web page and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their followers on Twitter.

Finally, look at TweetLater, a service that allows you to write lots of tweets at once and then schedule them to go out over time.

Get The Full Story and (5) Additional Ways Here, Enjoy

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1. Authorize your API connections. It seems like every other week a new Twitter scam pops up sending DMs on behalf of many unsuspecting users. Of course you can change your password to protect yourself, but many apps require an authorization for your account. Be sure to check http://twitter.com/account/connections to make sure everything there is legitimate.

2. Twitter provides their own widgets. There are apps galore out there, but did you know Twitter has developed their own series of widgets for you to use on websites, blogs and elsewhere? Check out http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets to find widgets to show search results, your recent tweets, or your favorite tweets. Here’s a quick sample of a search widget, showing scrolling chatter ahead of the 2nd TWTRCON conference coming up on October 22 in DC (want to attend? I have a 20% discount code: TWTRAC – I think the agenda is shaping up to beat the first one in SF earlier this year…) [Reading via feed? Please click through to the post to see the widget.]

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Ten Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers:

1. Explain to your followers what retweeting is and encourage them to retweet your links. Retweeting pushes your @username into foreign social graphs, resulting in clicks back to your profile. Track your retweets using retweetist.

2. Fill out your bio. Your latest tweets and @replies don’t mean much to someone that doesn’t know you. Your bio is the only place you have to tell people who you are. Also, your bio is displayed on Twitter’s Suggested Users page. Leaving it blank or non-descriptive doesn’t encourage people to add you.

3. As @garyvee says, “link it up.” Put links to your Twitter profile everywhere. Link it on your Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, blog, email signature, and everywhere else you live online. Also, check out the great feedburner-like badges from TwitterCounter for your blog.

4. Tweet about your passions in life and #hash tag them. Quality content coupled with an easy way to find it never fails. If others enjoy your content, they’ll add you. Learn more about #hash tagging here.

5. Bring your twitter account into the physical world. Every time I give a talk, speak on a panel, shoot a podcast, present slides, or hand out business cards, I figure out a way to broadcast or display my twitter account.

6. Take pictures. Pictures are heavily retweeted/spread around. This one from US Airways Flight 1549 has been viewed 350,000+ times. For mobile pics use iPhone apps such as Tweetie or Twitterific, both which support on the go uploading.

7. Start a contest. @jasoncalacanis offered a free macbook air if he reached the #1 most followed spot. That never happened, but Jason added thousands of followers…brilliant.

8. Follow the top twitter users and watch what they tweet. Pay attention to the type of content they sent out and how they address their audiences.

9. Reply to/get involved in #hash tag memes. search.twitter.com lists the hot ‘trending topics. Look for the #hash topics and jump in on the conversation (see #4 for links to #hash instructions).

10. Track your results. TwitterCounter will show you how many new users you’re adding per day and Qwitter will email you when someone unfollows you after a tweet.

If you enjoy this content, add me at twitter.com/kevinrose, thank you.

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When I saw our recent in-house survey that over 57.75% had never read the new or old Twitter TOS in it’s entirety.

The more I thought about IT – The madder I got! Because there’s absolutely ‘No’ reason for this.

How can you every hope to build a solid reputation on ‘Twitter for both you and your business, If you haven’t read the term of services (TOS) and understand it completely.

Wake up Tweople and smell the coffee!

Hang in there with me for a second and burn this image in your mind.

You’ve worked hard for months building your list of followers and one day you wake up and your ‘Twitter’ account has been suspended!

Not a good feeling I assure YOU!

So what exactly is Churn or Churning? Why don’t I show You a letter sent from Biz Stone and the Twitter Support Staff on behalf of one of the Social Net Daily subscribers:

============================

“Dear XXXX,

That we take very seriously. Accounts engaging in aggressive following and follower churn are typically suspended for a minimum of one week; at the end of that time, you may petition for reinstatement by either a) re-opening this ticket or b) filing a new ticket and referencing this one.”

=======================

So who are the Partners In Crime? Simple many of the ‘Twitter Automation Tools’ that are on the market today.

There are ‘Pros and Cons’ when using them, Please be careful.

Thank-you for your time and consideration in this very serious matter, Your comments are Welcome!

Editor@SocialNetDaily.com

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Stone, who said Twitter was “pretty good right now” with regards to funding, stressed the company’s immediate focus was on building out features ranging from an improved search functions to paid-for commercial accounts.

“Any kind of approach toward advertising is going to be awhile … We’re not thinking about that just yet,” Stone said at the 140: Twitter Conference in Los Angeles.

Privately held Twitter — known for its 140-character, stream-of-consciousness blogs — has received plenty of venture funding, but Stone declined to disclose the amounts or valuation.

TechCrunch recently reported that a new round of funding would value Twitter at $1 billion.

Still in its infancy, the fledgling company has rapidly become a cultural phenomenon, but Twitter and other social networking Web sites have yet to show investors how they will start earning a profit.

To that end, Stone said Twitter aims to offer premium features for commercial account users this year.

“We wanted to show people that we’re here to stay and here we are making money,” Stone said.

Those features, which could debut in test form, are envisioned as for-pay features and potentially could include “light analytics” tools that allow commercial users to gather data on their followers, he said.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein, editing by Maureen Bavdek)

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“was bored watchin the game on tv and saw this thing about RTs…made me lol after i had really bad stomach cramps”

Note the lack of punctuation, the use of of slang and abbreviations, the limited vocabulary, and the awkward overshare–all traits that Zarrella can now definititively say would turn Twitter users off.

How? Because the avid Twitter-er and author of the upcoming The Social Media Marketing Book spent nine months analyzing roughly 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets (which are usually symbolized with an “RT” on Twitter).

He noted when they were posted, which words they used, whether or not they included links, and more. Then, he says, he compared the two groups to get the first “real window” into how ideas spread from person to person: “Retweets may seem like a small idea…but many of the lessons [they teach us] will be applicable to viral ideas in other mediums.”

The full report is 22 pages, and won’t be available until tomorrow. But Zarrella offered me a sneak peak–via Twitter, no less. Below, his nine most effective ways to get retweeted on Twitter:

1. Link Up (But Don’t Use TinyURLs)

In Zarrella’s sample, links were three times more prevalent in RTs than normal tweets (19% to 57%), suggesting that their mere prescence could help buoy your bon mots. (Not sure whether that holds true for sporadic use of French terms.) But choose your URL shortener carefully: Newer, shorter services, such as bit.ly, ow.ly, and is.gd, were much likelier to get retweeted than older, longer services, such as TinyURL. Ouch…

Get The Full Story Including Graphics and “Keywords”, It’s Awesome! Enjoy

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Here are some tips to avoid annoying your Twitter followers:

1. Thank everyone who follows you, but don’t give them a sales pitch in the process. That leaves a very bad taste as the first communication you have with your new follower.

Remember what your Mom said: “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” She was a smart cookie – listen to her advice. Make your thanks unique, honest and non-commercial.

2. Don’t send stupid tweets. That’s right I said IT! No, really. Listen to me on this one. If you send 10 tweets a day about how you are going to the store, walking your dog and washing your hair, you will lose followers, period. Don’t do it. It makes your tweets seem like a really boring reality show.

3. Don’t send excessive tweets, no matter what the topic. If you send endless tweets all day long, people will start avoiding your tweets and not read them.

You want your followers to hang on your every word, not treat you like a phone call from your annoying Cousin Julie: You know, the one you roll your eyes at when you see her name pop up on Caller ID. Admit it. I know you do!

4. Send interesting tweets. Send tweets that no one else does. Send tweets that your followers love. (Like my Star Trek trivia tweets. Those are a hoot. It’s okay. You can admit you want to follow me now just so you can get those.)

5. Let your list evolve naturally. Don’t just add 1000 people in 2 days just because you can. It is far better and more productive to add smaller numbers and have more quality instead of thinking “bigger is better” – really. Having a large number of people you follow in a short time can be a red flag for people and the sign of a spammer.

The very best to both you and your families ~Staff

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And keeping track of what people are saying to each other about your company, your competitors and your industry on Twitter isn’t easy, either. Now, a growing number of free Web products are helping companies minimize the hassles.

CoTweet Inc., a San Francisco-based start-up, offers several tools to help companies respond to tweets. Marcus Schmidt uses one called Tweet Assignments for his job as a senior marketing manager at Microsoft Corp. He oversees two company Twitter pages where consumers post about 300 questions and comments a day. He says Tweet Assignments helps him generate swift responses from the appropriate Microsoft employees by allowing him to send consumers’ tweets to colleagues instantly, without having to copy them into email messages. The recipients can then respond directly to consumers with tweets of their own or send responses back to Mr. Schmidt.

Winnie Hsia, a social-media specialist for Whole Foods Market Inc., uses another CoTweet tool to manage the 300 to 500 tweets posted daily to the natural-food chain’s Twitter page. Called Conversation Threading, it tells users which tweets have been responded to and when, and allows them to review all the messages exchanged with any correspondent. Ms. Hsia uses it to get “a better sense of what our past interaction has been” before she responds to a tweet or sends messages to customers. It also helps her avoid accidentally responding to the same tweet twice.

CoTweet launched its Twitter tools publicly in July and so far doesn’t charge for them. But it plans to start charging a monthly fee that will vary by usage by the end of year, says Jesse Engle, chief executive.

Getting the Message Out…

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ST. LOUIS — The extent of the fence-mending between St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and Twitter.com was clear to see Friday night, when a co-founder of the social networking site was invited to throw out a first pitch.

It’s a far cry from earlier in the season, when the manager filed a lawsuit after an unauthorized page using his name made light of his DUI charge and the deaths of two Cardinals pitchers in recent years. The lawsuit was dropped in late June, not long after La Russa said Twitter agreed to consider donating to his Animal Rescue Foundation.

Jack Dorsey, a left-hander wearing a vintage game-worn Bob Gibson jersey, floated a pitch in the general direction of Cardinals infielder Joe Thurston before the NL Central leaders played the Chicago Cubs.

The 32-year-old Dorsey, who grew up in the city, was honored as person of the year at suburban Webster University earlier Friday. He received a key to the city along with a proclamation that adhered to Twitter’s guidelines of no more than 140 characters at an event that was billed as a “tweetup.”

Dorsey was impressed that the proclamation even included three statements beginning with whereas, and a fourth beginning with therefore. He was perhaps more impressed with the advice he got from La Russa before striding to the mound before being honored with one of four “first pitches.”

“The first thing he said to me was ‘Don’t throw it in the dirt,”‘ Dorsey said.

Dorsey said Biz Stone, the other co-founder of Twitter, and another co-worker toured the facility recently and added, “They loved it.” Dorsey got a promise from La Russa to take him out to dinner in the San Francisco bay area.

“We resolved it,” Dorsey said. “He was great.”

The lawsuit was the first encountered by Twitter, and resulted from what Dorsey called a misunderstanding related to the site’s terms of service. The lawsuit prompted Twitter to tweak those terms.

The Animal Rescue Foundation, or ARF, tweets. Not La Russa, who claims to know little about computers.

“I don’t even know where to find it, I really don’t,” La Russa said. “Do you just Google Twitter?”

Dorsey said he’d love to tutor the manager.

“It would be awesome to get him on Twitter officially,” Dorsey said. “That would be fantastic. I’ll work on it.”

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But the quickest way to ruin a good thing is to misuse and abuse it, and that is what you do when you spam your Twitter followers.

Spamming your followers is a good way to lose your “tweeples” (followers).

Here are some tips to avoid the Spammer’s Kiss of Death:

1. The occasional tweet that points to your blog or website is fine. Don’t give a link that just goes directly to your product or service. You don’t want to be perceived as someone who says, “Buy from me!” all of the time.

For example, if someone asks about cleaning stains, and you have a product that cleans them well, the best approach would be to direct them to a blog post of yours with tips on cleaning different types of stains (possibly with your link in the post somewhere). Be more subtle and less aggressive.

2. Focus on the positive. Even if someone gets irritated with you, don’t play their games. Be positive and do not feed into the negativity.

3. Remember that Twitter is for social networking. It is for building relationships and establishing communication with people – not for sending out a spammy tweet every 4 hours.

4. Limit your tweets. Tweeting about a blog post once a day is a lot different than sending the same tweet 8 times. Less is more.

5. Don’t send out the exact same tweet more than once, especially if you have a link in it (even a blog post). I stopped following one guy when he sent out the same post 6 times in one day! And he sent a link to his “business opportunity” each time – not what I need or want on Twitter.

Twitter is great when used properly, but don’t abuse it – you will lose followers.

Keep your tweets sweet.

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