This video walks you through using one of my favorite twitter tools, TweetChat.com. It’s in high def, so may take a few seconds to load.

The video covers how to use TweetChat and a couple of the ways it can make a difference to your business. Click here if you are interested in finding out about more twitter tools I recommend that can help you use twitter for marketing and building your business.

Did you know that despite some ‘common wisdom’ to the contrary, it is actually possible to sell your products and services directly through marketing on twitter?

Perhaps by using the phrase ‘common wisdom’ you understand what I think of the idea that you can’t, or shouldn’t, market your small business and sell your products and services on twitter. There is no such thing as ‘common wisdom’… Well, not much of any value anyway. Most things that the majority of people think fit into that category is more like a ‘common mediocre idea’ – far from ‘wisdom’.

The reason I take this position is if close to 98% (probably even more) of all the people in the world do not have the money or business success that they desire, then how can the ‘common wisdom’ they all believe in and follow bring success to you?

In order to be successful, you must begin to think outside the box. You have to look at what the ‘average’ small business person or entrepreneur is doing and do something different. If you do the same thing, you’ll get what they are getting… and I doubt that’s why you went into business… is it?

So, when it comes to marketing on twitter, you have to look to the people that are really building success. There are some major ones too… for example, Gary Vaynerchuk (Twitter handle: GaryVee) – he has used marketing on twitter as an extremely powerful piece of his overall marketing strategy – and over the course of the last 4-5 years, he has build a HUGE platform. His twitter followers RAVE about him, and watch his tweets carefully – you should too. You can get lots of ideas from someone who has figured out how to make it work for them.

And, if you are interested in learning more about how to use twitter for marketing, then you’ll want to check out this twitter guide – it’s a free webinar that covers everything from WHY you need to be on Twitter to WHAT, exactly, you should tweet about. Even more importantly it starts to get into the twitter tools that are so essential to building success on Twitter. Without them, you many find that marketing on Twitter is really, really hard.

So, here’s the link again (it’s on a sister site to this one) -Twitter Guide – go on and check it out. You’ll be VERY glad you did (what I figured out about marketing on twitter got me a 1231% increase in sales over a 4 week period of time… it WORKS.) And, here’s a post where you can find some more keys to successful marketing on twitter.

A couple of blog posts back I talked about one of the twitter tools I consider to be absolutely essential to your success… Hootsuite (you can visit www.hootsuite.com to check into it).

It’s such an important part of everything that I do when I use twitter for marketing that I want to make sure you have an introduction to it right away. You may be using other twitter tools, like Tweetdeck or Seismic, and even if you are, you should take a look at Hootsuite. As you can probably imagine I talk to A LOT of people about twitter (it’s quite a passion for me), and even avid Tweetdeck users will often try Hootsuite at my recommendation – and then come back to me telling me how much they LOVE it and can’t imagine going back.

So, here is a link to a page where you can get free instant access to a webinar that digs into this ‘best of all’ twitter tools. It also talks about the reasons you really MUST begin using twitter effectively for your business and gives some in-depth information on just exactly how to do that. Check out the Twitter Sales in 12 Minutes a Day FREE webinar.

Before we start to dig into using twitter for business, I want to go over a few of the reasons that you should.

As of September 2010 Twitter has over 145 million active users, and it is growing at a rate of over 300,000 new users per day – which is completely astonishing. As it continues to grow, getting really clear on your twitter strategy is going to become even more essential, so starting to dig into how to use twitter for business is a really smart idea.

One of the best focuses for using twitter for business is using it to drive traffic. When it comes down to it, without traffic, your website and business will flounder. Basically, it comes down to a numbers game – if you know you will make 2.3 sales for every 100 visitors to your site (which is pretty good, by the way), then if you can drive several 100 more people who are interested in your product or service to your website, then you can make more sales – pretty straight forward math really.

There was an article posted to Mashable in the last few days talking about Kim Kardashian’s twitter account. It showed a graph of how, by using twitter strategically, she is now driving almost as much traffic from her twitter account as from Google searches – pretty impressive. (If you want to read more, visit http://bit.ly/cAtfHa) One of the keys they talk about is how she makes sure to include personable tweets – like links to pictures, contests and her charitable efforts – exactly the kind of things people are interested in knowing from her. What are your prospects interested in knowing about you? And, don’t underestimate the value of sharing a few good pictures from your last vacation… people buy from people they have relationships with – that’s why the best salespeople in the world often feel like an old friend.

So, your goal as a business is to build targeted followers and tweet consistently valuable ‘clickbait’. You want to make sure that you are using a balanced mix of personal information and business information, sharing links to your online blogs, articles, and other sources of information so that you are serving those interested prospects. Sometimes you want to share a link to a special offer or promotion. Mix it up and keep it interesting, and you’ll see a great response as you learn how to use Twitter for business – your business.

Do you want to know more about how to use Twitter for business? Subscribe to the Tweetbit Tidbits (on the upper right side) and get useful twitter information delivered right to your email box and check out more of the posts on this blog. And, if your really serious about using twitter for business, then you should check out the Twitter Sales in 12 Minutes a Day course and get up and running with twitter, the right way, from the start.

Twitter tools have played a huge part in Twitter’s success over the past few years since it launched in March of 2006 (yes, it’s barely 4 and a half and it has over 145 million active users). Instead of overwhelming you with a list of Twitter tools to go check out, I’ll do one at a time and give you a bit more detail, and some breathing room to try it out for yourself.

The first Twitter tool that is essential to everyone’s repertoire when they are working on building successful marketing on Twitter is a great Twitter client. A Twitter client is an outside software or website that lets you run Twitter in a more effective way. With the release of the ‘New’ Twitter it’s possible you won’t need it as much, but from what I have seen, and what I know I can do with my favorite Twitter client, there is no way I’ll be giving it up anytime soon.

A few of the most popular Twitter clients include Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Seismic.

It’s been a while since I used two of these particular Twitter tools, Tweetdeck and Seismic, to be exact, because once I found Hootsuite it was like love at first site. I’d been frustrated by both Tweetdeck and Seismic for a variety of reasons, and when I found out the Hootsuite ran on a web browser (the other two were (and may still be) desktop applications), and I began to understand all the things I could do with it I was hooked.

The Basics:

Just a few of the basic things that Hootsuite will let you do…

1. See everything that is going on in your account at one time: That means you can set up tabs and columns to give you all the information you need at a quick glance, which makes using Twitter much easier and so much more understandable. Until I started using these features, I didn’t really ‘get’ Twitter, once I did, the whole game changed. For each of my Twitter accounts (right now I have 3, PaysonCooper, PaysonJewelry and LearnTwtr, and I help a few people run their accounts as well) I create a tab and display 5 columns, in this order: Home Feed, @ Messages, Direct Messages, Scheduled Messages and Sent Messages. I can see everything that is going on in each account by clicking on it and quickly scanning the screen. Very powerful.
2. Track Hash tags (#) and keywords: You can set up a tab with several columns that track hash tags and keywords that are relevant to your business over time or even short term. And example: I was at a conference where people were tweeting with a particular hash tag, by adding a column to my hootsuite window I could follow along with the conversation and participate while still having access to all my other information. This is SUPER valuable.
3. Scheduling Messages: There are many Twitter tools that let you schedule messages including Social Oomph (which used to be known as TweetLater), but why use a separate website when you can do everything in one place? And, by being able to show the column, I can see what’s scheduled to go out in the next few hours or few days. Again, very powerful.

Ok, that’s just a short list of things that make marketing on Twitter with Hootsuite SO much easier that just using Twitter alone. And, as far as Twitter tools go, for me it’s the winner, hands down. I don’t have enough digits to count the number of people I’ve converted from Tweetdeck users to Hootsuite users either – and they LOVE it. So, if you are using some other Twitter tool, go check out Hootsuite, a few minutes figuring out how to use could make all the difference in your Twitter marketing success.

And, if you are interested in getting all the details on how I use Hootsuite, get free instant access to a highly-acclaimed webinar that walks you through the first steps in getting to know the tool: Twitter Selling Secrets Webinar. And, if you know you are ready to really dive in, check out the Twitter Sales in 12 Minutes a Day course – everything you could possibly want to know about using Hootsuite to build your business on Twitter and start making sales is covered in step-by-step videos, where you get to look over my shoulder and see what I did to create a 1231% increase in sales.

Here are a few keys to creating success as you begin marketing on Twitter:

1. Be Social: Twitter, despite the way some people treat it, is a Social Network, so you will need to be social. That means you will want to converse with people, comment on things they share and generally build real relationships. It takes an investment, but it doesn’t need to be an exorbitant amount of time… in fact, when done right, marketing on Twitter can take only a few minutes a day.
2. Retweet: It gets mentioned a lot, but I want to mention it again here… retweeting is an essential part of your twitter strategy. You need to actively retweet things that will be interesting to your followers and help you build key relationships. You also need to make sure you thank EVERY SINGLE PERSON who retweets you. There is a great way to do this too – you can’t use the new Twitter retweet function, but if you change the settings in a Twitter tool like Hootsuite, you can click the button to retweet and the whole tweet will be placed in your text box, allowing you to edit it as you see fit – and send your links out again when you thank someone for retweeting them.
3. Be a Regular: You must participate on a regular basis to make Twitter work for you. If you get on 1 time per day and send out 1 tweet you will get almost nothing in return. You must spend a little time a couple of times a day responding to people, retweeting and posting some information that is good to share. Make it a part of your daily routine.
4. Be Personal: Again, it’s a ‘social network’ so people want to interact with people. Don’t be shy, share some things about your life – share a photo, a thought, an inspiration – whatever strikes you. A really easy way to do this is with a cell phone that has a camera. As you go through your day, watch for opportunities to snap an interesting shot and then share it with your Twitter followers.
5. Get More Out of Twitter: Link your Twitter account to other social networks like Facebook, but you need to do it the right way – the wrong way can get you shut down on Facebook, and even kicked off permanently. Look up the right ways to share between your accounts, or you can use a tool like Hootsuite to select which updates you want to send to Facebook and other social networks message by message.

Marketing on Twitter can be an extremely valuable part of your overall online marketing and social media marketing strategy – follow these steps and you’ll be headed down the right path. For more Twitter strategy, click here to see the rest of the Twitter and marketing blog.

And, if you are ready to make marketing on Twitter explode your sales, then check out the Twitter Sales in 12 Minutes a Day course.

When you start to think about using Twitter for marketing your business there are a few things to be aware of…

First, Twitter is growing at an incredible rate, so for almost every business using Twitter for marketing is going to be a smart move. There are a few exceptions… if your target market is say, people over the age of 70, then you might be missing the mark with marketing on Twitter. You would be better off spending some time looking at marketing in the AARP magazine (which has one of the largest circulations in the world… but I digress…). Relative to the internet as a whole, Twitter has a lower demographic of people over the age of 55, actually, so before you dive in if you are going after baby-boomers, you may want to do some more research.

But if you plan on using Twitter for marketing your business to people under the age of 55, male or female, Twitter will likely be very fertile ground. And, Twitter’s built in search capabilities let you do a lot to find those ‘targeted’ prospects and follow them (if you aren’t familiar with Twitter, one of the best ways to build targeted followers is by following them – when they read your great Twitter bio and they see you have something they are interested in, they will often follow back). So, if you do a little bit of keyword research, you can start to find and follow people who are talking about the keyword phrases that are most important to your product or service.

Second, you need a good plan to be effective marketing with Twitter. Without one you can get sucked into the black-hole of wasting time on Twitter FAST. So, make sure you take some time to find out how to use Twitter in the best possible ways. If you think about it this way… lets say you regularly charge your clients $100/hour for your time. If you spend even just an half an hour a day trying to figure out how to use Twitter and you don’t see any results start to come in, each week that goes by, you will have wasted $50/day! If you only work 5 days a week (which most entrepreneurs don’t do – tell me your not at your computer on Saturday morning and Sunday night? Right, I thought so…), that would be $250/week of wasted time. When you start to think about it that way, investing a little bit of money into learning the right and wrong ways to marketing with Twitter right from the get-go can save you a ton of money – not to mention help you actually MAKE SALES so that money starts coming in from those efforts.

If you have decided it’s time to stop pussy-footing around and you really want to learn, click here for a free webinar on Twitter for marketing. It will give you the key details you need to get going in the right direction. And, if you want to read more of the blog posts about Twitter for marketing your business, click here.

Ever wished you could get your favorite celebrity to follow you on Twitter?

Well, now you can – and with a charity donation to boot! It might cost you a pretty penny, but you could have any from Demi Moore to Zachary Levi (from the NBC show ‘Chuck’) following you! There are over 180 celebrities participating and the fund they are raising through the Ebay auction will go to aHomeInHaiti.org, and particularly to rebuilding the Miriam Center, which is a Haiti based home that serves special-needs children.

You’ll be the envy of your friends when you get your favorite celebrity to ‘chat’ with you on Twitter, and you’ll feel good about yourself too!

Check out the article for more details here: http://bit.ly/dhViC3

The reason you need Twitter for marketing your business is really quite simple…

As of Sept 2010, it has, officially, over 145 Million users! And, to top it off, the growth in the last 4 months prior to this announcement was nearly 300,000 people PER DAY!

When something is growing that rapidly in popularity, you can’t afford to miss the boat.

But, what if you’re just not sure how to use it EFFECTIVELY to help market your business?

Well, the answer to that question actually requires another question… what is your time worth to you? You could experiment, spend time figuring things out, learning the ropes, hoping for the best… and possibly stumbling onto a successful marketing strategy.

OR

You could invest in learning the RIGHT way from the very beginning… saving yourself untold hours of time, possible missing clumps of hair (yes, we entrepreneurs sometimes pull out a few strands when we can’t figure things out…) and the intense frustration and overwhelmed feelings that come along with knowing something should work, but not quite knowing how to make it work for you.

If you want to cut to the chase and really get clear on how to use twitter for marketing your business, here’s the best way.

The Twitter Sales in 12 Minutes A Day course. It comes with the ‘lazy business owners’ Daily Play for Twitter Sales Domination and breaks everything down so that you can become a Twitter Master in no time, leaving everyone else in the dust. Check it out here.