Twitter has two main components. Just like other social networking sites, you can add “followers” and follow other people as well. They’ll receive your updates and you’ll receive theirs. However, your messages are limited to 140 characters, which is why some people call it a “micro-blogging” tool. You have to keep your messages brief and to the point.

I would like to share with you some practical ways to create an instant flow of new traffic to your blog or website as well as how to add brand new subscribers to your mailing list.

Here are some tips to begin receiving active traffic from Twitter…..

1. Establish your Twitter brand: Even though you want to be personable on Twitter, you still want to portray your status as an “authority” in your area of expertise. So, don’t use Twitter as an hourly diary of your life as some do. Mix your posts or “tweets” up with industry-relevant links in addition to your personal activities and opinions. And by all means get a custom graphic background designed that is nice looking and includes the web address of your website and blog.

2. Begin to follow people: All this means is that you sign up to receive their messages. If you follow them, they will most likely follow you. This is the most prevalent strategy being used to acquire followers. Be sure to thank people when they follow you either by @ reply or direct message.

You can use the search feature in Twitter (search.twitter.com) or you can search Google.com (keywords site:twitter.com) and find the people you want to follow – just put in the search terms you are looking for. If you want to find authors in Australia, go for it. If you want to find local people to network with, that’s fine, too. Just search.

Important note: When filling out your bio in your Twitter profile, be sure to include several relevant keywords so you can be found when people search for folks to follow.

3. Be interactive and social with replies. Make sure you ask and answer questions and give value to the community. You don’t have to say anything profound – just relevant. Post a reply. When you type in a regular message, people may reply to your post. You’ll see your user name with the symbol @ before it when someone replies to your message. You can respond to other people the same way. You simply type @ and then their user name directly after that (no spaces) and then your reply.

4. Ask questions and surveys: You can increase your relationship with your followers by asking questions. Ask people for advice, what they think of the latest news story or their opinion on a topic. Survey your followers regarding a hot topic or if they think your latest blog post is accurate.

5. Utilize direct messages: If you want to send a private message to someone that no one else can see, you can send a direct message. You’ll also receive messages from others and be notified via e-mail when someone direct messages you. Use a service like Tweetlater.com or Socialtoo.com to automatically thank new followers with a direct message. Don’t forget to include a link to your website or blog in the note.

6. Take advantage of retweets: A retweet is when a Twitter user copies a twitter message from another Twitter user in their network and shares it with their network, thereby mentioning the author of the original Twitter message (example – Retweet: @originalposter The 15 Best Tips http://tinyurl.com/56f – great tips). Retweets that contain value can impress your followers, help establish your brand, and build a relationship with the original poster.

7. Start “tweeting” right away. The best way to get followers is to say something – your tweets will come up in searches, so make sure you say things that reflect you well. Say things that are relevant and not just sending out sales pitches. Don’t be afraid to give a word of encouragement or a suggestion to someone. Remember to place keywords in your messages.

8. Build your list. When you place a link in a message, make sure your websites and blogs feature free offers. Obviously, you’ll make them subscribe to your mailing list in order to receive the offer. However, don’t send them to a squeeze page designed only to harvest email addresses. Send them to pages that contain valuable, interesting content.

9. Send links as a natural part of the conversation. If you chat with people, eventually they will ask what you do (or you can drop subtle hints) – then you can mention it. Again, only send them content links.

Use links properly. Don’t send a direct link to your product. Send a link to your blog or a general informational website. Don’t be so blatant about trying to get a sale.

For example, if a Twitter entrepreneur complains about not doing well with social networking, don’t send her a link to your ebook on Facebook; instead, send a link to your blog post that discusses social networking ideas (that can include your link to the ebook). You will get a much more favorable reception.

10. Getting traffic to your blog posts: With a simple post to Twitter, you can have lots of readers come to your blog. Even though blog feeds do the same thing, you can often find new readers on Twitter or remind current readers to re-visit your blog or a specific article.

11. Be useful and helpful. Not every tweet has to be about “you”. Take time to tweet about others and be a helpful part of the community.

12. Listen to your followers. Try to help them out. You can get great feedback using tweets. You can get ideas for info products and affiliate products from the feedback you receive from your followers.

13. Don’t send message spam: Let me repeat: Do NOT send spammy messages! If all you do is send out tweets that scream, “Buy from me! Buy from me!” you will quickly lose followers. Just don’t do it!

14. Final tips: Don’t post the same link more than once. If people are really interested in your blog and your links, they’ll visit it the first time you post it. You don’t need to post your link multiple times. Don’t tweet about every single thing you do. (Like “going to the store” – do people really care?) Don’t send direct affiliate links. Don’t toot your own horn all of the time. Let people hear from you, but don’t be too chatty.

Please don’t get discouraged. Learning Twitter is just like anything else – it takes time. Soon you will be twittering and tweeting with the best of them. Just jump in, take action and enjoy the traffic.

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They are the people whose accounts at social media sites are highly active, lending additional weight to that which they submit and vote on. They are web-savvy individuals who have seen a lot of linkbait and who often don’t want to link to direct marketing ploys. Upon visiting a social media site or reading a blog, the only reason why a member of the linkerati would take your bait and either vote for it or link to it is because it’s simply too good to ignore. The public at large may send links, chain letters and pictures in mass emails, but the Linkerati are a harder sell.

There are six types of people who regularly constitute the Linkerati. Sometimes, people fall into more than one category.

Social Media Participants

These are people who are actively involved in communities such as StumbleUpon, Reddit and Digg. They visit these sites every day, vote on content, submit content and add comments. They are powerful because their votes determine which content will become popular and thus be exposed to the largest number of people.

Most social media sites, including the three large sites listed above rank their users according to how much success their votes and submissions generally garner. The unfortunate thing about this crowd is that they can sniff out linkbait and they often detest marketing.

Bloggers

People who run blogs are prone to writing about interesting content they find elsewhere on the web. While millions of people have Blogspot, Wordpress and Typepad blogs, some of them have never been indexed by search engines, carry no PageRank, have no links pointing to their sites and have little power. However, a percentage of blogs carry a lot of weight and their authors’ opinions are highly respected. This group includes the likes of Pete Cashmore from Mashable and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch: having these people, or their staff, write about your products, tools or content results in massive exposure. Links from these sites are very valuable. Of course, the more prominent the blog, the more difficult it is to convince the blogger to write about you. Paid blogging campaigns (where one has thousands of inconsequential blogs write about and link to one’s domain) can elicit huge numbers of links, and yet cannot compare in strength or significance to one link and one write-up from TechCrunch.

Many people do not think of the writers at these prominent websites as being bloggers: the word conjures up images of political activists, amateur literary critics, stay-at-home moms and their ilk. Often, people think of “bloggers” as a lowly form of the next category – journalists. However, blogging (call it “writing for the Internet” if the term bothers you too much) is becoming more important to the activity and culture of the Internet, and the best in the field are becoming more respected for their craft.

There are inherent differences between blogs, bloggers and traditional writing, most of which revolve around style, user interaction and subject matter. Bloggers are prone to editing their posts as new information comes to hand, adding strike-throughs to text that is no longer applicable and taking a less formal tone with their audience. Their bad reputation for knowing little about grammar, style or literary tradition is true for some of them and is completely undeserved for others. With so many people currently maintaining blogs, no one stereotype that applies to them all.

Journalists

The difference between journalists and bloggers is usually their employer, although other notable differences exist. Most newspapers, magazines and television stations have websites where they post their stories, and some even allow readers to comment on stories in what was once typical only of blogs. Journalists, however, rarely change their stories once they’ve been published, preferring instead to print retractions or omissions if they’ve made an error of if new information comes to light. Journalists are almost universally paid for their writing, whereas bloggers are often operating for themselves or making their money from the advertising on their site, if they make any money at all. Bloggers also often have other jobs – that is, they run an online or offline business and they blog for the company’s website. Even though there are many times more bloggers in this world than there are journalists, you can guarantee that far more people declare themselves to be professional journalists or reporters than “professional bloggers.”

Another reason journalists are often given more credit than that of most bloggers is because they are, theoretically, impartial and objective writers. Bloggers have never claimed to be anything but subjective, opinion-based commentators. Journalists are also powerful because their reach is not confined to the Internet; their profession is more established and recognized by society and they are often published on and offline. Even the least web-savvy people seem to realize how easy it can be to have one’s opinions posted online, and thus appear to respect offline writers more.

Links and reviews received from journalists vary in strength and significance, just as they do when received from bloggers. A link from the New York Times, for example, is going to be worth much more than from the Puget Sound News. When dealing with online ventures, certain publications are more authoritative than they are offline: being reviewed offline in Wired magazine is great, but being featured in their online publication is extremely valuable. Because Wired is well known as a respected, authoritative technology publication, the sites to which they link (unless the links are nofollowed) are credited with some of Wired’s authority.

Researchers and Web Authors

People who publish their research online are quickly becoming part of the Linkerati due to the strength of the websites they generally use to publish their findings. Sites whose generic top level domain is .edu are credited with authority that they may or may not actually have. A gTLD of .edu indicates that the site belongs to an educational institution, usually a university. It is somewhat of a flaw in the algorithms of search engines to assign universal authority to .edu domains, as most universities allow all students and faculty to create pages on their domains, which can contain any amount of inaccurate, untrustworthy information.

Search engines also assign weight to .gov (government) and .mil (military) domains, as well as the non-US versions of these sites, such as .gov.au in Australia. The people who write for these sites are usually neither bloggers nor journalists. Also note than many researchers and authors do not have .edu or .gov sites. Some even contribute to sites like Wikipedia, where the links do not help for SEO purposes (due to nofollow tags), but can drive a lot of traffic and value.

Often respected authors, academics, scientists and business-people who publish online don’t realize their status as members of the Linkerati; their influence offline is credited to what they publish online, but they do not necessarily understand the way their status affects those to whom they link.

Forum Posters

Although somewhat less visible to the public than blogs, the web is teeming with forums. Virtually every industry, hobby, religion, political affiliation and cause has dozens of forums where people discuss, argue and debate the intricacies of their chosen subject. Many online cultural phenomena have been spread by forum participants. Having your content discussed on a forum that relates to your subject is a great form of exposure, as you can guarantee that the people involved are interested in the content.

A recent piece of linkbait we released at Drivl was picked up and talked about in various college sports forums. While the piece did not receive a tremendous number of Diggs or Reddit upmods, the traffic to the page was huge and a lot of it was driven by these forums. We recently leveraged forums about the United States’ immigration procedure in order to market a post relating to the subject. Forum members are usually passionate about the forum’s subject matter. Like social media websites, forums usually reward constructive participation by assigning rank to members. In the example below, one poster is a Junior Member while the other is a Senior Member.

While rank makes little difference to a users’ actions within a forum (unless a high rank gives them moderation privileges), such a system is a great way to have people participate on a regular basis in order to improve their ranking. Forums are also specifically designed to let users know when new comments have been posted, thus encouraging discussion. Unfortunately, the tone of many forums tends toward argumentative and many threads turn negative. People are sometimes less than polite when concealed by a pseudonym, so viral content can be lambasted by forum participants in the same manner that it can be torn apart by commenters at social news sites.

Offline Connectors

The final group of people who can spread viral content are those who do so offline. This category is made up of influential people who are not active in any particular online community, but who reach the public through other mediums. Highly visible examples include people like Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and, to a lesser extent, Joel McHale of The Soup. Both host comedic commentary television programs in the U.S. and both talk about current events, viral content and social memes. Neither is personally involved in maintaining websites or blogs, but the things they talk about, the jokes they make and the content they promote is well-known.

Many less-visible people also belong to this group. In actuality, anyone who discusses online content in an offline environment is an offline connector: conference speakers, public officials, technology evangelists and politicians have all helped facilitate and spread viral content at one point or another.

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Of all the successful blogs on the Internet, hundreds more have failed. Running a blog is like running a business website. Unless you are willing to put the time in and treat it seriously, you won’t be blogging long.

That is not to say that the failed bloggers weren’t serious about blogging. Mostly, new bloggers aren’t prepared for the work that goes into creating a successful blog. Just building the blog doesn’t mean that people will necessary come to you. You pursue the audience and give them a reason to see what you have to say.

1. Fresh Content – no one wants to visit a blog day after day and see the same posts. Update your blog content at least twice a week. This will be easier if you write several posts ahead of time and upload them at the appropriate times.

2. Article Marketing – the niche you’ve chosen for your blog is one that interests you. If it is interesting you will spend more time doing it. Create content not only for your blog but also to be submitted to article directories. Use the resource box to advertise your blog so people can find you.

3. Social Networking – these sites are everywhere. Join Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, Twitter or a dozen others and make connections. You can join groups of likeminded people who are also bloggers or entrepreneurs.

4. Viral Marketing – this is where you spread the word about your blog. Talk to friends, family and even strangers. Give out business cards that have your blog address on them.

5. Use RSS Feeds – RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Readers can subscribe to your feed and get email updates when new content is posted. It is an easy way for them to keep up with your blog without spending all day online.

6. Submit Blog to Search Engines – doing this allows your blog to be ranked. Google and Yahoo! are two of the most popular search engines you want to crawl your blog pages. It doesn’t guarantee top ranking, though. You’ll have to do a little more work for that.

7. Joining Forums – as a blogger you are a budding entrepreneur. Right now you are marketing yourself to find traffic and then profit. Become a member of business forums, work at home forums and others to meet new people and share ideas. You can add a link to your blog in the signature line so others can find you.

8. Visit other blogs – show your appreciation to those who visit you by also posting comments on their blogs. It is a kindness that shows others you are not just out to advertise your blog alone. Add links to your blog in your comments.

9. SEO Marketing – whatever you write, use relevant keywords. Keyword density between three and ten percent is good for getting higher page rankings in search engines. Base your keywords on a research you do to find the most popular words used in search engines for your niche.

10. Social Bookmarking – submitting posts to social bookmarking sites allows others who are members of those sites to track you back to your blog.

Using any of these ideas will start the blog traffic moving in your direction. It takes time through internet and social marketing, but you will build the readership you want.

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