My first post on “Free Tutorial for Twitter” answered the question What is Twitter?. Now I’ll show you how to use it as a marketing and communication tool.
Sending Twitter messages, or “Tweets”
There are 3 ways to update:
1. All subscribers
2. Directed to one person
3. Sent a private message to one person
All Subscribers
Login to twitter.com/home
Insert your message in the box under “What are you doing”
Click update
All subscribers will see your message
This will register as an update in the right sidebar
Directed to one person
If you want to reply directly to a specific person you are following use @username. Keep in mind it will still be seen publicly by all your other followers. Make sure the person you’re sending the message to is following you, or they won’t receive it.
Sent a private message to one person
You can send a Twitter friend a Direct Text, which will go to their individual phone or web page. From the web, click Message from the profile page or use the drop down box on your Direct Messages page. From your phone, use the command: D + username + message.
What do the numbers in the right sidebar mean?
3 links are displayed in the right sidebar of your account:
Following – this is the number of people you are following or the number of friends you have.
Followers – these are the people who are following your Tweets.
Updates – refer to the number of messages you’ve sent.
How do you follow someone?
For example if you wish to follow me, go to http://twitter.com/hermandrost and click “follow” under my picture
You can also follow someone by clicking on any of the photos on my twitter page. This will bring up the twitter page of a specific person then click the follow link on his page.
My experience
I’ve found this application useful for following people in my niche. Gurus are busy people that often don’t reply to email or blog comments so you can follow what they are doing on Twitter and communicate with them.
People are not going to follow you if you have nothing valuable to say or don’t invite them. Announce it to your ezine subscribers and/or place a link to your twitter account on your blog. So far I’m only sending updates when I’ve got something noteworthy to say.
Please write your comment below if I’ve missed something. I’m still learning how to use Twitter as an effective marketing tool….more on this later.
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Follow me at http://twitter.com/hermandrost
You’ll receive quality tips on the design, conversion and marketing of your web site plus I’ll get back to you in a timely manner if you reply to my Tweets
Herman Drost is the CEO of http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Affordable Web Site Design, Web Hosting and Marketing.
