Figuring out what to tweet about on Twitter requires considering your overall Internet marketing plan.

For example, if you are trying to increase the traffic to your blog about books, you may decide to focus on tweeting links to news items related to book publishing and book marketing along with the links to your own blog posts. In this way you are establishing yourself as an expert in the book field by both the links you share and the original content you write.

Now let’s take this example a little further. You may decide to sell an ebook on publishing off your website on which your blog also resides. You may begin to add into your tweet mix occasional announcements about this ebook.

There’s a range of opinions as to how many of your tweets should be what’s called “self-serving” – promoting your own products or services – and how many should be informational or conversational or whatever.

Let’s say, though, that you do not yet have a blog or a website or a business of any kind that you want to promote.

What to tweet about in this case? Do you have any hobbies or interests?

Perhaps you are a green environment advocate. Then you could tweet information that you want to share about going green, such as links to books, news articles, and blog posts. You can add your opinions about the articles you are linking to in order to personalize your tweets.

You are establishing a brand for yourself even though you made never use that brand in connection with business. Still, you have a starting point from which to morph into a new brand if that’s what you decide to do.

Even before you get on Twitter you should decide what to tweet about. Will you be emphasizing your business views or your gardening interests?

Once you have made this decision, you can use Twitter’s own search capabilities or a third-party application such as tweetbeep.com to alert you when there are tweets connected to the topics on which you tweet. Then you can jump into the conversation and reply to people who are tweeting about these topics.

You can also follow Twitter lists that are on subjects of interest to you in order to easily track tweets connected to your topics.

As you participate more and more on Twitter, you will begin to follow people whose tweets you find especially valuable. You can study their tweets in order to decide which tweets you think are most effective in attracting followers. Then you can emulate the patterns you uncover.

Warning: Whatever you do, do NOT tweet in anger or use swear words or viciously attack someone. This is not proper etiquette and can quickly lose many of the followers you worked so hard to get – if not getting you kicked off Twitter.

Learn Here More About Twitter And How To Make Money With Twitter

Getting started on social media can often be deceptively simple – What’s the big deal? You sign up. – or intimidating – Why am I being asked for my date of birth? – or overwhelming – How do I find people to friend or follow?

In actuality there are official and unofficial rules. It is easier if you start out knowing what’s what, and this is probably especially important if you’re more of an introvert.

Let’s imagine you already use email, search for information on Google, and read blog posts. But you’ve never joined any social media sites. How do you start?

1. Decide how comfortable you are sharing information about yourself. And the corollary to this – how wide a sharing of this information are you willing to do.

If you’re a book author and want people to buy your book, it’s a good idea to decide that you will share personal (although not private) information to as wide an audience as possible. If you only want to connect online with former high school friends, your target audience is much smaller.

If sharing information makes you somewhat nervous, think about what it means to be personal as opposed to private. Personal is a good marketing book you just read that you can recommend to help others; private is a fight you had with your business partner over implementing the marketing steps recommended in the book.

2. Ask online savvy friends that, based on your goal, which popular site they would recommend you first join. (And do start with just one while getting your feet wet in this brave new world.)

• If your goal, for example, is to have a wide audience, then Twitter may be the best choice because of its “open to everyone” format. – If you only want to search for high school friends, then Facebook may be the best choice as you can confine your information to a very small circle and can search by name for those long-lost friends.
• If you want to make connections to help with a future job search, then LinkedIn, whose format is set up for such a process, may be the best choice for you.

3. Once you have chosen the site you’ll start on, do a Google search for information on effectively using that site. That’s right, before you ever sign up, read some blog posts that provide guidance on effectively using the site.

Now this isn’t a research project that serves as an excuse for postponing actually joining the site. Just learn a few of the basic “rules.” And if you do this step, you’ll be way ahead of most other people who start on social media without first doing any research.

And why not learn this on the site itself? Because most of these sites have inadequate information for newcomers or an abundance of information that overwhelms newcomers.

Plus, to encourage you to sign up, the site’s home page says something like: To join now just do this. And it’s only after you’ve provided your name, email, password, etc. that you’re left wondering “What do I do next?”

4. If you’re starting on a site that doesn’t require your real name, choose a username carefully. You want to think about seeing this name used all across cyberspace as lots of social media sites pull information from other social media sites (with your permission, of course).

You may initially think, for example, of choosing the name of your first book. But what happens when you write a second book? Or perhaps using the name of the book won’t work well for a site that is focused on a non-book arena.

Keep in mind that whatever you do on the Internet can live forever. So this choice of a username should be considered carefully and for continued use in the long-run. (Once you’ve established a good online reputation with one username you don’t want to start at square one again with a new username.)

5. Immediately post a photo of yourself – a headshot in which sunglasses and a baseball cap are not blocking people from totally seeing your eyes. (This does not have to be professional-photographer quality but should not be blurry.)

This photo should be one that will also work on social media sites you will join in the future because you want consistency across these sites. You want consistency to help people recognize and connect with you on more than one site. (The same for your username).

Keep in mind that the photos for Twitter are quite small. And even if you’re starting on Facebook, only include a headshot of yourself. Do not include other people and preferably not animals and other props.

By posting a good headshot of yourself you’re signaling that you’re interested in connecting with people – real people such as yourself – and you’ll be off to a good start on your first social media site.

Now that you’ve read these five tips for starting on your first social media site, what are you waiting for? Join the cyberspace social media community today.

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When most people think of customer service, long wait times on the phone, rude phone operators, and impersonal emails come to mind. Thanks to Twitter, however, customer service no longer has to have such negative connotations.

Twitter has redefined customer relations. Not only does Twitter enable companies to resolve customer problems very quickly, it also contributes to brand building efforts while reducing costs.
Why is Twitter an Ideal Platform for Providing Customer Service?

Twitter is lightning fast. Typically, calling customer service representatives involves frustrating wait times. On the other hand, Twitter allows staff to monitor issues and respond to them very quickly.

Twitter is very viral in nature. If other users notice that you are providing great customer service, they will take notice and share their experience, which will in turn bring you more attention and sales.

Providing customer service via Twitter is a lot less expensive than running a call center. And since you’re communications are limited to 140 characters, you are forced to keep it short, which usually means that it takes less time to solve problems.

Using Twitter to provide customer service is far more interesting for staff and customers than using telephone or email. Customer service reps will also feel more rewarded for their efforts because the immediate impact of their interventions will be visible on Twitter.

Monitor Your Reputation

In order to effectively provide customer service via Twitter, you must track all conversations that are going on about your brand. Find out what people are saying about you by tracking all relevant keywords, such as your company name, flagship product, nick name, etc. There are several tools out there you can use to track multiple keywords on one page such as Monitter. Tweetbeep sends you emails containing all mentions of your brand and links to each tweet.

Make Sure Your Customers Know Where to Find You

Your ability to provide great customer service on Twitter will be limited if your customers don’t even know you’re there. Make sure they know how to find you and follow you by advertising your Twitter presence on your company website, following others, and asking them to follow you back.

Respond Quickly to Customer Concerns and Complaints

When you’re monitoring your brand and find a customer complaint, respond as quickly as possible. Use @replies to ask the disgruntled customer how you can be of help. If it’s a complex issue, you can DM the customer and provide him with your phone number or email.

@replies are typically the best way to deal with customer complaints because they are public. Other customers dealing with similar issues can see your tweets and thus resolve their problems following the same advice, saving you time.

Connect with Followers on a Personal Level

Don’t just use Twitter to handle customer complaints. One of the major benefits of building a Twitter presence is the opportunity it gives you to improve your brand image and reputation. Give people a reason to follow what you have to say by retweeting successful resolutions to customer issues, giving updates about the company, and building a rapport with your followers.
Several companies out there, including Comcast, Southwest Airlines, and Ford, have successfully used Twitter to resolve customer service issues and build a stronger brand. Using Twitter to provide customer service is also far more cost-effective than telephone or email.

So there you have it. Twitter has transformed customer relations. Is your business ready to take the plunge?

Next, Discover Here More Tips On How To Make Money Online … And Then Watch This FREE 26 Step-By-Step VIDEO Course

First, let’s define the term Explosive Results for our usage.

A standard social media campaign helps spread the word about you and encourages other people to as well.

An explosive social media campaign has inherent viral exposure, inspires community driven communication, helps make the web a better place, and even brings joy to people, however fleeting.

When you share in social media, if your goal is just to get more people to see your links, you’re on the right track, but at the same time, you’re limiting your potential. You may think that getting explosive results from social media will take more time, energy and money, but this doesn’t have to be the case.

If you’re a business owner, you know that working harder doesn’t necessarily mean better results – what if you’re working hard on the wrong thing?

Sometimes the remedy is working smarter. Here are a few small changes you can make to your social media approach that can propel your social media results from lukewarm to smoking hot.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #1 – Hot Content

The cornerstone to any social media campaign is the content. If you get this component wrong, it doesn’t matter if all other elements are perfect. Study what’s going hot in your targeted topic and find a unique angle to fit your content into what people already like, without stealing their ideas.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #2 – Niched Network Nuances

The more tightly focused your submissions to social media sites are, the more likely they are to go viral, whether they are links you share by other people or your own. Here’s the logic.

People follow other people with similar interests. They’re on sites like Google, Yahoo, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg actively looking for new content. Put those two things together and you have a whirlwind of clicks happening. The only question is, will it be your link that gets clicked or passed over?

Having 5000 connections on Twitter or Facebook is useless if you are connected to people who don’t want your broadcasts, and you’re just as useless to them if you don’t want theirs. If my interest is in improving my existing business and you’re trying to get me to sell your network marketing products, it doesn’t matter how many times you ask me. If I’m not interested, your continued broadcasts will be ignored, or worse yet, blocked completely.

It’s about the perfect balance of quality AND quantity.

And if I’m not paying attention to you, I can’t and won’t spread your message. If you are in network marketing, why not go after people who love the network marketing concept but can’t seem to find the right company? That’s a perfect match, and can dramatically cut down your search for the right partners and prospects.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #3 – Simplify Sharing

It amazes me how many people miss this one.

You’ve got great content. You’ve got a massive, niched network.

Why feed them content that’s hard to share? Does that report have to be in PDF format? If so, does it have to be behind an opt-in wall if you’re spreading it among people who have Already opted in? Anyone connected to your business through its Facebook page, or your Twitter stream is also part of your opt-in list. Yes, it would be best if they were on your email newsletter list, but what faster way to get them there than to show them you don’t need to hold them prisoner there?

If your whitepaper is of such high value that you don’t Want it to spread, well, that’s something different. But if you’re sharing it so other people will spread it, make it easy for others to share.

• Send your su.pr link so all they have to do is click the Thumbs-Up button.
• Put a few sharing links on your page.
• Make it easy for them to Retweet.

The easier it is for them to share, the more likely they are to do it.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #4 – Consistency

And now we come to the area I fail at the most. It’s one of the things I know I need to do, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of how to brainstorm, create and distribute quality content consistency, and still give them best possible service and support to my customers and clients. I always err on serving people who have bought from me, figuring that next blog post can wait until tomorrow.

Then at some point, I noticed a decline in return traffic – people weren’t coming back because they’d already heard everything I had to say. The solution? I got help for my content creation process. The ideas are still mine, but I was able to barter help for research, transcribing, and editing. I am also able to get audio and video polished much less expensively than I thought, though I don’t always use this option due to time constraints.

The other thing that helped a lot was getting over my perfectionism complex. Release your content as soon as you can. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve left on the table from my old fear of the typo and grammar police. Not to mention the fact that I felt like I was leaving my audience hanging.

You subscribe to something because you want to get regular updates. If your favorite daily news show started coming on once a week, you’d probably switch channels. If you’re inconsistent without explanation, your audience numbers will drop and your network will fade.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #5 – Think Engagement

Measuring your results by page view alone is a thing of the past. When the web was mostly text and images, it made some sense that how many pages a visitor viewed at your site was a true measure of engagement.

Nowadays this isn’t the case. You want to look instead at how long people are at your site. The exception, of course, is when customers are coming to your site to buy, and the order processing system takes them off your page. But if people aren’t leaving your site because they’re ready to buy or subscribe, you truly must look at why they aren’t paying more attention to your content, and what changes you can make to get them to stay.

This is critically important in understanding which content will go viral naturally. What posts are people staying on your site to comment on? When do they take a few extra seconds to retweet? Are they watching your videos all the way through?

Once you know the content your audience is most connected to, and why, you can make more of it.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #6 – Three-Way Connection and Communication

That’s not a typo. Three-way communication is when the way you conduct yourself online is observed to a third party, who is also indirectly being addressed by your manner or statement. I wish I could credit the proper author of this, but I just don’t remember who it was who first observed that three people are positively affected by an act of kindness – the person giving, the person receiving, and the person observing.

One example of this in action is having a conversation with a peer about their new product on a social media site. Your friend is probably Dying to tell someone about the testimonial they just got, but don’t want to be rude or are too humble to brag. Ask them in front of your audience, and the conversation is exposed to your connections and re-exposed to theirs.

Connection is just as important – if communication is the conveyance of information, connection is doing so in a way that bonds. A several hundred closely bonded contacts will spread your message faster and farther than several thousand distant aquaintances.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #7 – What’s In It for All?

In the 80s, we all thought about what was in it for ourselves. In the 90s we decided to focus on others, hence, what’s in it for them. Today, we’re in the age of the win-win-win situation. Tell them how you benefit and tie it to their benefit.

Want someone to help you spread your stories? Make sure they know how important it is to you, why you came to them for help, and how they’ll be perceived for being the bearer of your good news.

You may look at the list above and feel that it’s intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Focus on doing just one of these things better each day for a few weeks, and before you know it, you’ll be doing them habitually. The results you’ll get will help these new habits stick.

Next, learn even more social media tactics for Explosive Results …
… and then watch this 26 Step-By-Step VIDEO course – yours FREE!