However, it’s not as simple as just joining Twitter and posting links, oh no! Actually far from it…

You see, its not as simple as it looks.

When I first got on Twitter 15 months ago, I thought it would be very easy to get traffic to my site and increase my online earnings...

So I signed up, got lots of followers, and then just started making posts with my link, telling people to go to my website. (I thought that’s all I had to do!)

I even got to the point where I had over 5,728 followers on one account! Now I bet you think that by having 5,728 followers, it would be dead easy to just make a post and get instant traffic to my website, right?

Click here to view page

You just have to be able to be there and follow simple, clear instructions.

Heck, you don’t even have to write your own comments, you will be shown exactly how you can fully automate your comments with Ultra High Quality, up to the Minute Content that your followers will love, and will make your non-followers start following!

That is the main reason that I created this series of really easy to follow, very professionally created, super high quality videos! It really is very simple to start generating masses of targeted followers, and piles of cash, using the techniques shown in the videos.

Click Here to Visit the page

Web 2.0 Traffic Building” is THE New Trend!

Just in case you don’t remember or weren’t trying to start an online business 5 years ago, I’ll quickly explain how easy it was to get free traffic…
5 years ago, the search engines such as Google were in their infancy as far as search engine results.

This meant that smart marketers were taking full advantage of that to the tune of millions of free hits to their websites.

Of course, the search engines grew over time and refined their services making it harder combined with tons of new competition hitting the market for that traffic.

This was basically the end of easy and free traffic! Why does this matter?

Because the new Web 2.0 and social networking sites allow you to get back to free, organic traffic!

You guessed right, these sites and services are still in their infancy so you can take full advantage of that.

If you don’t get moving, you’re going to miss out on what could be hundreds or even thousands of customers!

But what’s even better about all of this is that…

“You DO NOT Need to Spend A Cent Of Your Hard Earned
Money On ‘Pay Per Click’, ‘Blog Sponsorships’ Or ANY Other
Expensive Advertising To Get Tons Of Traffic – PERIOD”

You read that right!

Every course, eBook, physical product package, etc., is teaching methods that teach you how to get traffic using PAID methods.

That means you shell out a small fortune for the course on top of what you’re going to have to spend on the advertising it shows you how to do!

The great thing about social traffic generation using Twitter is that it doesn’t cost you a dime to do!

And before you start thinking “That means I’m going to have to spend every second of my free time doing this”, this doesn’t take a ton of time either!

Click Here to visit the page

Twitter, a free social networking site, is a vital ingredient in Kogi’s success. As Kogi’s example shows, the service that started as a way for people to follow the 140-character “tweets” of friends and celebrities is quickly becoming a powerful new way for businesses to talk directly with customers.

Because Kogi’s trucks visit locations all around Los Angeles, brand director Mike Prasad wanted to create a single place where fans could gather.

“We had to create a home for them. Twitter was a natural fit,” said Prasad. The plan worked. Since launching in November, Kogi has attracted more than 15,000 followers on Twitter (http://twitter.com/kogibbq).

IGNORE AT YOUR PERIL

“There is nothing faster for communicating than Twitter,” said Aaron Allen, chief executive of restaurant consulting firm Quantified Marketing Group. “You have to be a complete moron to ignore it.”

The Twitter conversation “cloud” can give businesses an early read on consumer sentiment, said Shiv Singh, global social media head at advertising and marketing firm Razorfish.

“It serves as a bellwether for mainstream blog conversations,” said Singh, who added that frequent tweeters tend to have extreme views and to be influential.

And negative tweets, like bad news, can travel fast.

Domino’s Pizza, the latest victim of bad web publicity, recently launched a Twitter account at twitter.com/dpzinfo as part of its response to a widely viewed employee prank video that showed, among other things, an employee putting cheese up his nose before adding it to a sandwich. Domino’s also fired the employees involved.

While Twitter is free and easy to use, experts say success does not come without putting in some sweat equity.

“It does take time and effort and care and feeding,” said Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing company. “If you go silent it shows. It’s like not answering the phone.”

TWEET ME

Starbucks has more than 140,000 followers on Twitter.

“It’s a way for us to answer questions and connect,” said Brad Nelson, who oversees the activity on Twitter.

McDonald’s and Burger King do not yet have corporate Twitter accounts. Representatives for the companies said explorations are ongoing. Meanwhile, Burger King – which is among the restaurant industry’s most technology-savvy operators – said the company keeps in touch with the operator of fan page twitter.com/theBKlounge.

Michael Breed, senior marketing manager at Brinker International’s Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant, has attracted more than 3,000 followers since mid-February with help from small giveaways.

In Los Angeles, restaurants are looking for ways to stand out from the growing pack.

Quinn Hatfield, of Hatfield’s restaurant in Beverly Hills, tweets the ins and outs of creating dishes, punctuated with the occasional mouth-watering picture.

In another part of town, Tender Greens’ co-owner Erik Oberholtzer uses Twitter to keep tabs on hardcore fans and to take online marketing to the next level.

Rush Street’s Nick Kaufman likes to reward people who tweet while they are dining at the Culver City eatery with things like free drinks.

“It’s kind of like I’m the man behind the curtain,” said Kaufman, who handles the restaurant’s online marketing. “People realize if they follow us they may get something out of it.”

Old people, having missed out on such important technological developments as cellphones, cars, Invisible Fence, MySpace, and novocaine, will not be missing the boat again — and that’s why they have thoroughly embraced the technology of Twitter, which allows users to announce to the Internet where they are and what they just ate for lunch.

To a person with short-term memory loss, Twitter serves a vital function: every time the user announces, “Going across the street to get ice cream,” they notify not only their 30,000-odd “followers,” but they also establish a record for themselves so that if they end up across the street wondering what on earth they’re doing staring at a pint of Haagen-Dazs, they need only check their Twitter status for the magical answer. And then they can “tweet” about their ice cream, which is important!

Several noteworthy oldsters show us just how fun the Twitter can be. Karl Rove and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio both use this technology to stalk Meghan McCain, a reclusive young authoress who appears only occasionally on television shows and large political meetings.

And of course McCain’s father, John, broke new ground for the over-70 set when he used his own Twitter account to chronicle his touching transformation from a well-respected senior United States senator into a banal, know-nothing codger with no dignity.

So do these developments mean that hip youngsters will stop using the Twitter, now that grampa’s hogging it to remind himself when to turn on the television machine? We can hope! But unfortunately, young people also have the attention span of gnats, which is why we’re all doomed.

The Luddite and technophobe Sara K. Smith types all of her writings out on paper and sends them via carrier pigeon to NBC and Wonkette

It just launched Wednesday, and they’ve already got three updates on there. The page is visually customized for maximum Raidermania, and even the little birdie is silver against black. An illegible Raiders schedule appears in the page design background.

The Raiders are one of a couple dozen NFL teams that now keep their own official Twitter pages. The San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots even used their Twitter pages to announce their draft picks simultaneous to the NFL’s announcements.

What will the team keep Raider Nation updated upon using their hot new Twitter feed? So far, not much. There is an update about an interview with a couple of your lower-round draft picks now online over at Raiders.com, and an announcement about the Raiders’ Youth Skills Camp. It is the official team page, so updates are likely to be written by marketing professionals and not critical of the organization.

But Raider fans hungry for a Twitter page more obsessively updated might want to check out the Chronicle’s David White’s Twitter page. When minicamps and OTA’s are in session, that guy’s tweeting an update pretty much every play the team runs.

Individual players can also tweet, as do Barry Zito and former Warriors Baron Davis and Jason Richardson. No current individual Raiders could be found in the We Follow Top 100 Sports teams and users on Twitter, but ex-Raider Warren Sapp keeps atwitter via the online service. Check his page for excessive use of exclamation points and very frequent meal descriptions.

Joe Kukura is a freelance who doesn’t even understand where you plug this Twitter thing in.

1. It’s a network of users, with one kind of relationship: following. I can follow you, and you can follow me. Or I can follow you and you don’t follow me. Or you can follow me, and I don’t follow you. Or neither of us follow each other. Pretty simple. Just arrows at either or both ends of the line, or no line at all. There are no labels on the arcs.  

2. It’s a micro-blogging system. Posts are limited to 140 characters. Enough for a bit of text and a link. This is a powerful idea, but not a new one. If you read Scripting News before February of this year, it was partially a micro-blogging system. When it started in April 1997, it was all micro-blogging. The earliest websites, from TBL, NCSA and Netscape were also micro-blogging systems.  

An aside, I gave a talk on Sunday at the WordPress users conference. One of the things we talked about was micro-blogging. I asked the people if they would like it if the only way you could create a WordPress site was on wordpress.com. They agreed that would not be good. Analogously, if micro-blogging is to become a real art, there will have to be many ways to create a micro-blog, and lots of RSS to tie them together.  

3. A relatively open identity system. I’ve said it before, Twitter or something like it, could be the holy grail of open identity. While the engineers of the tech industry have been, imho, looking at the problem the wrong way by trying to glue together the huge namespaces controlled by powerful companies who don’t want to give up control. Twitter, with it’s ultra-thin user interface, and light feature set, and simple API (more on that in a bit) and the nothing-to-lose attitude of its management, may be the breakthrough. Or it could be Facebook, with it’s much larger user base and a management that also likes to roll the dice. The key is lots of users, a growing user base, and an API with no dead-ends.  

4. An ecosystem. Twitter’s API is very simple. It covers the entire functionality, leaves nothing out. You could implement the Twitter user interface using the API. That’s a key thing. Compare it to Apple, who reserves for itself and a few partners, under terms we don’t know, the right to develop rich apps for the iPhone. Twitter takes the traditional PC industry approach, give everyone equal power, make it a level playing field and let the chips fall where they may. This means that if the people at Twitter miss an opportunity, the rest of us have a shot at providing it for ourselves and others.

So what do all these parts add up to? Users and relationships between users, their ideas, and an ecosystem. It’s probably the basis for some pretty hot apps. Will it be possible to monetize them? Without a doubt. People who say that Twitter hasn’t figured out how to make money don’t understand the role technology companies play in the much larger media and communication ecosystem. Ideas gestate here, grow up, find users, and then find customers. In a way Twitter is a mega-enterprise product, and by using it, we’re helping them prove it. Their customer is likely to be a telco or an entertainment network. But it’s way too early to cash it out, they all took the right approach, seed it with some more capital to add more bandwidth, solidify the back-end, add a bit more functionality, and wait to see what the users and developers do with it. 

Twitter is still a very interesting service, and as long as it remains as open as it is, we can all learn from and alongside them.  

At first I balked at the idea of Twittering like many others but eventually signed up (leeodden) and have been tuned in ever since. Like blogging, there are many mis perceptions about the productivity potential for Twitter. Those unfamiliar will often say, What’s up with: “My flight is leaving”. “We landed”. “Getting in cab. Etc?”. Trust me, there is a method to the MicroMedia madness as both an individual and a commercial communications tool.

There’s both a social/play and a social/communicate aspect to Twitter that makes it productive as a promotional tool for pointing to interesting things you’ve found on the web as well as a tool for building credibility and influence. On their own, such updates can be blasé and uninteresting. However, followed over time, you can gain insight into people you may end up hiring, getting hired by, working for, partnering with or simply socializing with.

It’s true that some people do use Twitter as if they’re trying to copy the most boring blog on the web. However, many others are sharing links to timely resources or things they’ve found on the web that they’d like to share/promote immediately as well as tidbits of personal/business information.

A variety of commercial applications for Twitter have begun popping up including political candidates posting updates from the road as has happened with Barack Obama & John Edwards. Other commercial and marketing use examples of Twitter include JetBlue promoting special offers, the BBC posting news items, Apple posts it’s own news (bypassing the media – hmmm) and online retailer Woot posting deals throughout the day.

From a personal brand building and networking standpoint, the key is not to look at microblogging as individual posts, but think of the overall impressions and value that can be created over time. Each 140 character or less entry serves as a seed of an idea for an overall objective. It’s tempting to post something to get it off your chest as I did when a bike was stolen outside my office window and I pulled it out of the truck as the thieves drove away – all during a conference call. I felt I had to tell someone and I certainly couldn’t interrupt the guys from Intel, Ogilvy and iProspect I was on the call with.

Rather, consider an overall objective and keep that in mind as decisions are made about what kinds of personal info, links to useful resources and promotional items are posted. Over time, you’ll build a footprint and identify within the Twitter community. Building that footprint will be far more effective if you keep overall objectives in mind, rather than random information. Unless of course, your objective is to build an identity as a scatterbox.

Now for the Twitter tips.

Biz Stone via the Twitter Email Newsletter:
Jott, has created a way to send a Twitter update by speaking into your phone–your voice gets converted to text and sent out to all your followers. This is a
much safer solution for people who insist on updating Twitter when their attention is required elsewhere–like driving!
Twitter by Voice and more Twitter Apps.

“Rhea” – Skim for links. They are often only used for passing news, as an action alert or resource grabber. It’s worth 5 seconds. Rhea Drysdale

“andybeal” – I tweeted that I was looking to hire a new blogger and found Janet – so I guess Twitter followers are a good job pool Andy Beal

“TDefren” – Mix it up: share news, pontifications, reaction, blog posts. Aid in others’ discovery & contribute to the conversation. Todd Defren

“SebastianX“ – Often Twitter sends folks to new stuff way faster than RSS, and it’s a persistent link, valuable despite the tinyurl/nofollow crap, as long as you promote your profile a little. Sebastian

“graywolf” – Use the twittertools plugin to automagically post new blog entries to Twitter. Michael Gray

“trishussey” – Connecting your blog feed to Twitter and posting events and breaking news. Twitter is a great way to announced time-sensitive events like radio shows, etc. Combine with Twitterbar for Firefox and you can post right from your address bar. Tris Hussey

“bhartzer” – Like a lot of other services, it’s important to add or follow other people first and then most likely they will reciprocate. Find your favorite twitter profile and view who they’re following…and follow them. Follow people and they’ll (hopefully) follow you. Also, when editing your profile on twitter, you can add more than one link in your profile. Turns out that http: link URLs are treated as links. Bill Hartzer

“PeterHimler” – Fun to follow thought-leaders and journalists who often tweet their forthcoming thoughts on the site. Peter Himler

Additional resources on using Twitter as a networking, PR and communications tool can be found at:

•Rafe Needleman: Newbies Guide to Twitter
•Caroline Middlebrook: The Big Juicy Twitter Guide
•Jeremiah Owyang – What The Web Strategist Should Know About Twitter
•B.L. Ochman’s What’s Next Blog: How to Write Kickass Twitter Posts
•PR Squared: Using Twitter To Create & Inform Communities
•WebProNews: Microblogging What’s it Good For?
•University of Maryland, Baltimore County: Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities
•Red66 – Using Twitter as a Marketing Tool
•Eleven Marketing- Add Twitter to Your Internet Marketing Toolbox
Tools to make your “twittering” more productive:

•Twitter Groups – Allows you to tag your followers into different groups. Then you can send a message to those groups without needing to send the message to each person one at a time.
•TweetVolume – A frequency search tool to see how often a unique name (person, brand, etc) is mentioned on Twitter.
•Twitter Tools – A huge collection of Twitter tools by platform as well as plugins, web services and widgets.
•All Twitter Tools and Mashups in One Place – Maybe not all, but a very large list of desktop clients, mobile apps, mashups, plugins, tools and widgets.
•Twittown Unofficial Twitter Community which includes Twitter Forge, a listing of Twitter plugins, Ttools, mashups and services.
Thank you to everyone that contributed! BTW, you can get our BIGLIST updates of SEO blog reviews on Twitter every Friday.

Do you have a great Twitter use or marketing tip to share? Please share in the comments.