Over the past few months, many people have commented on my Twitter promotional strategy. Most of the comments have been positive so I am taking the time today to write my Ultimate Twitter Resource guide. It will talk about all things Twitter, from what it is, to the many ways to use it, and other great Twitter related sites. I will forewarn you, this will get a little long but I hope you find it is worth the read. If you are more interested in strictly promotional aspect, you can bypass the first half or click on the links to my previous Twitter columns, most of the information on promotion is in those posts. At the end I have included a comprehensive list of links for you to peruse.

(Here are the links to my previous Twitter columns: Using Twitter to Increase Readers and Make Friends,  Don’t Take Promotional Personal with Twitter, and The Twitter Effect)

My series of Twitter entries created quite a bit of buzz, as over 75 comments will attest to. I hope I have consolidate all needed information into one well thought out entry. If you have anything to add, please join the discussion.

I also encourage everyone to post links to their Twitter account in the comments section.

Introduction:

I was first introduced to Twitter in April of 2008. Yes, I know, not that long ago. However, as soon as I saw the promotional ability of the tool I started using it daily and religiously. I quickly was able to build over 4000 followers and almost quintupled my blog traffic, all in 2 months of work. In addition to the promotional aspect, I have met a nice amount of really fun and intelligent people, and enjoy reading messages from everyone that I follow.

What is Twitter?

Twitter was started in 2006 as a ‘micro-blogging’ platform. Micro-blogging is a style of social networking that lets you send updates of 140 characters to those who are following your time line.  Social networking heavy-weights such as MySpace and Facebook refer to these as ‘Status Updates’. Over the last two years, Twitter has gone from relative obscurity to national prominence thanks to blogging, and many new related website (for example, the Chicago Sun Time columnists all have Twitter to let readers follow their daily activities.) Although there are a hundreds of micro-blogging websites, Twitter is far and away the most popular.

Another popular reason people Twitter is its ability to be updated quickly from a mobile phone. Once you set up your account, you can easily text message updates to display on your Twitter feed.

The following is a quick explanation of frequently used terms in Twitter.

A Tweet is a status update made to your time line.

Someone who Follows you is someone who receives your status updates on his or her Twitter profile.

When you Follow someone, you will receive their status updates.

Getting Started on Twitter:

Creating a Twitter account is fairly straight forward.  Think of a user name and fill out the simple form.

After you fill out the form, it will prompt you to check your current contacts in your email account to see if those people have a Twitter account. It was ‘Follow’ all of those people. You now at your default screen. It should look like this:

You are now ready to start making status updates. If you plan on using the update from cell phone feature, make sure you follow the on-screen instructions to set it up.

Customizing your Twitter profile:

Before starting promotion or using Twitter as a communication tool, you may want to customize your profile. There are a few things you can do to make the profile more personal.

• Add a customized background image. I personally didn’t feel the need to do this on my profile, but many people like to have their established brand or logo in the background of their profile. Example: Selina Wragg uses the same background image for her blog as she does her Twitter.
• Add a personal photograph. This will give your profile a personal feel for anyone that chooses to follow you.
• The biography section is an excellent play to post links to your websites, MySpace, Facebook profiles. Or if you want, just a little something about yourself. I will get into promotional optimization later on in this guide.

When your profile is customized, it could have a nice look and make it feel less sterile than the generic Twitter screen. Here is an example:

Notice how the Twitter background and the blog layout have the same feel.

After you are up and running, I recommend taking a few days to observe the culture of Twitter communities so you don’t feel in the dark when you start to promote your website or product. If you want to read more about the more common Twitter usage rules SheGeek’s has an excellent post about it here.

How To User Twitter To Communicate:

Once you have created your profile and added some friends, you should take the opportunity to learn how to communicate within Twitter before moving on to promoting your blog or product.

There are three general ways people communicate with Twitter.

1. Public Time-line
2. @User replies
3. Direct Messages

When someone posts to a public time-line, it is viewed as a general message. One of the first mistakes I made was not understanding this, so when people would send me messages I would just reply in the public time-line. People must have thought I was crazy. @User is the proper way to reply to a message from a user if it is not private. When you use @User, it will display in the users reply section on their Twitter profile. When using a Twitter client, usually the client will distinguish those messages and display them differently. The final common way is a direct message. Direct messages are private and only the user can see them.

Another great communication feature of Twitter is the ability to update it via cell phone. Once you set up your cell phone number in the Setup section, you can send an SMS text message to Twitter to have them update your profile. You have all the same options when communicating by SMS.

Below is a video that explains Twitter in simplistic terms. I thought it was pretty entertaining.

Most of this next section was culled from a post I made in April called Using Twitter to Increase Readers and Make Friends. You can find that post here.

How To Promote A Niche Blog With Twitter:

Most of these tips can be used to promote any product or website, but this next part is geared more toward promoting you niche blog through Twitter. Since my niche blog is about blogging tips and, on the fringe, a make money online blog, I started with the popular niche blogs in those fields.

These are the steps I went through in order to build the traffic and increase my followers. There are a few people who look at these types of methods as spamming, but they key to it is to NOT spam, and use your new found connections properly.  When I promoted my music on MySpace, I would find a similar artist to my music. I would go through and then attempt to add their friends and message them. The mindset was ‘If they like this artist, there is a better chance they would like my music than if I picked a random person off the street.’ Instead of spamming them, I would message them personally and ask them to check out my music. It worked well, until people took advantage of it and start spamming relentlessly. So far, I have found that not to be the case on Twitter. Here are the steps.

1. Make sure you profile has up to date links. I made sure that the blog I wanted people to go to was the first link on the profile. In the biography section of the Twitter profile, I added a link to the websites About page. This way if people wanted to find out about me, it would take them to my blog. (Keep in mind, I do not have advertisements on my site, I am more interested in sending them to the website so they can see what I write about, and if they like the content, will add my site to their RSS reader. However, if you are displaying ads, this is a good way to increase hits and traffic)
2. Find someone with a similar business or blog and attempt to add their followers. It seems pretty simple and it works fast. In my example, I immediately cruised over to the profile of Maki from DoshDosh. He has a wonderful social media blog, his writing is top notch, and I like his overall style. I went one by one and added every single follower. You can do it faster than you ever could add a MySpace friend. After I had added all his followers, I went to a few more profiles and added similar followers. My thinking is if someone is following another blog, they quite possibly could be interested in following my blog.
3. Download and install an application to help manage Twitter. I personally use Twhirl. It helps me manage replies and messages in a chat like setup. It is great for responding to messages. Later on in the guide you can find links to all sorts of Twitter tools.
4. Respond to every single message and tweet. You will get a fair amount of backlash from adding people so fast. The reason is because many assume that you will just be spamming them. Take interest and respond the messages. You will ease their mind and if they like your content and tweets, they may become a reader.
5. Don’t spam incessantly. One thing I have noticed, is the people who spam get removed very fast. So if you intend on building long lasting relationships and not just quick traffic spikes, make sure not to spam. I recommend starting conversation as well as posting links. You will be rewarded by meeting a lot of wonderful people.
6. Give back as well as take. You will have an opportunity to meet a wonderful community and find many new friends and blogs. Make sure you give traffic and subscriptions back. I assure you that you will find something you’ll love.
7. Add your Twitter Feed to other social media sites like Facebook and MySpace. If you have taken the time, like I have, to build extensive networks on MySpace and Facebook you can install applications and widgets to display your Twitter feed on those profiles. For MySpace, you will have to create a widget. Facebook has an application that you can add to your account by click on this link 
8. Setup a plug-in to automatically post new blog posts to your Twitter account. There are many great tools to do this, and on this blog I currently use Twitter Tools to achieve this.

People who promote this way sometimes receive backlash. I cannot count on 100 hands how many times I have been hassled or harassed when promoting my music or blogs. But if you have something to say, you need to get it out in front of people.

Misconception of the Follower to Following ratio (F:F) and Spam Control

The first initial reaction to my promotional tactic from many long time Twitter users was outrage. How dare someone add a PUBLIC profile without knowing anything about me. Another thing you will hear in contrast to my promotional strategy is my F:F ratio in unfavorable.

What is an unfavorable F:F ratio? That is when your following number greatly outnumbers your followers. People feel that if you have an extremely high following number, that you must be a spammer. I find this completely backwards. I order to spam anyone they must be following you.

For example, I have a F:F ratio of 18.610 people I am following to 4,192 people that follow me back. The only people that can see my Tweets are the 4192 that are following me back. Those people had to chose to follow me. This is not spam. The amount of people that I follow should have no bearing or effect on you. If you choose to follow back, then you will receive my promotion. That simple. If you follow me and decide you no longer like the content I am providing or the Tweets I am relaying, simply stop following and your problem is solved.

The Twerp scan and The Twitter blacklist are examples of elitists who automatically assume that if you have a lot of people you follow, you must be a spammer or parasite.  The logic is completely wrong. If you follow someone, once again you CANNOT SPAM SOMEONE. They have to follow you back.

One tool that is effective in helping you manage those who Spam or are a little over zealous this week would be Twittersnooze.  If you follow someone you do not want to delete, but they are being a little too noisy, try this tool.

Things to Avoid While Using Twitter:

Although using Twitter can be a wonderful promotional tool, there are things you should work hard to avoid.

1. Everything is public so make sure to keep it public. Twitter can quickly become a chat client, but it really shouldn’t be used that way if you intend on using Twitter as a primary means of promotion. Everything, with the exception of private direct messages, is public. Even @User replies are viewable by all.
2. Avoid confrontation. When promoting your blog, you may encounter people who want to bait you in to an argument. Remember, everything is public and they can re-tweet you messages to everyone on their list.
3. Don’t just talk about yourself. Some people have a notion that all they need to do is talk about themselves. If you don’t participate in the community, you will be tuned out. Read other peoples tweets, @Reply when you feel like you can interject something intelligent, and make sure you stay interesting with your public time-line.

Twitter Resource Links:

Over the past few months I have relied heavily on the intelligence and hard work of other individuals. Here is a link of Twitter related post from some reputable blogs.

101 Twitter Resources by Traffikd.
17 Ways to Use Twitter by Maki at Dosh Dosh
5 Reasons to Twitter by Ben at BlogEx
5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.
Why Twitter Isn’t a Waste of Time by Sheila Scarborough
Twitter is Stupid but Courtney Tuttle
13 Odd Ways to Use Twitter at Social Media Trader
5 Twitter Tactics to Building a Better Brand at Mashable
Get Into Twitter or Get Outta Public Relations at PR Squared
Why Twitter At All? at Road2Blogging
Twitter Feeds Made Simple at ClickPopMedia
10 Tools That Will Make You an Expert at Dumb Little Man
Twitter 101: Clarifying the Rules for Newbies at SheGeek
Tweeting for Companies 101 at HorsePigCow
Twitter and Business: The Conclusion at Business and Blogging
10 Best Twitter Tools at Quick Online Tips
How to Use Twitter to Build Brand Integrity at Marketing Vox
10 Things Twitter Users Should Not Do at Valley Wag
8 Awesome Firefox Plugins for Twitter at Mashable
Ultimate Twitter Resource by Arvind Jose
My Essential Twitter Tools at Web-Strategist.com
Simple Twitter Resource at Ext337
10 Ways Twitter Can Boost Your Social News Profile at ReadWriteWeb
Twitter Can Be Liberated - Here’s How at TechCrunch

Posting Tools:
TwitterMail is a tool to send messages to Twitter via email
Twhirl is a desktop applicaiton that makes it easier to post to Twitter
Twibble is a multi platform desktop application that makes it easier to post to Twitter
Twitterific is desktop application for Mac OSX
TwitterBerry is an application to post to Twitter from your Blackberry
Search and Stats:
Tweetburner: shorten the URL and get stats on it so that you can tell what people are clicking.
TwitterLocal: put in your location, select a radius and find (and subscribe via RSS) to the tweets that are in your area.
twemes: follow messages marked with hashtags (words or phrases after the # sign)
Twitter Karma: Allows you to sort through your friends and followers and see a variety of info about them
Quotably: allows you to follow conversations by user
Tweet Scan: Allows you to search twitter. This can be a great help when you are looking for people to follow.
TweetStats: Shows you your twitter behavior, or the behavior of any twitter user. Nice to see, in your own stats, who you send tweets to the most.

I have grabbed a lot of these links from several locations, such as Traffikd. Please check out his blog post which is listed at the top of the resource list.

Most of these links are care of Twitter Fan Wiki. There are hundreds of more links there as well.

I will be adding to this as needed, if you have suggestions or additional blog posts regarding Twitter please leave them in the comments section and I will add them.