“Hi, do you want to be my friend?” Thousands of people ask each other this on Twitter every day by following someone. The first thing most people do when one of these requests shows up in their inbox is check out the profile of the person asking. Because unscrupulous marketers find a way to spam any electronic program available these days, and abuse the flow of information by sending unsolicited requests through automated programs, you need to take the time to check out their profile, rather than blindly following everyone who follows you first.

When a person begins to follow you on Twitter, try to get a feel for them. Who are they? Do you share common interests? Is there something there that could turn them into a client at some point? These are all good questions, but you must remember- they are asking the same thing about you when you follow them.

Your Twitter profile is a snapshot of who you are. It’s a quick 5-10 second glimpse into your world so someone can get to know you better. When you create an account with Twitter, you can chose from one of the pre-made backgrounds or you can use one of the many free Twitter-related tools to custom design your own. If you are really serious about branding yourself or your business on Twitter, and have a few bucks to spare, you can opt to have your Twitter profile custom made by a professional, just like a website.

Here are a few tips to think about when designing your Twitter profile.

• Keep it neat – Too many items on the page, just like a website, distract the viewer’s eyes from the content of the profile. Keep it simple and say what you need to say.

• Keep it consistent – Make sure your profile, and the wording in it, is directly in line with your brand, marketing campaign and other areas of your business you want to emphasize.

• Keep it short – Remember, you only have a few seconds to show off what you have before someone makes a decision whether or not they want to follow you back or follow you at all. Keep your point short and sweet.

• Keep it useful – What do you offer? How can they contact you? Where can they find samples? Make sure your Twitter profile is as useful as possible. People don’t like to hunt for information.

• Keep it interesting – Give your viewers a reason to talk to you. Ask them a question, make a controversial statement, do something small to get them into a conversation with you so you can determine their needs.

• Include links to your websites or even a freebie they could download.

Twitter is a useful tool for any business, but without a proper profile, the business has no identity. Make sure you take the necessary time to design a useful, branded and interesting profile so when you ask someone to be your friend; they don’t have to think twice. There are many other ways to pump up your Twitter profile, but if you follow the six steps above, you will be on a good path to developing a healthy brand.

If you are using Twitter to market and promote your business, you’re likely concerned about how much time you spend on the website every day. It’s a bit of a catch-22 situation. In order to get the most out of your networking efforts, you need to carry on conversations with people and do more than just pop in long enough to make a comment and move on. However, if you spend all your time on Twitter working on building relationships, your business isn’t going to be around long. So what’s an entrepreneur to do?

No problem. There are several desktop applications you can utilize to communicate via Twitter without having to stay on the website all day. These handy little programs all work in similar ways, but some seem to be more popular than others.

One of the most popular Twitter applications is Tweet Deck. Tweet Deck offers the flexibility of using columns to break down your tweets into categories. You can set up groups of followers and label them, so only those particular tweets appear in that column. By default, Tweet Deck gives you three columns. One is for your Friends –  meaning all the people you follow. One is for your @replies and will show every message using your user name preceded by the @ sign. The third default column for Twitter is the Direct Messages column, which shows all of the private messages you both send and receive.

You can choose to add new columns simply by clicking on the icons found at the top of the Tweet Deck page. When you click on the group button, for example, a new column is created as well as a list of your followers. You simply check off which followers you want to add to your group, give the group a name and voila! You now have a column exclusively for tweets from your chosen followers.

You can also add search columns to Tweet Deck. With the search column, you type in your keyword and you’re off and running. Every time someone tweets with that keyword, it will show up in your column- whether you are following that person or not.

Tweet Deck is great for breaking your Twitter stream down into manageable chunks of tweets. When you are following hundreds or even thousands of people, it can be easy to miss the message sent out by your particular favorites. With the groups function, this is no longer an issue. It’s easy to add new people to your group with Tweet Deck as well. When you see a tweet you like, click at the bottom of the little window the tweet is in. This will take you to a temporary column holding their profile. At the bottom of their profile, you have the option to follow them and to add them to a group.

Tweet Deck minimizes to your system tray and sends up a little pop up window to the upper right hand corner of your screen when you receive new tweets. You can set it to make a little chirp to notify you or you can turn the sound off.

Tweet Deck is a nifty little desktop application to help you stay in touch with all your Tweeple, without having to spend your day on the website filtering through messages you don’t need or want to see.

As more and more people (to the tune of 2.5 million users a month) are using Twitter to develop social and business networks, more and more software geeks are getting in on the fun by developing analyzers and statistics tools, among other applications, to help show your status and to enhance your Twitter mojo. While some of these tools are just for fun, others are taken rather seriously by people who interpret the data to find new ways to build their following and influence.

Here’s the low down on a few of the more popular tools being used to analyze a person’s Twitter activity.

1. Tweet Later - Tweet Later lets you set up a tweet or a series of tweets and schedule them for broadcast later. While this flies in the face of the interactive nature of Twitter, many people find it convenient for times they want to announce something at times they will be unable to do so manually. Tweet Later will also let you automatically follow anyone who follows you and you can even automatically send a welcome message to your new followers.

2. Social Too – Social Too will also give you the option of automatically following people who follow you as well as send them a welcome. Social Too sends you an email each morning with a list of all the people who followed or un-followed you the previous day.

3. Tweet Beep is a service that sends you an alert whenever your chosen keywords are mentioned. You can use Tweet Beep to monitor when your name, your brand or your competition is mentioned. Tweet Beep can also keep an eye on how often your URL is mentioned, even if it’s used in a shortened URL.

4. URL Shortening Services – Because Twitter limits you to only 140 characters per tweet, posting a link to your website can be troublesome. There are several services, such as budurl.com or tinyurl.com that let you type in the URL of any site and will then shorten it into a clickable URL that uses fewer characters.

5. Tweet Stats is a hub for analysis of Twitter trends. Tweet Stats will show you a graph of your tweets per hour and per month. You can see which days you tweet the most in a Tweet timeline and you can also see your reply statistics.

6. Twitter Counter is a widget you can add to your profile, blog or Website. It provides the quantity of your followers by week, month and quarter. Twitter Counter will also predict the future number of your followers based on your average gains/losses.

7. Twitter Grader is a very popular stat tool on Twitter. Twitter Grader looks at the number of your followers, the power of your network, the frequency of your updates and the completeness of your profile and gives you a percentile score.

These are just a few of the services designed to help you use Twitter as productively as possible. While they can all provide you with useful information, its important to remember that they can all have incorrect data available to them as well. So ultimately, let the effectiveness of your Twitter time be determined by the interaction you have with others and the results you get with you business.

Paulwillshowu is now following you on Twitter. Does this name look rather fishy to you? It should. This is an actual user account on Twitter that was suspended due to strange activity, which probably means the person (or program) who set up this account was going to use it for the sole purpose of spamming the Twitter stream of flow.

Your user name on Twitter is the first impression people have of you. Even before your profile or any of your tweets are read, your name can be a big clue to who you are and what your purpose is. Many people decide to use their name such as JohnSmith as a username. Using your real name can let other people know a real human is trying to get to know them, rather than a program that is just trying to push a product on them. This isn’t always the case, of course, but your real name can be the perfect choice for your username.

A business is a little different on Twitter, but can follow the same rules. Comcast Customer Support, for instance, has ComcastCares as a username. Many businesses decide to use the business name as the sole account and the employee’s first name followed by an underscore to denote single users within that business. For instance, back to the Comcast example, you could have Jane_ComcastCares as an account for Jane.

Your user name can be a difficult thing to come up with, especially if you have a common name or don’t feel comfortable using your given name on the Internet. A simple, yet memorable, name is always best. Here are a few tips when deciding on a user name to employ for Twitter.

• Go solo – Chose a name that can be used across many platforms. Chances are, if it isn’t being used on one, it won’t be used on other sites either. This helps people looking for you find you easily. If they know your username on Twitter, then they can find you on LinkedIn as well. It’s a simple way to add to the branding of your business.

• Personal – If you have a common name, instead of using underscores or numbers, (which makes it look like you didn’t spend much thought on your name) try using initials or different combinations of your name.

• Length – The shorter the better. Remember, you only have 140 characters. When someone wants to reply to you, your name takes up a portion of those characters. If your name is 40 characters long, you’re limiting their ability to respond. Length also makes getting the spelling correct if someone is using a mobile device. Keep it short and sweet.

• Characters – Try to avoid the use of special characters such as $, _ and %, as well a numbers. These characters are typically used by bots trying to spam the system and people tend to shy away from incoming requests. This also makes replies difficult from a mobile phone. How long does it take you to spell out @$horty_179 on your key pad? Chances are many folks won’t want to waste their time even replying to your tweets.

Spend some quality time deciding on your username. Make it personal to you so it fits your style, but also make it unique and keep others in mind. Follow these few steps and your Twitter name will be created in no time. Then all that’s left to do is to get out there and start tweeting.

When you are building your Twitter network, one of the big things you need to consider is who to follow and who not to follow. Some people follow everyone who follows them, but if you are using Twitter to grow and promote your business, you will need to have a bit more strategy than that.

If you intend to connect to people who will purchase your products or services or enhance your business in some other way, indiscriminately following anyone who follows you isn’t going to cut the mustard. As with any other marketing strategy, you need to develop a targeted group of followers on Twitter if you expect to earn any money from them. No one’s business product or service appeals to everyone and if you try to market yours to the whole of the Twitterverse, you’re wasting your time and your effort.

So how do you decide who to follow and who not to follow? There are a few tricks you can use to choose your followers in a more selective manner in order to market your business most effectively.

• Look at a potential follower’s Twitter stream. Go to their home page and read their Twitter stream for a page or two. What do you see? Are they constantly promoting themselves? You may want to take a pass. Do they provide useful links to other people’s websites? They could be entertaining as well as helpful to your business. Do they talk about things pertaining to your expertise? Common interests are a definite plus when choosing a follower, so you may want to give those with similar interests a chance.

• Look at who is following them. Every profile page has a list of the person’s followers. You can click the link on the upper right hand side of the page that says followers or you can move through the grid of photos further down the page. Look for followers you have in common. This can be a good indicator of mutual interests. Look for high profile people in your field of interest. Many of the biggest names on Twitter only follow people who are relevant to their business. This doesn’t mean to imply it is a good decision, but it could lead to some influential or at least interesting people to follow.

• Follow the public Twit stream and look for people who are interesting, funny or helpful. Click on their username to get to their profile page and look around a bit to see if they sound interesting to you.

• Use Twitter search. At the bottom of the page is a clickable link to Twitter search. Once there, you can enter in a key word or phrase and click search. You will find all the recent replies using the term. If you use a relevant key word, this can be an excellent way of finding followers interested in your business.

• Try an off-site service like Twitter Grader. Twitter Grader will rank the reach and authority of your Twitter username based on how many people you follow, how many follow you and how many updates you have made.

While this is interesting information, the truly useful feature is the list of suggested followers Twitter Grader will provide to you. Based on common interests and common followers, you will find suggestions of people in your area of expertise. Now, here’s the trick: it may not be the most useful to you to simply follow other people in your industry; although you can network that way quite productively. However, you may just want to go to those suggested profiles and see who THEY are following and who is following them.

While none of these methods of finding followers on Twitter is fool proof or offers any guarantee your business will increase, they are all great ways to find some interesting new people to meet and potentially do business with in the future.

Networking is one of the biggest buzzwords in the business world these days and with good reason. If you aren’t actively networking, you aren’t making those connections to your next business venture, your next client, and your next big (or small) windfall.

What is networking?

So what exactly is networking and how do you do it? You can find thousands of seminars, programs, masterminds, insider’s groups and a hundred other “guru names” that will teach you all about networking for a super low, one time payment of only $$ (insert big buck amount here!)

I’m going to let you in a little secret: Networking is simply a matter of getting out there and letting people get to know who you are. That’s it. All there is to networking is to meet the people. You really don’t need to wait for some super-exclusive big name expert to teach you how to network before you begin.

You learned it all in kindergarten: Play nice, share and make new friends.

Based on its exponential growth, Twitter is the number one place to get out and network. All you need to do is create a Twitter account and start using it. Use your business name or your real name for your Twitter username and upload a real picture of yourself. Plug in the link to your site or blog and create a quick little bio that tells folks who you are and what you do.

Next, post a few tweets saying hello. Offer up a pearl or two of wisdom relating to your expertise. Then, start following people. Don’t know who to follow? Use Twitter search (the link is at the bottom of your main page) and type in a keyword or two describing the topics you’re interested in. For business, it’s often easiest to begin by following people in your own field. Type in your industry and step back while you watch the results start pouring in. Click on the usernames you see and start checking people out until you find some you like, then follow those people and start interacting.

Do NOT go on Twitter and start posting link after link about your business.

Instead, share some of the insight and wisdom you have about your business. Good, juicy, useful information. Just give it away! Heck, it’s only 140 characters, you can spring for it. Share links to great stuff you find on the web. Cut and paste someone else’s post with “RT” in front of it. This is called a Retweet and it’s an easy way to share and make new friends. We all love to be re-tweeted because it makes us feel important and special.

Yes, there are all kinds of tips and tricks to using Twitter (and other networking sites) effectively for marketing your business. A lot of the teleseminars, books and programs are worth every penny you pay for them, some even more. However, you don’t need even one of them to get started using Twitter to network for your business.

If you have been on Twitter for any length of time, you have noticed people often use a # symbol at the end of their messages. This is known as a hashtag. Hashtags are commonly used as a symbol to send out messages pertaining to a certain event. These symbols were actually made popular during the San Diego fires in 2007 as a way to group news messages.

Today, just about any subject you can think of uses hashtags in order to follow a particular stream of tweeted data. They are used for promotions and contests, as well as groups of people communicating together. One common hashtag seen on Twitter is #gno, which is Girls Night Out. This group is growing every week and you can join in the fun simply by searching Twitter for #gno.

Your business can also utilize this nifty symbol in order to announce new products or projects, keep customers informed of current events going on throughout your company. You can even build your business by providing clients with a useful way to keep track of you and your brand.

By grouping messages together and providing a common thread to search upon, you and your customers will be able to track any announcements put out by your business on Twitter with ease. Hashtags also force you to keep certain key words (such as #SEO or other searchable keywords) your business might be working to develop as optimized search terms in your text. Since all Twitter messages can be indexed by Google, the use of these key words will also help your business in developing their search engine rankings.

Here are a few things to remember when creating hashtags for Twitter.

Availability – Check places like www.hashtags.org to see if the hashtag you want is already in use. If your tem is available, make sure you are following @hashtags and just input the hashtag you wish to use preceded by the # mark, of course.

Relevancy – Make sure your hashtag is relevant to what you are trying to track. For instance, do not use #newyork if you are trying to sell watches in the New York area. Use something a little more specific to your business such as #FossilNY.

Memorable – Keep your hashtags memorable so customers can find them easily. Large acronyms and heavy abbreviations detract from keyword usage and they are difficult to remember. Remember, the longer your hashtag, the fewer characters you will have to use in your actual text. Keep it short, simple and to the point.

Branding – Use your hashtags to help develop a business brand. By using your tags to enhance your search engine optimization terms, your brand will be more visible to customers searching for what you offer. Remember to keep your hashtag in line with your business and business goals.

As you can see, hashtags are a great way to help build your business. Give them a shot and let your customers know you are using them too. The easiest hashtag to use is your business name. If you tell your customers to search for your hashtag they are guaranteed to have the most up-to-date information about what is going on with your business. Happy hashtagging!

Twitter is a social networking tool, built to, well…socialize and network with others. Many businesses have caught on to this nifty network marketing tool. Since then Twitter has exploded as an easy to use, online platform that can be expanded to help develop branding, promote products, and keep clients in sync with what is happening on the forefront of your business.

There are a few different rules businesses must follow when networking on Twitter, but for the most part, things work the same as they do for an individual user. Here are a few things to think about when using Twitter as a business tool.

• Update your profile – Keep your profile updated and current with any new developments or projects currently in the works. This helps your customers understand where you are going as a business and it also makes them aware of any changes you have planned.

• Stay professional – While it may be fun to get into a heated debate over who will win the Kentucky Derby, keep your tweeting business oriented. It is not a bad thing to express your opinion every once in a while, but do make sure that it falls directly in line with the mission statement and operating procedures of the company under whose name you are tweeting. If you are a sole proprietor, obviously you have the decision making power here, but if you are in business with others, develop a policy for how individuals will tweet.

• Be personal – People like to know they are talking with actual people. In this age where digital voices prompting our actions are standard, people find great delight in the ability to communicate with intelligent human people who can actually listen and respond rather than deal with canned impersonal messages that don’t meet their individual needs and desires.

• Give to get – Do not, I repeat, do not, just spam your followers with announcements of new products or websites for them to look at. Converse with them, answer their questions and ask them exactly what they are looking for. Once again, be human and socialize with them. It is ok to interact with your customer online the same way you interact in a face to face meeting, just keep it professional.

• Use tracking devices – Implement the use of hashtags and other tracking devices as searchable references for your customers. This makes it easy for them to follow you and your business developments. The easier it is to follow you and what you are doing, the better chance you have they will actually do it. Let your customers know when you have initiated a new search term and what those terms mean to them. Your business is about helping the customer get to your product as easy as possible. Hashtags are a great tool to help this happen.

• Make their life easy – While conversing with your prospects, make sure to ask if there is anything they believe your business can do to improve – and then listen. Customer feedback is one of the most valuable tools to a business. What better way to get feedback than online when you are already in conversation with them? You can develop customer loyalty simply through listening to and responding to their opinions.

The biggest difference between a business account and a personal account on Twitter is the language and posture you present while socializing. Don’t be a machine, check your replies and messages, respond to questions and be human. Follow these simple rules and your business will develop a new social networking tool that can be used to reach thousands more clients in no time.

Twitter profiles are a window into the life and business of each user. Without a proper and effective profile, jobs can be lost, money can be washed down the drain and clients can be swayed to another profile that provides more of what they are looking for. A Twitter profile is just like a marketing campaign for a company. A proper Twitter profile should effectively provide a snapshot of your brand.

Twitter is just another tool to implement your marketing strategy on the web. As such, the same branding rules apply to your Twitter profile. Your profile does not just include the wording on your Twitter account, but also the background on your Twitter page. There are applications you can use to develop free backgrounds for your Twitter account if you are on a budget, but in order to properly brand yourself, spend the extra money and develop a personal background the same way you would for a website. It will pay dividends in the end.

Here are a few tips to follow when creating your profile on Twitter to help develop your brand.

• Be Consistent – Keep your message steady. If your business is about making the best athletic shoes on the market, make sure your Twitter profile falls right in line with it. As enticing as it might be to throw up a few pictures of you fishing with some friends, keep your message relevant.

• Add Pictures – Many people want to see actual pictures of who they are talking to, not avatars or logos. As tempting as it might be to put your company logo up as your profile picture, save your logo for your background and put a picture of you on the profile. This will let people know they are talking to a real person and help your marketing efforts tremendously.

• Frequently Update – When you have something new, make sure you update your profile. This lets people know your business is changing and growing. Your brand depends on it. Remember to keep it a consistent message, but also to keep it filled with fresh content.

• Give Readily Available Contact Information – When branding yourself or your business on Twitter, one of the most important things is to make sure people know how to get in touch with you. Be sure to include applicable links to your website or any other methods of contact you might have such as email and phone. Specify how you prefer people reach you and list your business hours, if you use them.

• Stick with Simplicity – While you only have 140 characters to develop your profile, treat it as though it were SEO copy. You only have a few seconds to get your brand across before the potential client becomes bored and goes elsewhere, so be brief and chose your words wisely.

• Value Time – Take your time. Developing your brand on a new social media tool can be exciting and a lot of fun, but don’t let the excitement go to your head. Take your time and if you feel yourself getting frustrated, take a 5-minute break and go grab some coffee or a soda. If you take your time, you will be able to get out exactly what you want to say. You won’t need to go back and change your message 10 minutes after you have published it because you left something out or didn’t get your point across.

Branding your business took time, possibly even months. Give your Twitter profile the same attention you did to the initial branding efforts and it will pay off. Follow these steps and you will have a good understanding of how to use your Twitter profile to brand your business properly and effectively.

If you’ve been around the social media circuit for any time, you know Twitter is the phenomenal micro-blogging platform revolutionizing the way people network and market their business. Twitter gains somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 new users every month. The recently elected American President, Barak Obama, made Twitter a household name as the political pundits across the country marveled at the way his campaign team used the tool to reach millions of American’s with Obama’s message.

For all the people using Twitter effectively, there are also huge numbers of people who either don’t make good use of it at all or who try to overpower the platform and its users with unwanted spam.

Here are three of the best business practices for using Twitter effectively:

1.     Use a complete profile. Twitter gives every user a profile page. Make the most of this space by uploading an actual photograph of yourself, providing your real name in your biography and offering information about and links to your website or blog.

People look at your profile page to decide if they want to follow your updates. They may also take a look when you post a message particularly relevant to them. When they get there, make sure you give them what they need to make an informed decision about your business. It may be the only shot you get.

2.     Interact. Don’t just broadcast. Twitter is a social networking tool with the operative word being social. Don’t just blast your site information or the link to your sales page every time you use Twitter. Talk to people. Ask them what they do and how you can help them or ask about their family members or interests.

Twitter is great for conversations kept open enough for everyone to join in. General talk about a specific industry, process or training is a great way to get others involved in a discussion. If you engage in banter and chat on Twitter every time you use it, you may even find it a bit tough keeping up with all the followers you gain.

3.     Share your expertise. The people with the highest rankings on Twitter are the ones who aren’t afraid to give away some of their best stuff.

Share tidbits of real information related to your area of expertise. If you’re a marketer, don’t just push products. Instead offer tips on how to build your list or ways to help your affiliates. If you’re a writer, offer tips on how to write an effective headline or what to say in an email campaign. Share enough of your knowledge to let people know you’re the real deal. It’s the fastest way to draw them to your website where you can sell then sell your products.
If you consistently follow these three business practices while interacting on Twitter, you are all but guaranteed to grow your business. Twitter is really all about interaction and relationships are all about give and take and showing respect. Using good business sense and common courtesy in your Twitter affairs will gain you not only followers and clients, but respect for your business as well.