The Top 12 Ways To Use Twitter for Internet 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 use www.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?
4. 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?
5. 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.
6. 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 opt-in house email list. Invite these people to join.
7. 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.
8. Use it to build buzz about an upcoming product or website launch.
9. Use it to better brand yourself or your business. Remember, when someone wants to learn more about you or your company, they are increasingly using sites like Twitter for research. You could easily use Twitter to establish yourself as an authority in your field.
10. Use it to update followers on breaking news regarding your company. If your company is mentioned in a new article, tweet about it and include a link to the article. Or if you’re at a conference or trade show, you could tweet what you’re doing and invite people to visit you in person.
11. Use it for business networking, master-mind groups (see Napoleon Hill), and getting yourself seen by high-profile people in your industry.
12. Use it as an instant messaging system to keep your and your team on the same page during projects. This is especially useful for those who work with teams spread out in different cities or countries.

You should note that this top 12 list is not in order of importance or in any particular order. I suggest that you give Twitter a try if you haven’t already. See if you can apply a few of these techniques and tactics to help you take advantage of Twitter as a marketing tool.

Internet Marketing : Google and You

Did you know that some experts estimate that Google gets close to 500 million local search results each month? Do you think there are people looking for what you may have inside your head? Meaning, your knowledge and expertise! Yes, people are looking for what you know, whether that is a hobby or your experience through a job or a small business that you own or have owned.

Why not turn your knowledge into products and services and become one of the hundreds of individuals we have helped to do just that. Please stop by our website and sign up for our Free Internet Marketing Newsletter - www.ConsiderInternetMarketing.com

Until next time - Be well.

Jim Gage

Internet Marketing : Why Social Bookmarking?

I figure that if you're reading this, you have that question, or a similar one.

There are three reasons:

     1 - More links

     2 - More traffic

     3 - More credibility

More links are always a good thing.

Think of links as the road traffic that moves through the web. If there are no roads to where your business "lives" online, namely your website, it's far less likely that the visitors you want will end up getting to you.

That's true whether you're talking about search engines or links from other sites. Search engines use a mysterious cross between the number and quality of links to your site in their determination of whether you should be number one or number 701 for your desired keyword.

In addition, the "nicer" the road, the more traffíc will flow through it - think of an authority site linking to your site as a highway that leads directly to your site, and one from a reciprocal link or link exchange scheme as a back street in a sketchy neighborhood full of potholes.

Improved traffic, also good.

From social bookmarking, this traffic is often targeted. Through tagging, the description someone writes, or the title they assigned to your link, the person who discovers the submitted link on a social bookmarking site knows exactly where they're going, and why they're interested in getting there.

It's like seeing the cover of a magazine on a rack. That's what pulls them in, they see a headline - and to get to the story they are compelled to take another action.

The more credibility thing is a bit harder to explain, so we'll go with another analogy.

Let's say I made a movie and I thought it was fantastic. If I hadn't met you before, and I tell you, "hey, I made a great movie, come see it!" - you may come see it, you may not.

It depends more on how much time you have and if you're interested in that kind of movie, or even how nice of a person you are, than my opinion.

Why?

Because I'm the one who made it, so you can't know whether to trust my opinion, at least in relation to how much YOU might like it. Of course I think it's great, but I have no way of knowing whether you will.

Now, if you knew me and my taste, and how alike our tastes are, you may be a bit more inclined. So if I'm, say, Michael Bay, and you liked my last movie, and my new movie is on the same type of thing, you might go see it based on the trailer alone. You know you're taking a gamble but it's a safe bet.

Now watch this.

Your best buddy, the one who likes all the same things you like, the one you hang out with and trust the most, calls you on the phone and says:

"I've just seen the best movie I've ever seen in my entire life. I have to see it again. When are you free, I'll come pick you up."

The only thing that could make that deal sweeter is if your friend has also said "My treat." At least as far as recommendations go, the person who knows what you like the most is likely to be the person whose advice you'll follow.

If you know that friend, and that person has similar tastes, or at least knows what you like, you're more likely to see the movie.

My sister and I have similar tastes in movies, but I'm a little more patient with beginnings and endings and like more indie-fare. Yet, no matter how many times I have suggested we watch a movie together that she ends up not liking as much, if I rave about a movie, she'll at least give it a chance.

Now, let's take that back to social bookmarking. Imagine you can find hundreds of people, all over the world, with tastes similar to yours, sharing information you wouldn't find yourself.

Or maybe you can just connect faster and more frequently for suggestions from people you already know. Wouldn't you be more likely to follow their suggestions than some stranger?

That's the power of social bookmarking. It's put a technology behind word of mouth sharing of web sites that anyone can use.