Welcome to part 3 in a series of articles about marketing on Twitter. In this article I'll discuss how to grow your followers on Twitter.

As mentioned in my earlier articles, on Twitter you can only communicate directly with users who "follow" your updates. When you post an update on Twitter (an update is a short message of up to 140 characters), your message appears on your followers' Twitter home page. You can also send direct messages to your followers via Twitter's messaging system.

Without followers, you can still publish updates and hope someone finds your messages via a keyword search. But you will be missing out on the essential conversational nature of Twitter. Therefore, especially for online marketers, growing your followers list is your primary task.

At first glance, it seems pretty straightforward: the more followers, the better, right? Things are not that simple though. As with a brick and mortar store, you don't just want traffic -- you want the right kind of traffic.

Growing your followers list is easy. Follow a bunch of people, and many of them will follow you back (a common practice, called "re-following" on Twitter). Follow ten thousand people, and three or four thousand of them will probably follow you back. There are a number of applications developed to help Twitter users manage their follower lists. One app of note is Refollow (http://refollow.com/refollow/index.html), which helps with batch following and unfollowing. Be sure to familiarize yourself with Twitter's terms of service and especially The Twitter Rules (http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/26257/entries/18311) before using Refollow or any third-party app.

Another online Twitter tool of note is Feald, http://feald.com/index/tweethunter. Feald lets you batch follow users by keyword. Be sure to use narrowly targeted search terms with this tool. Twitter discourages use of automated follow and unfollow tools as they tend to dilute the personal networking experience.

If you are an online merchant, you'll probably want to disassociate yourself from Web opportunists and pornographers who may follow you just to get free advertising. Other Twitterers post blatant spam. Prune those followers from your Twitter marketing account regularly, using the Block tool.

Unless you are a celebrity, your best approach to marketing on Twitter is to build a small "word-of-mouth" network of followers who will recommend your product to their friends. Online networking makes this super-easy because everyone can mail all of their friends by "retweeting" your updates! You can cross-post your messages to Facebook and give an RSS feed or podcast. Keep your network updated by posting friendly notes, links to pages of interest, ideas, news stories, personal updates, company news and new business promotions.

Hint: When you post links to articles online, sometimes the URL is very long. Use a URL-shortening service like TinyURL (www.tinyurl.com) to create a shortened url. You can customize your Tiny URL and even install their widget on your Bookmarks toolbar. The link http://tinyurl.com/foothillweb points to Foothill Web Design.

Related:

• Twitter Help: Following Limits and Best Practices
• Twitter Help: Automation Rules and Practices

 

This week I completed a new website for JM Photography at www.joshuamarokphotography.com. Thanks to Mr. Joshua Marok, the owner of JM Photography, for choosing Foothill Web Design.

For this project, we selected RocketTheme's Chromatophore template with the Monochrome preset. I added several enhancements to the base Joomla CMS (content management system) including custom logo, photo gallery, WYSIWYG editor, slideshow, statistics, social networking links, AddThis toolbar, custom contact page with captcha (anti-spam), backup utility and file manager.

It was a pleasure working with JM Photography's owner, Mr. Joshua Marok. Josh insisted on providing the best visual quality for all his photo images. We used high-resolution photos for the slideshow and photo gallery, with a cool lightbox effect in the gallery. You can see an example of it here:

http://joshuamarokphotography.com/gallery

I like the idea of using the website to create a virtual business card. Although we took a minimalist approach to the site (there are only three pages), a lot of information is presented to the visitor through use of slideshow and galleries of high-res photos.

JoshuaMarokPhotography.com lets visitors see high-quality images and easily contact the site owner. The site owner is protected from spam by the built-in captcha on the contact form.

This is part 2 in a series on Marketing on Twitter. In this article I'll explain how to get started on Twitter.

The first step of a journey is often the most difficult. So let's get started. Go to Twitter.com, pick your user name, and create your account. On your Twitter home page (www.twitter.com/YourUserID), type a term in the search box and click on the search icon. Don't bother posting any messages (also called updates or tweets) yet. What you'll see are snippets of separate conversations from Twitter users.

At this point you can click on a Twitterer's user name or icon to visit their home page and see their latest updates. When you find a user whose tweets are interesting, go to their home page and click on the Follow button at the top of the page. Following a member allows their posts to appear on your home page. It also lets them send you direct messages via the Twitter messaging system.

You can use the Find People link at the top of Twitter pages to find interesting people to follow. Many businesses are also using Twitter. For example, typing in the words "Palo Alto" (my hometown) in Twitter's Find People search brings up links from Palo Alto Westin Hotel to Palo Alto Daily News. They're all using Twitter!

Although you can read other members' tweets by following them or using Search, at this point you still can't communicate directly with other Twitterers. As mentioned in Part 1, you can only contact members who follow you. In the next part of this series, we'll look at one of the most important Twitter topics: how to grow your follower list.

Note: Twitter Search can find members physically near you. Try using the following format:

near:"your town" within:5mi

 

 

It's been a busy week at Foothill Web Design. I completed a website refurbish for Ganado Feed store in San Jose. Thanks for choosing Foothill Web Design! You can view the site, which is now being maintained by Ganado Feed, at www.ganadofeed.com. I'm learning the ropes at Twitter to see how the social networking site can be used for online marketing. I'll be writing some articles about Twitter. You can read the first installment here. I've also added Herdboy's fantastic TweetMe plugin (based on TweetMeme) to this website. You've seen similar plugins on many Web logs. It's fantastic. Just click on the little green icon at the top of this article to see Tweet Me in action.

Twitter is the hot new social networking site. One of the best sources for information on Twitter is Mashable, the "Social Media Guide" (www.mashable.com). This article is aimed at Twitter newbies, and will discuss my early discoveries. The main focus, beyond a general introduction, will be on using Twitter for business and marketing applications.

You may be familiar with other social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Members interact by posting messages on each other's pages. Apps like games and horoscopes are available to enhance a member's home page.

Twitter works in a similar way. Twitter members post short text messages (limited to 140 characters) to their group of friends. Other friends respond, creating a large circle of conversation.

As a Twitter member, you can send direct messages to other users, but only to those who "follow" your "tweets." Thus one of the goals on Twitter is to grow a list of followers you can interact with. If someone follows you on Twitter, it's considered good etiquette to follow them back. You can often establish a large list of followers just by following a lot of people.

Twitter is searchable, so you can find people tweeting on just about every subject. When viewing Twitter search results, keep in mind you're seeing just fragments of a conversation. Twitter Search can be a good way to find people who share your interests.

Despite its simplicity, Twitter has many far-reaching applications. Celebrities use Twitter to communicate quickly with their fan base. (Ashton Kucher, from the TV show, "That 70's Show" has over 4.3M followers on Twitter.) Politicians use it to get the vote out or poll their constituents. Businesses use Twitter to advertise new products and services. You can even set up a private list to use as your own company bulletin board.

To get a feel for how Twitter works, just jump right in. Go to www.twitter.com and create an account. Type some terms in the Search box. When you find a member whose posts interest you, follow that person. Chances are they'll follow you back. Twitter is a fun, easy way to rub shoulders with the rich and famous.

Related links:

• Twitter: Twitter 101 for Business
• Mashable: A Social Networking Guide
• Twitter Search

(End of part 1, more on Twitter for business and marketing coming soon!)