Entrepreneurs get ready! Here is the top 5 business ideas you have been looking for to promote on Twitter, the worlds most popular micro-blogging platform. Get ready now to face the competition for the favours of the Twitter people. These 5 business ideas will take off fast once introduced to the community. So what do you offer the Twitter crowd? Tough sell for sure, but check out these great ideas:

Spot on direct fact checking services:
People are always looking for answers to anything between heaven and earth and lets face it, most are to lazy to even bother Googling, especially when busy Twittering. Now Twitters do not have to suffer being away, but can tweet their questions straight to Mahalo.com and receive feedback and answers from a Yahoo Answers kind of site. The popular media site has just introduced this feature to Twitters. Similar to Yahoo, users can vote on the best answers and give comments.

Cure For Insomnia Business:
Twitter users are prime prospects for insomnia treatment, since most stay up until the wee hours tweeting to their hearts content and as we all know, it is not so easy to fall asleep once birds start singing outside or your neighbour is singing in the shower! Of course getting off Twitter may actually solve this problem, but would you really want to? Of course not. You get paid for sleeping on the job as well and in most jobs sleeping is not considered gross misconduct, so compensation is due if your services are no longer needed.

Hugging Business
Everyone needs a good hug once in a while and Twitter users need them more than any. Having a hug delivery service would serve all Twitter users well. There are actually organisations offering free hugs, but that would mean having to get out on the street and log off Twitter, essentially a no-go. Better have the hug delivered straight to your doorstep. There would have to be a good selection of huggers available of course, depending on what kind of hug you want, strong or soft, caring or dramatic!
Power Nap Businesses

Clearly loss of sleep due to Tweeting must be made back somewhere and work seems to be a good solution. Now if only there were a company that delivered a soft pillow and blanket on demand. What a massive success that would be to have a goose feather pillow delivered to you in the lunch break or during another “very important” evaluation meeting! Remember, science has already approved of power napping!

24 Hour Concierge
Twittering is an exhausting business. And with no refreshments how can you keep yourself ready and alert. 24 hour delivery of soft drinks and snack would take care of that problem. Macadamia nuts and lemon juice or your favourite candy bar, with no fuss and no disapproving looks from the others in supermarket line. Or your bellboy could take care of your business card printing service and hand them out to potential clients who can’t get in touch with you because you are “in a meeting”!

Seeing as how Twitter is becoming more and more popular amongst businesses (even Walmart uses it!) we have decided to give you a quick over view of some Twitter best practises.

Top 10 Twitter Tips:

1)    Make objectives about what you want to achieve by using Twitter, and stick to them. You need to know what you want to achieve with Twitter. If there are too many things, create more than one account – each one should have its own agenda and credibility. Think about your user name. If you want to build up awareness for your own name brand, use your name, but if you want to build up your company name, you could try a mix of your name and the company name or just the company – depending on the length of your company name. E.G Leila_Interleado. You don’t want to use a name like superstar69 because it gives absolutely nothing away about you or your company and it doesn’t inspire any kind of credibility.

2)    When you add your avatar try not to add a picture of you wearing a giant silly hat, or you sitting in a boardroom. You want to be a human as well as professional. You also want to inspire confidence in your business capabilities and not look like a joker. Keep it simply you -and enforce your brand (whether it’s a personal brand, company brand, or your voice in the company brand).

3)    Add your URL and a small bio to your profile. People will have an online reference to learn about what you are offering them or what else there is to learn about you. Your profile reflects your brand.

4)    Twitter is like micro blogging. Your messages have a limit of 140 characters. Make them count.

5)    Twitter is no longer there just to tell people that your dog had 5 adorable puppies and you have decided to name them all Bob and Trudy. Now is the time to use Twitter to tell people about your business goals, your professional interests, to spread knowledge and offer customer support. Use your own ideas to spread the messages – be unique!

6)    That said, by no means is it deemed acceptable to spam your followers with “Tweets”* only concerning your company and how great it is. This is a sure fire way to either lose follower or not gain any. Add a human touch by passing on the link to an article you found funny or interesting. Tweet about issues you have online, things you found on your way to work, ask questions and reply to what other “Twits (or Tweeps)”** say. Offer customer support for example. Be useful but keep a balance.

7)    Add followers who you think you can learn from.  Hopefully they will think the same of you and follow you in return. It’s about building up a network here, the more useful all the connections are the better for you and everyone who networks with you. This means not automatically following people who follow you too. Depending on what you want to achieve, it seems logical that you would only follow people who have things to say that you find useful or interesting in any way. This is a chance to gain new blog readers, newsletter subscribers or software users. Again, this depends on what you want to achieve with Twitter.

8)    If you like what one of your followers  contributed, say so! By “Retweeting”*** what one of your followers or someone you are following says, you let them know that you found what they said interesting and that you are willing to share it with others . You could also reply to them or send a direct message and let them know. To retweet something, users typically type in “Retweeting” and the user name with an @ in front of it to show who posted it originally e.g. “Retweeting @LeilaPan” then paste the Tweet here. To reply to someone you type in the user name with an @ before it e.g. “@LeilaPan nice article!”. Users can be notified when they get these replies so they will know you replied to them or retweeted their message and may be more inclined to return the favour. Try to keep  a balance though, people can see when you are Tweeting your own messages or when you are replying or Retweeting – make sure you have your own voice.

9)    Use Twitter regularly. The more you use it, the more interaction people see. The more use people see in following you and the more followers you will receive!

10)    Twitter can give you insight you may not have had before. It can form part of your online reputation management. Track what people say about you or your company, or both! See if people are Tweeting your articles. By responding to what people say about your brand you build up your network and credibility.

Of course there are many Twitter tools and resources out there to help you use the application as best you can. It’s all about using it and finding out what works for you. You might also want to brush up on your Twitter lingo (you could even make up your own Twords! Twitter words…that one’s all mine.) Twittering can be fun, and keeps the communication lines with your target audience wide open.

The most important thing to remember is that this takes time, but it is becoming more and more widely accepted as a way to interact with existing and potential customers or even your niche heroes.

If you would like to follow some Interleado employees, you can follow me or Interleado’s CEO, Peter Cullen.

*Twitter posts

**Twitter users

***Reposting a Tweet

Twitter can be very powerful marketing tool, if you use it right. Here are few things that will help you to get maximum impact from twitter:

Increase your followers

If you don’t have any followers you won’t have anyone to promote your blog or products. So, you need to increase your followers. You can do this by following other people, offering incentives for people to follow you, write article to promote your twitter profile and also provide link to your twitter profile wherever possible, such as your blog and other social networks like facebook.

Get targeted followers

You need to aim for followers, who would potentially have interest with your niche. Again you can do this by analysing other members on twitter. Find someone who has many followers and also who is within the same niche as you. See, who follows that person. Find out what do they do to get those followers.

Tweet and Interact

Just tweeting is not enough. You also need to interact with other people. Reply to their tweets, ask questions and also retweet their tweets. You can do all those at twitter.

Retweet your follower’s content

Don’t just tweet your own content. You need to tweet your followers content too. People love to see their content is tweeted by someone else. This will also result in return favour and also they will tweet your content as well.

As you all know by now, twitter is social network. As the name says it all, you need to socialise and interact with others to get the maximum impact.

Everyday millions of people around the world are using twitter as an effective tool to reach out to other people.

With the job market being more competitive, employers and job seekers are turning to social networking sites such as twitter for job hunting and recruitment. Twitter can be used effectively when looking for a job to make valuable connections with potential employers and find prospective job listings.

Jobs can be searched on the Twitter website itself by going to search.twitter.com and typing in keywords for the particular job you are looking for such as “accountant new york”. Results for those keywords will be listed.

Job search engines like TwitJobSearch are helping employers and job seekers by searching for employment ads and organizing them into job tweets. The TwitJobSearch website allows you to login into your twitter account and search for jobs by:

Search and Advanced search – type in keywords that is specific to the job you are searching for.
Browsing job categories – browse jobs listed under categories such as Accountancy, Banking, Consulting services and many more.
Map search – jobs tweeted within the past 72 hours are marked on a world map. Zoom in to your city and click on the twitter icon and it will bring up all jobs listed in that city.

TwitJobSearch has now teamed with TweetDeck to bring you JobDeck a new desktop job search platform. JobDeck makes it easier to search for job listings as well as connect with contacts across Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Online job service TweetMyJobs connects employers and job seeks by tweeting job postings. Job seekers subscribe to “job channels” for their desired job type and city. When jobs become available you will receive text messages regarding new job postings. The TweetMyJobs website allows you to search for jobs by:

Search – type in job title/keywords and city
Browse by company – 7,476 Companies listed
Browse by Country – EVERY country in the world is covered
Map Search – Jobs that have been listed in the last 7 days are marked on the map. Just zoom to your desired location and click on icon to see the list of jobs.

If you are job seeking via social networking sites it is important to remember that recruiters and prospective employers are now conducting online research on potential applicants using various sources (social networking sites, search engines, photo sharing sites, blogs and various other sites). It is important to promote and protect your online identity and reputation by being careful about what you post.  An inappropriate comment or photo posted by you could mean that you are rejected as a candidate for a job.  Post content that would be favourable to an employer or recruiter and always assume that anything that you have written or posted can be viewed by everyone.

This article is something that everyone should read, whether you are just starting out or already have numerous followers who enjoy what is known as tweeting.

Twitter can be used as an extremely good marketing tool or just as a social networking tool that you can use to let friends and family know what you are doing.

There are no real secrets on collecting real followers and you will only gain as many followers as you truly deserve. It can and will take some hard work and marketeers should be warned that you will not get followers by simply adding new quotes every 2 minutes, there are enough of those on twitter and we really do not need anymore.

To start with you should always look to your friends and family. These are the easiest followers to get on board as you do not need to sell them anything. You know them, they know you and should be happy joining in to help you out. This first step would hopefully bring you at least ten to twenty followers. This is an important first step as others will tend to follow if they feel there are enough others to warrant the following on process.

Tweets are little messages that can be upto 149 characters long, seems a lot but they go very quickly. Each tweet you send should be of interest to a specific and unique group of individuals. Sending a message to the masses about a little rock will not get you anywhere fast.

The best way would be to use twitter as a form of private online diary, somewhere that you can type your little bits of news each day if you have something interesting to say. A good example may be:

“Just woke up to radio 1. Football boots still not clean from Saturday. They can wait. Eggy bread for brekky I think ”.

You will notice a few key words in the message whilst it also mentions what is going to happen and the overall feeling. See happy

This in itself will not guarantee you millions of followers but it is a start and it might just start a big bandwagon of other followers who want to know more about you and your eggy bread. You may even want to tweet again later to say you burnt you breakfast because you are not a great cook. These types of tweets on a constant but not immediate basis will quickly gain you interest from others who will want to know what happens to your boots or which football team you may play for.

A major key factor is not to bore your potential followers to death by creating the same message over and over again. Boring those sat next to you in a restaurant only results in those sat next to moving elsewhere which is not what twitter was designed for.

Do not feel disheartened if, after a week or two your popularity does not increase, like a big puzzle it will take time, if you continue to provide your life story live and as it happens then you will receive a mass following that will grow steadily on a monthly basis. Patience is an important tool in doing so and you may well give up after a few weeks if your heart is not really in it.

When it comes to marketing on twitter you again do not want to be tweeting the same message over and over again but provide your readers and potential new readers with something useful that may need. This way they will keep an eye on you to see what else may be offered in the future. Advertising has been proved fruitless if it is just pushed onto possible leads, like brainwashing it only works on a very minority few and is not worth the time in the long run.

As an example you may be wanting to advertise the best online bookmakers as a project or subject. When tweeting on specifics be exactly that. Be specific and offer something different each time. A tip, better odds, a mistake at the bookmakers that could be taken advantage of even. Do not repeat yourself a hundred times in one day, not only is it spam but it will not do you any favours.

The following pointers below are a brief insight into what you should be doing, if you follow it you will be a winner.

1) Be patient.

2) Tweet only unique information.

3) Do not bore your followers.

4) Provide something useful with each tweet.

5) Tell everyone what you are doing.

6) Do not spam.

This will not guarantee you thousands of followers but it will certainly help you on your way. If stuck to closely it will help you in a bigger way than you can imagine.

The phenomenal global reach of Twitter gives you an unrivalled opportunity to showcase yourself and your skills that won’t cost you a cent!

Following other like minded people on Twitter is a simple yet effective way to use Twitter as a marketing tool and drive targeted traffic to your websites.

When you follow others you will find that around 70% of the people you follow will follow you back and a large proportion of these new followers will visit your profile to see what you are about. It is at this point that you must present yourself in the best possible way.

Be sure to upload your image, the standard brown gravatar is a very negative sign – it shows that you don’t care enough to spend a few minutes uploading your photo.

Your Twitter profile provides space for one URL so make sure you have a website or blog with engaging content and personal information – a mini biography works well, don’t forget your followers want to find out about you, they will not be impressed if your link is to a sales page.

Create a custom background (Google ‘free twitter background’), this shows your followers you are taking your business seriously, it also gives you the opportunity to showcase your skills and provide URL’s (unclickable) to relevant websites.

Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression so do everything in your power to make it a favourable one.

Building a substantial list of followers is a great way to tell the world that what you have to say is worth listening to.

When people visit your profile and see that 3,000 other people are following you this acts as a powerful form of social proof – similar to a testimonial that says….”this person gives good advice, I follow them and I urge you to do the same.”

As your list of followers grows so does your own credibility.

Think about your own experiences on Twitter, if you visit 2 profiles and one person has 3,515 followers and the other has 15 followers which group do you feel most compelled to join?

Naturally you click the little green tick and join the larger group – you feel reassured that you are taking the right action because you can see that many others have taken the same action – this is the power of social proof.

As human beings we instinctively look for social proof before taking important decisions, we feel uncomfortable if others aren’t taking the same action and we seek out like minded individuals to spend our time with, we like people who are like us.

Twitter satisfies this need by providing a huge pool of people who are just like us with the same needs, wants and interests and it makes it possible to connect with these people quickly and easily.

Twitter is brilliant for raising your profile and building your credibility, however, Twitter’s greatest strength is its ability to cut through the layers of bureaucracy that usually surround and protect the big players in your particular niche and allow you to contact them directly.

If you think about the people who dominate your niche, for example, the top internet marketing ‘gurus’ you would find it very difficult if not impossible to pick up the phone and call them or send them an email and get a personal response.

No, because these powerful, influential people have tens of thousands of customers it is impractical to be available to all, so they employ people and systems to handle these personal interactions and therefore protect their time.

Life on Planet Twitter is very different!

Anyone can search for the name of their ‘top person’ and follow them, read their Tweets, send direct responses to them and in this way build a relationship. This ability to network and build relationships is unique to Twitter and is, I believe, its greatest strength.

This final point is so important I want you to go back and read it again.

Using Twitter as a marketing tool is all about building relationships and your business will benefit hugely if you can get a few ‘big hitters’ on your side!

There is a difference in the way that some people use twitter,there are different types of people on Twitter and ways that people use twitter, the Twitter snobs love the twitter community they are there to tweet they The Twitter snobs maybe follow 100 people and have 12000 followers. They are only following them because they love what they say, Then on the other side there are more aggressive twitter marketers that will follow people back in order to build a big list of followers as possible, I can understand the advantages and drawbacks of both of these sets of rules.

I think that we need to look from two points of view and see the advantages and disadvantages of both and look at what we can actually learn from them and use them to our advantage. To build our Internet Business for free using the power of Twitter and other free social media strategies.The main advantages of being a Twitter snob is that you only see the tweets of people that you are following on Twitter.That can be a great advantage from a learning point of view.As you can follow your guru’s and keep up with what they are saying the disadvantage of this however is quite big as well.

In the first place with all the Twitter tools you have available including Twitter Karma and many other Twitter tools people use to automatically unfollow people who do not follow them back.If your twitter followers are using karma.That means even if you are someone’s favourite guru you will still be unfollowed, what does this do for your list or your list of followers? Not much it just makes it more difficult to build a list for you on twitter,secondly I think it is also about respect if people have the desire to follow you and show you that they like respect and trust you.It is nice if you can in turn return the favour even if you use a piece of software to do it.

What are the advantages of building a list of Twitter followers this way? Firstly you will have more people who can see what you are doing because a lot more people will be following you,Secondly you keep your fans happy seems like a good idea to me if you want to keep them,as well as that you can build a list of targeted followers for free (priceless) If you are really intent on following your guru’s on Twitter but also want to build a huge following why not set up a mastermind Twitter account for this purpose.There is no need to ignore the free publicity and traffic that Twitter offers.

Once you have a targeted list of Twitter followers then you can start monetising your list whilst adding a lot of value for them as well,this will ensure that regardless of economic fluctuations and uncertainties. You will always be able to have a passive stream of income flowing.Just from a few simple clicks from Your fingertips using the list you built for free on twitter.

Twitter is easily one of the most popular social networking sites on the web today. Sure, you can add your friends and co-workers, but why not try something a little more interesting? Celebrities around the world have joined Twitter and are now sharing the minutiae of their lives for the entire world to read. Here is a list of some of the most popular, funniest and most interesting celebrities on Twitter. (They are ranked by followers â?? so the more followers they have the higher they rank on this list).

1: Britney Spears
Twitter Name: britneyspears
Followers: 3,943,630

The undisputed queen of Twitterland, Ms. Britney Spears is an odd mix of personal tweets mixed with PR updates from her management team. Filled with photos, news about upcoming concert performances and albums, weird little titbits about Britney’s day to day life, and sometimes a little bit of controversy.

2: Ellen DeGeneres
Twitter Name: TheEllenShow
Followers: 3,869,945

It makes sense that Ellen DeGeneresâ?? Twitter is so popular: it isn’t just wacky insights about her life or clips from her popular talk show. Ellenâ??s tweets also features regular information about surprise giveaways and contests that are available only to Twitter followers. Frequently requiring readers to rush off to a specific location, Ellen’s fans get the chance to take part in some exciting promotions.

3: Oprah Winfrey
Twitter Name: Oprah
Followers: 2,770,434

It appears that Oprah does all of her own tweeting, meaning you won’t see any PR people speaking for her. It also means that you shouldn’t expect many updates. After all, how can Oprah find time in the day to tweet?

4: Shaquille O’Neal
Twitter Name: THE_REAL_SHAQ
Followers: 2,626,476

Plus-sized basketball star Shaquille Oâ??Neal was one of the first Twitter phenomenon. Not only does he handle all of his own tweets, he sends out an almost never-ending stream of them. Shaq encourages fans to come talk to him, replies to messages regularly and just has a good time. A mix of vulgarity and genius, this gregarious superstar is one of the most entertaining Twitter-ers around.

5: Demi Moore
Twitter Name: mrskutcher
Followers: 2,353,591

Who would have thought Demi Moore could be so accessible? Decidedly unglamorous in her tweets, this beautiful actress tweets about watching movies and cable television while interacting directly with fans all day.

6: Lady Gaga
Twitter Name: ladygaga
Followers: 1,833,334

This laid-back pop goddess is surprisingly in touch with her fans. If you add lady Gaga as a friend, there’s a good chance that she’ll be returning the favour and follow your tweets as well. If you’re ready to be caught in a bad Twit-mance, here’s your chance.

7: Rainn Wilson
Twitter Name: rainnwilson
Followers: 1,699,452

“The Office’s” Dwight Schrute is busy on Twitter. His signature wit and interest in communicating with his followers has made him a hit on the Twitter scene, with more than one and a half million followers.

8: Perez Hilton
Twitter Name: PerezHilton
Followers; 1,657,164

The Internet gossip superstar, Perez Hilton, now keeps in touch with fans across the world via Twitter, and keeps the world informed of all the scandals as they happen. For celebrity gossip junkies heâ??s one youâ??ll want to follow.

9: Kevin Smith
Twitter Name: ThatKevinSmith
Followers: 1,547,381

Cult movie director Kevin Smith is a prolific tweeter who loves to keep in touch with his loyal fans. His acerbic wit is constantly on display. Those who need to keep their Twitter feed work-safe, beware!

10: Paula Abdul
Twitter Name: PaulaAbdul
Followers: 1,470,708

Paula Abdul, the sometimes controversial musician, dancer, and television star, keeps it real on Twitter. She posts regular updates so her fans can easily keep up with what she’s doing,  constantly. Yep, get ready for a pretty hefty number of Paula-centric tweets per day; if youâ??re into that.

Free Twitter Tools â?? Improve Your Tweeting

I get about 20 messages a day on Twitter about how I can â??grow my twitter following on autopilotâ?. The thing is, just about every person telling me this barely has any followers. The truth is thereâ??s nothing you can really do to grow your following on autopilot, it just takes some time and effort. There are some free tools that can help however, as listed below.

TWEET LATER

Tweet Later is the most useful Twitter program I use by far. The interface is horrible, but you only have to configure your Twitter options once and then youâ??re done. After youâ??ve loaded your Twitter account into Tweet Later, go to â??Accountsâ?, â??List Accountsâ?, then â??Editâ?. You should have at least the following two options set-up.

Auto-follow: This will follow anyone who follows you automatically. This is essentially just common Twitter etiquette for marketers… if someone follows you, you follow them back. Most marketers on Twitter use this function, which is how you will get your followers; when you choose to follow someone and they have this option selected, they will automatically follow you back, and you now have a new follower. If you gain followers this way, itâ??s just nice to return the favour. Additionally, the more people you follow, the more likely someone is to follow you.

Auto-Welcome: I would also recommend checking this and using it. It serves as a great way to start up a conversation with new potential leads. Send a simple message… thank people for following you, and maybe ask them a question to get the conversation started. Do no pitch your business in your auto welcome message. I get this all the time everyday, and I just delete those messages automatically. Be prepared to be bombarded with such messages.

You will also see Auto-Unfollow here. I personally donâ??t use this (more on unfollowing under “Friend or Follow” below).

Tweet Later also allows you to… Tweet Later. Go to â??Tweetsâ?, then â??New Tweetâ?. You can write in as many Tweets as you like and how them published to your account whenever you like. This way you donâ??t have to return to Twitter throughout the day to post something new. Simply set up a few new Tweets in the morning and then forget about it.

I personally donâ??t use any other Tweet Later functions, but browse around and see what suits you.

TWITTER FEED

Twitter feed will Tweet your blogâ??s RSS feed, i.e. every time you make a new blog post, you will automatically Tweet this to your followers. This is great because it gets traffic to your blog, and you donâ??t have to worry about remembering to Tweet it yourself.

TWEET DECK

Tweet Deck allows you to do everything you can do on Twitter, but without having to actually go online to your Twitter account. It has a different interface than Twitter, which some people may like. It also has an option to shorten your urlâ??s (which Twitter does, but only after posting the Tweet), which can help you make longer Tweets. Beware though, Tweet Deck makes really loud annoying sounds periodically, so you might want to lower your volume.

HUITTER

Twitter recently changed the the interface in the â??followingâ? section. Previously you could immediately tell who you were following, but wasnâ??t following you back, but you now have to click the icon on the right of the screen to figure this out. Yes this seems effortless, but when youâ??re trying to unfollow 100 people at a time, it takes much longer with the new interface. Huitter allows you to unfollow everyone who isn’t unfollowing you with the click of a button (if you wish to keep following certain people you can specify this). If you wish to unfollow these people, itâ??s now a lot easier. For anyone who doesnâ??t know, once you hit the 2000 â??followingâ? mark, you must have followers within 10% of your following, i.e. if youâ??re following 2000 people, you must have 1800 or more followers. Hence, it becomes necessary to unfollow people who arenâ??t following you, or else you wonâ??t be able to follow more people.

TWITTER BACKGROUNDS

Iâ??m not speaking specifically about any tool or website here. Google â??twitter backgroundsâ? and youâ??ll get several sites with free twitter backgrounds, some with some really really cool images. Theyâ??re a lot more interesting than the boring ones provided on Twitter, and they can serve to start up conversations too (I get asked about my Twitter background once in a while).

So there is your â??automatedâ? Twitter system. Add as many new followers per day and it wonâ??t take too long to get to several thousand followers (I recommend following less than 400 new people a day, or else your account might get suspended). Just remember to unfollow people, be friendly, and donâ??t spam people with your business opportunity.

To find any of said applications, simply google the application title. For information on optimizing your Twitter profile for your business, see my article â??How To Use Twitter For Your Businessâ?.

Even if you are new to the internet, the chance is you have heard about “Twitter”, the micro-blogging platform where the challenge is to have your meaningful say in 140 characters or less. Besides stretching the limits of your imagination and honing your haiku skills, this social networking tool has exploded onto the internet (and traditional) marketers’ horizons with great force, and it seems every one from Oprah (the newest celeb to publicly succumb to the Twitter hype) and President Barack Obama (who is using Twitter to help drive his Health Reform Bill) right through to the Pope has cottoned onto the marketing, brand building and social opinion influencing power of this website.

Such is the power of Twitter as an opinion former (or at least influencing opinion) that even Fortune 500 companies have appointed “Official Social Networking Managers” to continuously keep their brands in the minds of its Twitter followers, expanding on the traditional brand building and brand managing efforts, boosting sales and creating more loyal followers in the process.

The internet being the internet showing no favour just because you are a Fortune 500 company, Twitter has brought tremendous power to the smaller internet and traditional marketer as well, where the small operator can generate just as much traffic to his/her website and create an on-line brand, using the same techniques Fortune 500 companies do. However, some Twitter techniques work better than others do (especially seeing it is a SOCIAL networking platform), and those who manage to tap into the social psyche more effectively than their counterparts can be assured of more traffic and a better response to their Twitter “campaign”. Here is possibly where Fortune 500 companies have the edge – they can afford to employ a Psych graduate (or two or three) or even Post Graduates to manage their Twitter campaigns, especially when it comes to shaping public opinion or influencing netizens’ perceptions about virtually anything – from politicking to introducing a new flavour of crisps.

The REAL power of Twitter lies in that it incorporates what Seth Godin calls “Permission Marketing“. Instead of the traditional “Interruption Marketing” where what you were doing gets interrupted by a marketing message (think of those television commercials during your favourtie sitcom), Permission Marketing is marketing you CHOOSE to be exposed to. Because you choose to hear this marketing message (by, in the Twitter vocabulary, FOLLOWING someone or a brand on Twitter), you are already predisposed to listen to what the marketing message is, and far more likely to ACT on such marketing. Suddenly a marketer is no longer an interruption, he has become a friend that tells you about a product or service because you ASKED him to.

Understanding the power and basic principles of a Twitter campaign is one thing. Executing it effectively can be quite another. Remember the Fortune 500 Psych Grads? They were specifically employed because they understand the human psyche, how we react to external stimuli, especially in terms of how we perceive a brand or “value”, and can employ 140 characters to achieve a desired outcome, one tweet at a time. Great marketing if you can afford the price tag.

Most small and medium companies however, CAN’T afford the price tag, and have to opt for the “self-help” option. The “one man show” almost CERTAINLY will have to opt for the self-help option, and here we meet the first real barrier to making use of Twitter to generate sales. How do you get people to FOLLOW what you are saying tweet for tweet, so that you can build relationships with them to the point where they trust you enough to act on your recommendations? More importantly, how can you be interesting enough that those who stumble across you will actually tell all THEIR friends about you – the RETWEET phenomenon? And how will you convince these new readers to become followers?

A great number of very informative articles and books have seen the light all about exactly these issues, and can go a long way in helping you create and manage an effective Twitter campaign. In the end an effective campaign boils down to relationships, and Twitter is all about building relationships based around common interests. In this respect human nature has not changed much since the dawn of time – we like those who like us (and think like us) and like the same things we do. The psychological term is “Set”, defined as “Readiness to think or respond in a predetermined way when confronted with a problem or stimulus situation”, and like our offline relationships, our Twitter relationships will be better when we are within our own “set”. The first step in using Twitter as a business tool then, is to carefully design your Biography on Twitter, as this is what other people will judge you (and your suitability to be followed) by. Further to this, choose the people YOU will follow carefully, as even in cyberspace, you will be judged by the company you keep. Keep within your “set”.

The question still remains though, how do you get people to follow you in the FIRST PLACE? Make use of all your other communications to alert people to the fact that you are on Twitter – as part of your email signature, on your business cards and letterheads, on every blog post and website you create content for; even word of mouth works very well to generate a following on Twitter.

Once you have a following, treat them like gold, especially if you hope to sell to them at some point in the future. Make sure that at LEAST 90% of your tweets are NOT sales orientated; there is no quicker way to lose followers than to bombard them with sales pitch upon product offering that has no quality content about your mutual interests, or at least is interesting in itself! Also, a little generosity goes a long way in social networking sites. If you read a Tweet that you found helpful, or interesting, RETWEET it to your followers, including the name of the originator. By using the concept of positive affirmation you not only create goodwill towards yourself from the persons you have retweeted, but you also build your own image as someone who is more interested in providing your followers with quality information, irrespective of the source, than just punting your own products and viewpoints. Retweeting also goes a long way in adding to your follower numbers, as someone you have retweeted will be far more inclined to retweet something interesting you have to say to their followers, broadening your potential follower base.

Wishing you the best with your Tweeting campaigns, and may you dominate your niche one tweet at a time!