September 23rd, 2009 by Bruce

Twitter is an absolutely fantastic online business tool, and it has, on quite a few occasions, staggered somewhat under the weight of its incredible growth – and sometimes, when a world wide news break occurs, “tweeters” from across the globe leap forward and crash their servers. It’s difficult to think of anything that has had such an amazing growth curve as this upstart social networking platform. Twitter didn’t even exist at the start of 2006, yet now it’s widely considered to be the 25th most important website in the world by numerous visitors, and it currently has many millions of very active fans.

Twitter does break the usual trends somewhat, insofar as anything to do with social networking has an established “trend” of course. Twitter lets you post messages, either via a web portal or through your mobile phone, letting everyone know exactly what you’re thinking, where you’re at or what you’re doing at the moment. Your message is restricted to 140 characters or less, so it’s always succinct. You have the choice of picking who you want to interact with, and who you want to see – known as “followers” or “following” in the domain of Twitter.

At this early stage of its development, Twitter doesn’t really have an online business model as such. You can sign up in just moments and start “tweeting” your messages for free. Marketers take a long hard look at the viral possibilities provided by this service and they begin to salivate. Opportunities await those who seek to harness its power.

Twitter is perfect for communicating business news or interacting with your friends and family. You can send a message strait from your mobile phone utilising one of their readily available applications, without even needing to go to a computer. It’s difficult to estimate the actual number of users because of the fluid nature of the platform, but many experts do caution that the number of avid users, or those who actively follow and get followed, represents a very small proportion of the total user base.

Even though the actual number of really active users might be only a few percent of the total users, the Twitter platform can still be seen as having really great marketing potential. Internet marketers need to approach the task of soliciting followers carefully. Whatever your niche, the first thing that you need to do is to seek out other experts who are regular “tweeters”. You can do this quite easily by using a simple search inside the Twitter program. Once you locate these experts, take some time and apply yourself to figuring out what kind of followers they’re going after, because your job is to work toward adding friends or followers to your Twitter feed in a strategic and consistent manner.

As it appears that the vast majority of members do not actively keep up with Twitter, it follows that there is no point in adding followers without trying to qualify them. If you can readily see that the follower in question has a fairly active list of individuals who he or she is following and, in turn, is being followed by, then they’re definitely good potential targets for you to go after.

Try and build a list of followers by initially following those who you suspect may have an interest in your product or service. If you’ve properly qualified them and you discover that they’ve followed you in return, then you’re on your way.

While you might just simply include your information in the profile supplied by Twitter, most experts will recommend that you also create some sort of banner or template instead of using a stock wallpaper background. This should include your branding, logo and message and it’s something that all serious marketers maintain.

Just as with any other kind of Internet marketing or website development, stay clear of spamming and keep your messages relevant, informative and entertaining as well. There’s always a time and a place for your marketing message, and when you do use it, you should always do it a subtle fashion. Happy Tweeting!

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a highly qualified Executive Virtual Assistant Service which helps businesses and individuals accomplish every detail of their professional aspirations. Want to discover more about these insightful online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Today!

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