Social Networking With Twitter by G T Bulmer

I've been a member of the Twitter social networking site for several weeks now and the experience keeps getting better and better!

© GT Bulmer
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Social networking has become such a vital part of every home based web biz marketer's game plan and Twitter has developed into a leading force in social networking.

The biggest benefit of social networking is that it is free; you can reach thousands of prospects easily and economically. The challenge of social networking is that you have to spend time developing your presence on a social media site and time developing relationships of trust.

Twitter definitely simplifies the process. Sign-up and set-up take a matter of minutes. Then all you do is begin posting your "tweets" in 140 characters or less. You can post as often as you like, but the secret to social networking success is to offer info, insight and value, not just blatant promos or ads for your products and services.

You will find that once you become active in posting tweets, Twitter members will automatically start following you. And that is the object of social networking; to build a list of followers.

There are a few techniques to build your followers faster. One way is to follow other members. It's easy to do on Twitter - just a click of the button - and most members you follow will follow you back.

As your list of followers grows, it becomes even more important to create a balance between informative tweets and promotional tweets.

Also, it helps to keep your tweets relative to your basic theme. For example, I try to keep the majority of my gtbulmer tweets focused on the theme of business and online marketing. I try to keep the majority of my ThinkGreen4Life tweets focused on the theme of the environment and going green.

If your tweets depart too far afield of the theme that attracted your followers, some will un-follow you, and on Twitter, it's just as easy to un-follow as it is to follow.

Another way to help build your followers is to "re-tweet" the posts of other members. Basically, you click the "reply" icon to paste their twitter ID into your comment field; you type in the letters "RT" (meaning re-tweet), then copy and paste the portion of their text that you want to re-tweet. After making sure it is 140 characters or less, you then click the "update" button to post the re-tweet.

When you re-tweet the comments of other members, they appreciate it and will likely pay more attention to your tweets. Also, they might return the favour and re-tweet some of your tweets. There is a HUGE advantage to this: when they re-tweet your tweets, their ENTIRE list of followers could potentially see your messages. There are two key benefits to this:

- First, you instantly multiply your exposure to members you might otherwise never reach.

- Second, when one member re-tweets another, many of their followers begin following the member who has just been re-tweeted.

With that in mind, I actively watch for tweets that I think my followers will be interested in, then re-tweet those tweets. It's one more way I can provide service and value to members of my growing social network on Twitter.

After just a few weeks as a member of Twitter, I have developed a nice following and I am following many informative and inspirational members. Not only have I been learning a great deal on a variety of topics, but I've been finding some great links to share with friends on other social networking sites.

If you are looking to build your home based web biz or advance any form of business or Internet Marketing that you may be involved in, I recommend you consider the value of Social Networking with Twitter.


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