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Are you a business owner? You have a website or blog?

Whether you sell a product or service, internet marketing must be done. To generate business income through your website or blog, you must first drive traffic to your website or blog. There are many ways for you to do this. Advertising is a costly way. Using Social networking is another FREE way. Twitter is a social media site embracing business. Juts to make a point, all CNN reporters do have an active Twitter account. Not just for fun, for improving their business.

What is Twitter
Before going into the benefits of marketing your business with Twitter, first understand what Twitter is. Twitter is a social networking website that also acts as a micro-blog. After signing up for a Twitter account, you develop a list of contacts. These are individuals you want to follow or receive updates from. Many will return the favor, becoming followers of your updates. There are no limits on how many messages you can send; however, there is a 140 character limit. Updates, otherwise known as Tweets, are sent through instant messaging, mobile web applicat ions, RSS feeds, Facebook, and the Twitter website.

How to use Twitter
By performing a search on http://search.twitter.com/, you will see the latest Tweets on the subject your enter. xample if you are interested in hair loss products, just type into the search box: hair loss products. Or: cooking books. You get the picture. Use some searches about your own products and services. The key to using Twitter as a marketing tool is to advertise without really advertising. Respond to Tweets found on http://search.twitter.com/ that fits the subject of your website, blog, product or service. Occasionally send business updates to your friends. Highlight your new blog post, summarize a product you are selling, provide a discount code or announce a new service. You should also reply regular to members that you follow.

Benefits of Marketing YOUR Business with Twitter:

1. You can generate traffic.
Whether you sell a product or service, either directly or indirectly, you need to drive traffic to your business website. You can easily do so with Twitter. You can embed a link in your tweet. Did you recently update your blog? If so, share a miniscule summary of your post on Twitter and then provide a link to the post (use keywords….).

2. You can generate interest.
Next to generating traffic to your website or blog, you should also generate interest. There are varies ways to do so. Start with creating catchy Tweets. If you sell a product, don’t just instruct people to buy your product, but ask for their feedback. Ask how it can help them in the use. Then post something on the feedback you received. Then ask your followers to forward information on your product to their
contacts. When you be able to create a catchy message on product or service, it helps to generate more interest on Twitter.

3. You can get feedback.
As stated in previous benefit, a great way to subtly increase traffic to your website or blog is to ask for feedback. By providing a link, you will not only get website traffic, but you will also get what you asked for, feedback. For example, do you sell great products, but are your prices too high? Twitter members will let you know. Just ask bold questions, induce the need to respond.

4. You can update customers.
When connecting with customers, you might ask them subscribe to your newsletters. But you can also use Twitter for updates or newsletters. Just get a link to an update article on your website or blog. You can share promotional codes, discount coupons, new product releases, and so on. Consider even multiple accounts (certainly one for business and personal use)

and last, but not least…..

5. You can make sales.
Regardless of whether you sell a product or a service, a sale will generate income. By increasing visitors to your website, you increase your chances of making a sale. You can go a step farther by making contacts that are within your targeted market. For example, do you sell children books? If so, your target market is parents. Perform a search on http://search.twitter.com to find posts that focus on parenting. You can offer a response that leads to your website, increasing your chances of making a sale.

Mike Paetzold back again for day 4 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing Twitter. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform that allows you to post your thoughts but only in 140 characters or less per entry.

So far I have discussed why Twitter is a bloggers best friend and yesterday and the day before the topic was Integrating Twitter into all you do – parts one and two.

Today the discussion will move to the most important part of using Twitter – moving them to your list.

If you have been following and applying what has been discussed here you are building a relationship with your followers. You are becoming a trusted information resource and your followers are looking for your tweets. There is a problem though.

The data flow on Twitter is moving quite quickly to say the least. Your tweet may easily be missed even by the people that are your raving fans depending on how they access Twitter. (Going on a bit of a side bar here. I will return to my main point shortly.)

One of my favorite tools for using Twitter is Tweet Deck. It allows me to segregate into columns not just replies ad direct messages but I can group the people that I really want to not miss their information in a separate column. The goal of using the techniques in Twitter Time Saver is to get your name listed in that special column on your followers set up.

Because of this it is always preferrable to move people to your ezine or email list. This can be quite easy as all it takes is a quality gift on the topic you talk about.

Adding a tweet about a gift like that which will grow your email list is easy to do and you will get your biggest fans to be able to get your information in multiple formats.

Twitter can be a great way to get people to sales pages but… unlike getting them on your list it is a once and done proposition. Make sure that at the very least your are using offers to join your list as you tweet to your followers regularly.

Hope you have enjoyed my stay here this week and you have learned from what I have added. Hopefully you are now following me on Twitter and have checked out my blogs. Next week I will be heading to Blog Income Life. Hope you follow me there.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Mike Paetzold back again for day 4 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing Twitter. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform that allows you to post your thoughts but only in 140 characters or less per entry.

So far I have discussed why Twitter is a bloggers best friend and yesterday the topic was Integrating Twitter into all you do – part one. The discussion centered primarily on integrating your blog and Twitter.

Today the discussion will move to integrating other services into how you use Twitter. Sites like Facebook and Friend Feed make it easy to integrate all of them together.

All of these places are places where you can share information on your topic of interest. The cool thing is that Google has made it easy for you to do that with Google News and Google Reader. You can add the rss feed for any topic to your reader and see the latest information that Google finds as they find it.

Friend Feed allows you to integrate anything you share on your Google Reader account to Facebook and Twitter automatically. And the last word is the important one.

We all know that sharing good quality information is the key to making any social media work. It shows you to be a very valuable resource on a topic and can build your following.

As people keep seeing that what you are tweeting is helpful and that you are sharing not just your stuff but others valuable information you build up a credibility.

This makes it more likely that people will be looking for your tweets and you have beaten the biggest barrier in using Twitter, you have gotten their attention.

Find the latest information for your topic on Google News and any blogs in your niche that always have quality content. Add the rss feed of the news topics and the blogs to your Google Reader account.

Grab the feed of your shared items from the reader and add that to your Friend Feed account.

Now add in your Twitter and Facebook accounts along with any other social media sites you use like You Tube to your Friend Feed account.

Set your Friend Feed to automatically publish your new items to Twitter and Facebook.

Now as you go through your reader just click the share link and it will automagically (not a word but it should be) be tweeted and added to your Facebook and Twitter streams. Direct additions to Twitter will be automagically be added to your Facebook and Friend Feed stream. Any other sites you added like You Tube will also update on the other sites.

This allows you to do one simple action and have it spread across your social media presence. All while saving you time and allowing you to provide quality information to your followers so they will want to recommend you to others.

You let Google work for you to find the latest information and then you act as the editor to decide what is valuable and what is not.

You can find tutorials and videos showing you exactly how to set this system up in Twitter Time Saver.

Do this regularly and when you add in other tweets you will have an audience that is looking to hear from you which will increase the response rate you can get on them all while keeping yourtime (your most valuable asset) commitmemnt to a minimum.

Be back tomorrow for my last day here on this blog tour.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Mike Paetzold back again for day 3 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing Twitter. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform that allows you to post your thoughts but only in 140 characters or less per entry.

Yesterday I discussed a few of the ways that Twitter can help a blogger and vice versa. They really do work well that way together and both are more powerful together than separately.

Today I want to talk about some of the easy ways to integrate the two. I am always about automating things where it is possible and making it easy for people to follow me in the format that suits them.

After all some people are really into Twitter. Others love to use Facebook or MySpace. Some like to keep track of various blogs using feed readers. My goal is to make it easy to get my information on multiple platforms so each person can find me in the way that they like.

It is easy to tie your blog and Twitter together. Tweet My Blog is a plugin that will automatically send a tweet through your Twitter account every time you add a blog post. It will allow you to add a widget to your side bar and show your latest Twitter entries on your sidebar.

The good part about using something like Tweet My Blog is that you set it up once and it keeps working for you.

Now you can do this with other services like Twitter Feed but they are more complex to get configured.

Either of those will automate both tweeting your posts and showing your latest tweets on your blog.

Twitter though is social networking and one of the best ways to integrate your blog and Twitter is to make it easy for blog readers to let others know about your blog post.

Now you and I both know that unless your post is extremely valuable none of your readers are going to take the time to copy the url then go to their Twitter account or whatever Twitter tool that they use to let their followers know about your post.

Adding TweetMeme Retweet Button like I have here when Fred wasn’t looking (sorry Fred ) makes it easy. You can click the button and it will automatically retweet the post to your Twitter followers. This makes it much more likely that your readers will pass the word along. You have made it easy for them and removed a lot of the friction for them.

Finally make sure that you make it easy for your readers of your blog to follow you on Twitter. You can do this by adding a ribbon on your blog (just do a Google search for Twitter Ribbons) or use a button in your sidebar. Again you can find lots of these by doing some searching on Google.

You can add a follow me link in your signature like I do. Speaking of which are you following me? If not click the link in my signature below and start now .

Tomorrow I will be back and finish up with integration using other social sites. The more places you share the more likely you will get the results you want.

Now go follow me on Twitter. (Yes, sometimes it helps to ask more than once )

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Mike Paetzold back again for day 2 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing Twitter. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform that allows you to post your thoughts but only in 140 characters or less per entry.

Now Google has started indexing the tweets on Twitter and their spiders have been extremely busy. It makes Twitter a perfect place to…

• Get your post indexed
• Let your followers know about your other content

As you can see the trackback from Twitter was indexed 25 minutes before Google indexed the actual blog post. This has been consistently happening about 90% of the time over the last month or two.

The other thing you can do with Twitter to help your blogging efforts is to add your Twitter stream to your blog side bar. There are numerous plugins that will allow you to integrate this into your side bar and this will make sure there is fresh content each time they visit.

As long as you are tweeting regularly there will be fresh content on your blog each time the page gets indexed.

When I discuss integration later this week I will be listing the plugins that I use for that.

In my opinion every blogger should be using Twitter as an adjunct to their blogging efforts for these two reasons. It is also a good way to build a relationship with your readers and to find new readers and allow your followers to spread your message to places that you can’t reach.

Will talk more about the details when I talk about integrating Twitter.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Hi guys and gals let me take a minute to introduce my self and explain why I am here. My name is Mike Paetzold and I have been traveling across the blogosphere as part on The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour.

Since early Novemeber I have been taking up residence on a different blog each week. I did take off two week over the holidays to spend time with my family but I really enjoy being able to get out and meet new people this way.

Now a bit about me personally. I have been online since 2000 and am known by some as The WordPress Guy. I love blogging, teaching people to blog effectively and to understand how to make money online.

I have created numerous products and not just about blogging but list building and integrating Twitter into your process.

I am active on a variety of social media because items like Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo, Hub Pages and more can greatly help your overall marketing plan.

You can find me on Twitter as MikePaetzold and if you like the information I provide here this week I hope you will follow me.

So enough about me. Let’s get to what I will be covering here. See each week I change topics to match the blog I am visiting and this week the topic will be Twitter.

Over this week I will be covering the following topics.

• Twitter and list building
• Twitter and blogging
• Twitter tools for integration
• Using free offers

Finally before I finish today I think it is important to understand a bit about Twitter before I cover the other topics.

Twitter is a minn blog where you get a maximum of 140 characters per post or as they call it Tweet. It is a great way to build interaction with those that follow you and integrates well with other social media.

The true power of Twitter has more with that interactive nature than what you can accomplish in 140 characters.

I’ll be back tomorrow so leave your questions and I’ll talk to you then.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey unveiled a hot new venture today.

Jack Dorsey, The Twitter creator, gave the first public demonstration of his hotly-anticipated latest venture — a device to allow credit card payments by cell phone — and also revealed that it would be given away for free.

Rumors have been circulating on the Internet since it was announced earlier this month, but little has been known about how it works or who it was aimed at.

More details of “Square” — a card reader which plugs into the headphone socket of most mobile devices — were revealed.

Square, a tiny cube about an inch in length, contains a magnetic strip reader that allows users to swipe and read credit cards, then deduct payment on or offline through a downloaded application that communicates with card issuers in the same way as retailer devices. Customers use their finger on the phone’s touch-recognition screen to sign their name to the transaction.

Interesting…

Fred Lotgering
LotCon Biz Solutions