Strategising Twitter For Money Making and Business

During this time of writing, Twitter has reached millions and millions of users already enjoying fame as in the capacity of followers and wealth, via tweets-for-money programs and all other causes that you can imagine off. The tactics that I am going to share is not guerilla tactic. Therefore it is not an overnight tactic to grow followers, promote business and make money. If you are looking for an overnight tactic via Twitter, then this is not for you. Twitter is a spam-sensitive tool. Even if your intentions are genuine, using automated methods such as TwitterFeed will send your account shitlisted as soon as they smell something fishy. So be very careful of how you play with your account. Please note that by following this process, I assume you have already had;

1. A working blog in your disposal
2. Some affiliate accounts

Here are the step by step of strategising your Twitter for business and money making.

Decide your niche

This is based on two reasons;

1. Already had a blog? – Then just follow the niche that you have been talking about all this while.
2. Haven’t got a blog? Decide now – for your Twitter and your blog! Both elements must complement each other. You can’t talk about dogs in your future blog while your Twitter is talking about cats!

Register with Twitter

Of course, getting a Twitter account is vital for this. Head over to signup for Twitter. After signing up, pay attention to small details such as:

1. Profile picture – best with logo if you are a company/freelancer or your own portrait. Avoid putting pics which is not you or yours!
2. Name & location – company name or individual name with your present location.
3. Web – link your blog here, this is very important. Once your Twitter is populated, your followers tend to follow you back to your blog and this will of course generate free traffic.
4. Bio – a snippet with the purpose and intention of you using Twitter suffices. Add the keywords that is related to your niche here – sparingly.
5. Design – the wallpaper of your account. The more unique is the more better. If you are not good in image design, use your corporate identity colors. If you are individual, use your favorite colors, 3 at least. Avoid too much color and striking images that will distract people. Don’t make yourself look amateurish even if you are one. You want to keep them there not driving them out don’t you?

Make your Twitter Account Alive

So you got an account now but still vacant – no followers and no content. Both elements are important as they are the pull and push factors that will ensure your account is booming or not. Some might have a dilemma of choosing which to populate first – content or user?

I might go for content because having user without content is suicidal. Many will end up unfollowing you if that’s the case. Content can be fed in 3 ways;

1. Random – this scenario is when you read an interesting content somewhere as a user and you suddenly had an urge to share, so you find the social media button or ‘Retweet’ button that most reputable sites have nowadays, and share them via tweets. To be able to populate this you need to constantly read (other people’s) stuff and share them. This method is for non critical stuff such as leisure. If you are going to monetize this way, it is time consuming.
2. Semi-automation – armed with your blog (WordPress I assume), you equipped your post with TweetMeme’s Retweet or Twitter Tools as a content provider. These tools will offer the ability for other users to click on the blog post and share them in their own network. This is one way to monetise by writing a review to promote an affiliate product with keywords, ads (like Adsense) and texts cloaked with your affiliate links. Once the content is being shared and your readers click on your affiliate links, you make money.
3. Full-automation – This method involves RSS feeders to your Twitter account. The best you can get out there is Ping.FM and TwitterFeed. You only need one account to accommodate all your Twitter accounts! If you are occupied most of the time but wishes to have your Twitter account seen as ‘alive’, this is the option you could choose. Get a Feedburner account and burn your 1) blog RSS feed (for WordPress is usually http://www.yoursite.com/feed) or 2) Google Alerts. Copy the RSS from Google Alert generated from your keyword search and ‘burn’ it with Feedburner. Copy the burned RSS feed and past them in TwitterFeed. You can set how many tweets in hourly intervals of your choice. Set apart the intervals further to avoid being blacklisted as spammer.  Your Twitter account now is alive and kicking!

Finding Followers

You had contents and now you need to have an audience! Always remember that your niche keyword plays an important role on this part. You might want to add people who tally along with the niche that you are involved with. Sign up with ‘follower finder’ sites such as:

1. Hummingbird 2 – This is the best Twitter auto-follower ever. Cream of the crop! But is paid version. It auto-follows tweepers based on targetted keywords that you have specified. So once someone tweeted a message with the keyword on it, it grabs and add them in your list. It can auto-unfollow too for those who did not follow you back. This tool is regulated so that you add people not in masses so that it does not arouse suspicion of Twitter to ban you.
2. Twellow – This is a free service. It lists and categorise tweepers based on the niche they are in, say you are tweeting about real estate, so you should be listed in Real Estate. Adding people is easy. Register them for free and  key in the keyword in ‘search’ and follow them in masses. You can get instant followers with this but use is sparingly to avoid being blacklisted by twitter. You can add say a hundred people and repeat the same process in say 1-2 hours interval.
3. MyTweeple – This one is handy but quite complicated to use. Every potential tweeper that you want to follow comes with a personalise settings box where you can check their stats, check their last tweet and review them, or simply alerting other users if they are a spammer. Other typical function include unfollow and blocking.

There you go having a lively Twitter account with content and followers, and next you need to look pro and sound pro, sou you need productivity tools

Twitter Productivity Tools

These tools will be your best buddies to ensure smooth operation of your Twitter campaigns whether you are a content provider feeding informations or marketing products.

1. Tweetdeck – This is an Adobe Air software that you need to download, and register. Its free to use and all you need to do is to add in all Twitter accounts. The window is segmented so you can see incoming Tweets, DM’, mentions and many more. You can tweet to all your accounts simultaneously. This software is a sleek desktop tweet-publishing tool.
2. Hootsuite – It is an imitate of Tweetdeck. Just like TweetDeck it allows you to manage multiple accounts, organise your tweets and followers. You can schedule tweets and post them in other social media platform like Facebook, LinkedIn and Ping.FM. If you like TweeDeck, you will equally enjoy this one.
3. SocialOomph – Known as TweetLater in the past, this web version productivity tool is no stranger to the tweepers community. It is a one stop organiser for all your tweeting activities. It collaborates closely with StatusNet, another microblogging service. SocialOomph allows you to track tweets, schedule updates, auto DM-ing, manage your followers and linking to other social media networks such as Facebook, Ping.FM, StatusNet, RSS, blog and Google Buzz. It comes with a paid and free version. The paid version is awesomely powerful.

There you go. With those steps, you are ready at any moment to launch business and money making campaigns from your affiliates or 3rd party tweet-for-money/tweet advertising programs that i will describe further in my upcoming post.