Twitter Me Blue

Must Have Twitter Marketing ToolsThe recent explosion of social media has created new opportunities for internet marketers. The one everyone is talking about is called Twitter. If you have never been on Twitter, or at least heard of Twitter you must have been living in a cave. The main stream media has been all over it lately. CNN for example has a huge presence on Twitter, with over 1.96 million followers as of the time of this article. Followers, by the way, are people that are interested in what you have to say and have decided to follow your tweets or updates. These tweets can be about anything you choose to write about, from what you are doing now to what you are going to do tomorrow. The can be about any and everything you want to say. You get a 140 characters to express yourself to the world. The quality of these tweets will have a direct impact on the rate at which you obtain and maintain followers. The more informative or entertaining the tweet, the more interesting it will be to your followers and the more likely it becomes that they will retweet the update. Retweet is when one or more of your followers think enough of your update to pass it along to their followers. You can compare retweeting to back-linking. It’s a great way to get your name out to the rest of the Twitter world and increase your followers.Now to the important part for IM people. Twitter has become one of best places to market on the net. Consider your followers like you would your email list. The larger the follower/email list the more opportunity you are going to have. It’s that simple. I’d like to tell you it’s more complicated. But, it’s not. It’s simple math. Market to more targeted people and get better results. There the secrets out. I feel better already.Let’s get to the nuts and bolts of building your follower base. The best way to gain targeted followers on twitter is to follow people interested in the niche you are marketing to. For example, if you’re marketing to NASCAR products, you would follow people interested in NASCAR. Simple, right. The problem comes in when they don’t follow you back. The rule is, about 30-50% of the people you follow will follow you back. So if you follow 1000 people, you can reasonably expect 300-500 people to follow you back. What about the people that don’t follow you back? You have to get rid of them by unfollowing them. Then go and follow more people. The basic rinse and repeat, that is fundamental in internet marketing. Two problems arise, first, this is very time consuming and second, twitter considers it spamming when you follow then unfollow and follow again the same people. They are very likely to suspend your account for this. Unless you have a miracle memory, you’ll never remember all the people that you have followed and unfollowed. This where having the right tool makes all the difference. You can automate the entire process with a tool called Hummingbird. It will allow you to follow targeted prospects with a couple clicks of your mouse and unfollow anyone that doesn’t follow you back. It will save you an enormous amount of time. It will handle multiple accounts, so you can market to several niche markets. The program also protects you, in that, it will not follow anyone you have unfollowed in the past. This will help prevent account suspensions. I personally use this program, after extensive research, I might add, and have found it to be the best program of it’s kind on the market. They are currently running a special offer. Use the discount code “RECESSION” and save $30.00. This program is worth many times what they charge. Review it here:ReviewAnother great time saver is called Tweetlater. This program is a life saver. It comes in two versions, a free and pro version, I strongly recommend the pro version. First let me tell you what both versions will do. First it will automatically send every new follow you get a welcome direct message. In this message you can welcome the new follower and tell them a little about what you do. A nice way to say, market to them. For example if you have ten accounts and average 400 new followers a day, that’s 4000 ads you send out everyday without lifting a finger. That’s a fabulous way to make passive income.Time savers are money savers. Another way this programs saves you time is that it will automatically unfollow anyone that unfollows you. Both versions will handle multiple accounts and let you schedule future tweets. You can sit down on a Monday and schedule all your tweets for the week. That’s a huge time saver.The Pro version also allows you to: * Schedule @replies and DMs * Schedule recurring tweets — Without them being repetitive! * Bulk upload & schedule tweets — Save time! * Run your own Twitter bots — Fully automate accounts! * Ping.fm integration — Feed Facebook & MySpace! * Manage DMs of all your Twitter accounts — Integrated console! * Automatically weed out SPAM — Boost your productivity! * And much moreThe pro version is the way for the serious IM pros to go. I use it and it makes my life much easier. I strongly recommend the Pro version.You can review both versions here: ReviewLook for twitter marketing tips on my blog: twitcashblogI look forward to your comments. Until then, Good Marketing