e-Business Australia

Twitter is an extremely popular and lucrative social networking site and is a great tool in your fight for traffic. Millions of people are now using twitter to converse on many different subjects all around the world, constantly. But before you start marketing on Twitter there are some mistakes that could cost you money if you dont avoid making them yourself.

1. Not using your own picture on your profile.

Although some twitter users do not use their own picture, they are missing out on potential followers because a real picture helps people connect with you and makes a good impression. Your own face on your profile allows others to know that you are a real person, not just a business trying to make money online.

2. Automatically sending direct messages to new followers that are sales messages.

This guarantees you will lose followers as quickly as you gained them. Only ever send out friendly, welcoming direct messages and not the type that tries to get your new follower to immediately buy something you are selling. It always puts people off, very few follow the link ion the message, and worse you might be losing followers by doing this.

It is possible that some will follow the link and purchase your product, but consider the overall cost of all those followers you have just lost. You get sick of salesmen, and so do your twitter followers, so dont be just another salesman. Instead just send a message that thanks them for following you.

3. Trying to get lots of followers without anything decent to post.

It is going to take you some time to grow your list of followers, so you have to be patient. You will not get many followers when all you are posting is that you are looking forward to using twitter, and those types of messages. If you have nothing of value to post yourself than simply retweet the valuable content of your niche market competitors. This is a great way of getting visitors to your profile, as people always like to see who is retweeting. Try and get yourself included in a discussion of others within your market.

4. Never send out one sales tweet after another.

If all you ever do is advertise your business all the time, without posting any other content type, then your followers will quickly get tired of this and stop following you. Think about this, why would anyone want to follow someone who only ever sells stuff and has nothing else of interest to say?

Twitter is for humans, not computers, so be friendly and do not over promote your business. Limit sales or advertising tweets to 10% of tweet content and keep the rest educational and informative. Try and post content that you would like to see yourself if the roles were reversed.

Although all this is mostly common sense, there are some twitter marketing strategies which are more complex, and perhaps best left to professional marketing automation products. These are not free, but the professional can see how to recoup such marketing expenditure in minutes when these twitter marketing strategies are in use.

A lot of webmasters have made article marketing their primary marketing tool. Why? The answer for this is simple: this internet tool allows them to grow their ebusiness without hurting their pockets. It only requires these people to produce quality articles and distribute them to article submission sites to position themselves as expert on their chosen niche and to drive more traffic to their website.

Do a keyword research. If you want to easily identify the topics that are being searched for by your potential clients, you will need to use a keyword suggestion tool that can help you figure out the most popular search terms within your chosen niche. These terms will easily help you figure out the type of information that your target market are looking for so you can make the process of choosing your topics well-guided.

Your titles must be able to evoke action, touch emotions, or pique the curiosity of people online so they will be moved to check on your content.

Optimize. You need to make your articles search engine-friendly so they will fare well on relevant searches. You can easily do this by identifying the most searched keywords within your target niche through the use of a reliable keyword suggestion tool. Then, incorporate the top performing keywords on your articles especially on your titles so you can better connect with your potential clients.

Steer clear from using clichs and idioms. The reason for this is simple: these have been overused by other writers and they can be a bit annoying to your readers. If you want your readers to understand your content, you need to communicate your messages using simple terms and short sentences.

Your articles must be objective. Remember, your main goal in writing your articles is to inform your readers. So, you better not offer them with information that can mislead them. Avoid inserting personal biases as much as possible. If you need to insert your opinions, make sure that you back them up with studies, researches, and other reputable resources.

Promote your products and services. Although blatant advertising is a no-no in article marketing, you can still create a need for your products by discussing the ways on how they can help your potential clients and by highlighting their benefits and features.

Your articles must be informative. Online users spend time reading articles for simple reason that they would like to be informed. So, make sure that your copies contain the information they need. These could be information about their areas of interest or information that can potentially help them resolve their pressing issues.

To date, Twitter has gained the reputation of being one of the largest attractions in the global social media craze. By definition â??tweeting’ started out as being short online messaging similar to text messaging but more social; however, online marketers have also realized the benefits of such a communication tool. Of course, most every marketing tool always has its own particular way of being used. If you want to get appropriate responses, you need to follow a definite path.

If you don’t pay attention, you’ll find the results can ruin all the efforts you have put in. The great thing about this type of marketing is you can avoid common Twitter foul-ups by following a few simple rules. First off, you should remember that Twitter is a widely used social networking site, and people are on there for fun. This is why your business will get enough exposure. This article will cover those blunders that you can and should avoid to make Twitter the best marketing media to promote your business.

If you have a business, and you have customers or clients who follow your progress with Twitter, do not think that they are interested in being your friend. The other thing that people have to learn is that not every person who sees their marketing campaign even cares about what the business is about. Your prospects don’t really think about “you” but they inherently think about “themselves”. It will never make a difference how good the product is; your potential customers will never purchase from you if they don’t care about your product.

Your prospective customers who read your message only care about how your product or service will benefit them. In order for you to make this product important to them, you have to figure out how to make them believe that their life would be worse off if they don’t purchase your product. Once you understand that very important concept, you should be able to come up with a great Twitter marketing movement.

Another major problem that Twitter marketers run into is not giving enough information about their product. If a person cannot figure out what you are selling or what you are doing, then they will ignore you! One way to clarify yourself is to create a biography that will hook your prospects, and include a photo so they could identify you. It’s all about product placement and how you present yourself and if your first visual communication is off, then they most likely will not communicate with you again.

But you don’t have to be too serious. Taking your product or your business too sternly can be a death knell to your business and any chance of having a successful marketing movement. The whole point of being on Twitter is to be urbane and witty. Don’t complicate the lives of your potential Twitter following by being too serious. Write your tweets with some spice and add a little humor if it is appropriate. That will make more people interested in what you have to offer. You want to give a picture of life to your advertising on Twitter.

Community is the key word here, and Twitter should be treated as such. That’s also the reason it’s so important for you to participate in it. However, the biggest mistake some make is that they don’t join in the community, but rather only try to promote within it. Avoiding this mistake is pretty easy though; just keep in mind that you will have to give in order to receive. You can’t just inform, you must participate in the social aspect. Becoming a follower of some Tweeters, answering their questions, and participating in Tweet threads are great ways to build a relationship within the community. If you want to achieve positive results, then becoming an active member of the community and working with other Tweeters is the only way to accomplish this.

Twitter is really a simple concept â?? in order to succeed using this marketing tool you will have to put forth some effort and grow a large following of people interested in listening to what you have to say and who want to hear it again. So how are you going to make this happen? All you have to do is give the people what they want â?? write about what they want to read about. It has to be beneficial to them. This is how you can avoid the most common mistakes that marketers do when trying to use Twitter to market their product.

Did you know there is a new open source community project underway called the WordPress Plugin Database, located at wp-plugins.net, which is a user-friendly web site with about 2,500 WordPress plugins and counting?

”The WordPress Plugin Database is a categorized list of WordPress plugins, complemented by a WordPress Plugin Manager that allows one-click installs,” say the database developers. “For users, wp-plugins.net provides a browseable list of plugins, and RSS feeds you can subscribe to in order to get notified of new plugins and updates. For developers, wp-plugins.net makes it easy to publicize your plugin and keep users informed of new versions.”

As for us everyday non-developer WordPress fanatics who are constantly searching for cool new plugins to make our site attract visitors and earn some money, the WordPress Plugin Database is populated with plugins that can help generate web site traffic to your blog, sell your ebooks, share web site links, podcast your message, offer a public forum for returning visitors, and fight spam in the process.

Below is a short list of free plugins I discovered in this new database that can drive traffic to your blog, sell terrific products, and keep visitors on your site for a while – the perfect monetization strategy for every blogging entrepreneur.

Would you like to add a Public Forum to your blog? Simple Forum is a free plugin that is described as a “simple and straightforward forum that does the sort of stuff a forum is supposed to.” Simple Forum currently has 71 features you can use to develop a growing community of returning visitors who are encouraged to speak to each other, and who share common interests with you, the brilliant blog owner and forum manager expert. Search engine spiders love the fresh content provided by a community forum. Simple Forum can support your forum member’s comments in 17 languages: stuff.yellowswordfish.com/simple-forum/

Would you like to monetize your blog by selling your products and services with a WordPress shopping cart? The free WP eCommerce Lite shopping cart plugin is described as “an industrial strength, elegant, easy to use, fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.” You can upgrade to the eCommerce Gold plugin for just $15. If you don’t have any products to sell, you can set up this shopping cart to sell products offered by Amazon.com, Art.com, and so on: instinct.co.nz/?p=16

Reciprocal link directories create backlinks to your site that helps improve your site’s search engine ranking, and most shared link directories are not free. Plus, most blogs don’t offer a shared link directory. The free WP Link Directory is described as “the first and the only one link directory plugin on the Internet for WordPress admin to store and maintain a set of links in classified categories.” This link directory plugin can match your blog theme: alectang.com/wordpress-link-directory/

Podcasting is a web site traffic generation phenomenon that has seen over 6 million people download MP3 podcasts. That’s not including the millions of people who prefer to listen without downloading. Here’s an idea. Why not record your blog articles as a podcast, and then submit your articles to podcast directories? Even if you don’t like the sound of your voice, there are software programs online that you can use to speak your written words with a more pleasing sound.

PodPress is a free plugin described as “a dream plugin for Podcasters using WordPress,” and “a full-blown Podcasters Plugin for WordPress.” With Podpress, you can post a podcast along with your article for visitors to download, or listen to without downloading. Why not interview an expert in your niche by telephone, and post your conversation as a podcast with your article? mightyseek.com/podpress

And finally, every high-traffic blogger would love to find a way to eliminate spam. Spam Karma 2 (SK2) is a free spam fighting plugin developed by the WordPress Plugin Directory guys. SK2 is described as “an anti-spam plugin for the WordPress blogging platform. It is meant to stop all forms of automated blog spam effortlessly, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible to regular commenters.” wp-plugins.net/doc/sk2/

By the way, don’t forget to upgrade your WordPress blog to the latest 2.3 version released in September of 2007. WordPress 2.3 offers new article keyword tagging features, which means improved search engine ranking and more web site traffic for you: wordpress.org/download/