Using Twitter For Marketing And Driving Traffic

Well it seems these days you can't go anywhere without hearing something about Twitter. It would seem as if everyone and their mothers are on Twitter including celebrities, athletes, companies and even politicians. Just like with the other websites I have shown you on this site you can generate plenty of traffic and or sales from Twitter with a little hard work.

It's not the easiest site to gain a million followers on, but with some dedication you can grow your followers quite easily. First thing you need to do though is sign up, which you can do here. Just pick a username and fill out your profile included a link to the website that you want to drive the most traffic to. Once you do this you can beginning your tweets. It could be anything that runs across your mind, or you can link to one of your sites or blog posts with some clever saying. Don't concentrate on this too much in the beginning though, because if no one is following you then no one will ever see any of your clever tweets.

So what you need to do is start following people. Twitter has a link up at the top called "Find People" which will automatically go into your e-mail and find out your contacts that are already on Twitter. This is under "Find on other networks". Twitter also has a "Find on Twitter" option where you can simply type in the name or username of anyone on Twitter and find people this way. Go nuts and follow all the people you want at this point. After you have added in all your contacts it is time to take it to the next level. You need to think about what your website is about and some possible keywords that are relevant to your site. Take these keywords and enter them into the search on Twitters homepage on the left side. For example, if your site is all about Fish you can typing in fishing or aquarium or an individual fish even to see if anyone is Twittering about that particular topic. Now you have located the people that are interested in your websites topics enough to Tweet about them, so make start following them, or even send them a reply to their tweet giving them some insight about what they said, or just say hello. Rinse and repeat until you are following about 2,000 people.

At this point Twitter makes is so you can only follow 200 more people than are following you. For example if you are following 2,000 people you need to have at least 1,800 followers. This prevents spammers from completely taking over Twitter. What I do at this point is go back into the people that are following you by clicking on the "Following" under your profile picture. Now under each profile picture that you see it will either say "Direct Message", or it will be blank. The ones that are blank you need to remove, because this means that even though you are following them, they are not following you. No sense following them if they aren't going to follow you because of this ratio that Twitter puts into place. Of course there are exception if you really like the person and don't care if they follow you. Continue to build your followers and Tweet your websites out along the way and you will start to see traffic coming in from Twitter. Everytime you make an update to your site or post a new blog post, tell people by giving out a short Tweet about what you did. If your followers are interested in the topics on your website and in your Tweets they will respond.

Twitter can be particularly effective in selling individual products too, like the ICUcopyclip for example. This is a rear view mirror/note holder that attaches to your computer monitor. So knowing that people would use this at work and especially in their cubicle, I can target people that are Tweeting about their cubicles and even ones that are looking for cubicle decorations just by searching for "cubicle" or "cubicle decorations" on the Twitter search. Then you can follow them or even send them a Tweet about the ICUcopyclip. I am sure you can begin to see just how effective Twitter can be for marketing products and websites.

If you liked this article or you just want to check out my profile on Twitter just click here, if you follow me I will be sure to return the favor : ) You can even leave your twitter URL in the comments below and I will be sure to follow you!

Is CoRank The Next Social Phenomenon?

Corank is a site that I have run across lately that seems to be yet another great way to promote your website it will get at least a few more eyes on your hard work. For all of you familiar with the site Digg you will get the hang of this real quick!

It essentially works the same way as users get to submit and vote on stories/articles. The only real difference is that you get to choose your sources for the articles. This way you filter out a lot of the junk on sites like Digg and you get your own personalized spam free front page. Another slight difference from the mighty Digg is that you simply vote if the story is interesting or just "not for me", they also give you the feature to save stories. Of course, no social news site would be complete without the comment feature and Corank is no exception to the rule.

It is on a much smaller scale then digg, but it seems to be growing at a nice clip and every link to your site counts so what are you waiting for? You can go sign up here or you can view my Corank profile here. Don't forget to add me as a source if you like... enjoy!

Spicypage Takes Another Step Towards Becoming The Next Digg

For those of you who haven't heard of Spicypage you will be soon. Just recently they released a feature to submit individual articles on the site in addition to the entire website or blog. The major difference is that the articles that you submit are not voted on like digg, but are just sorted by the number of views. You can still vote for the site that the article came from though, so it seems to be a win-win for the author of the site/article!

Spicypage has also added a group feature to the site. This can be another way to promote your website or blog. All you need to do is start a group that revolves around your site. People can join your group and give you feedback on your content, design, ect.

While the site is nowhere near Digg just yet, it is gaining popularity and has a much better layout and more options then Digg gives you. So if you haven't signed up already now is the time... you can learn more about Spicypage here! You can sign up here or view my profile here!

Stumbling Through The Internet

A fun way to promote your website or blog is to submit your content to the website Stumbled Upon. This site is a bit different from any of the other social networking sites out there and seems to be snowballing around the Internet. Basically, as with all other sites the first thing to do is to sign up. Once you do that you should begin to edit your profile, avatar picture, interests, personal info ect. Stumbled upon will download a toolbar that works with Firefox or Internet Explorer which is great for submitting sites, seeing what your friends are stumbling, keeping track of your favorites and for finding new and interesting sites.

Now is also a good time to tell stumbled upon what kind of topics you would like to see. This way you filter out most of the junk that you just don't care about! That is the real beauty of Stumbled Upon! If you are a fan of the next blog button on blogger you will certainly love this as the content tends to be of a higher quality and less spam. For example if you are interested in photography and science then you can choose only to view photography and science sites. Very, very useful as it narrows down the sites you are looking for quite well.

Like other social networking sites it also has groups, friends, networks, forums, and it also saves all of your favorites much like delicious. It acts like a one stop shop for all your social networking needs.

The website Stumbled Upon is also a great way to try and target your exact audience for your website or blog. For instance if you have a site all about poetry you can submit it to Stumbled Upon under the poetry section and watch the targeted traffic roll in. It blew my mind when I saw all the different topics to choose from on the site! Like most other social networking sites, the more people that like the site the more it will be shown.

The site is growing everyday and I have seen the traffic results myself in Analytics. So go sign up and start Stumbling today. You can view my profile here or you can get started here.