Twitter Marketing Tools and Twitter Strategies to Boost Business Results

Here's why.

You see, the amount of information you can add to your Twitter profile is limited. For example, a Twitter bio only allows 160 characters max. Make no mistake that its important to fill out the profile information. This will help you build credibility and gain more followers. After all, part of your Twitter business strategy should be to gain targeted followers. In other words potential customers and industry counterparts to network with.

An incomplete profile will decrease the probability someone will follow you simply because they'll question your legitimacy. So filling out your profile is a must to succeed on Twitter. So even your profile can be considered a business Twitter tool. But the amount of information allowed is limited.

You'll be glad to know using a customized Twitter background allows you to include additional information about yourself, company, products, and brands.

Not only that but a professional Twitter background will radiate professionalism, increase credibility and trust, and let's you stand out from the crowd. Above all, you'll capture attention and make a memorable first impression. This dramatically increases the probability that you'll find targeted Twitter followers.

Some important aspects of your professional Twitter background to include, where appropriate, are a larger profile picture of yourself, a company and or brand logo, tag lines, product images, email address, phone numbers, and all of your website addresses (you can only include one in the Twitter profile).

In fact, include all social media (Web 2.0) contact information you use with your Internet marketing strategy. You'll see smart Twitter users include things like their URLs for Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, MySpace, Skype, YouTube, Flickr, and Blogs. There's too many too mention but you get the idea.

And yes there's more to social media than Twitter. Integrating at least a few Web 2.0 makes sound business practice. So be sure to include them on your custom Twitter background.

If you're even moderately experienced at graphic design then creating a custom Twitter background is a small challenge.

But if you lack the skills or time to design your own professional Twitter background then go ahead and hire a pro to do it for you. Some of the best can be hired to do the job for less than $50 to $100.

IMPORTANT NOTE: In September 2010 Twitter released a new user interface that takes up a wider area of space. As a result there's less room to brand yourself with a Twitter background.

The old Twitter interface allowed at least 120 pixes (or more depending on screen resolution) of space on the left had side of the screen to utilize.

With the new Twitter that has been diminished to only 41 pixels.

I feel this has decreased the value of custom Twitter background. But strongly believe they are still important because even that small space can be used to brand your company. Overall, they're a must for any serious business.

Just to clarify here's an example of the Twitter background I used on the previous version of Twitter:



It's designed for a screen resolution of 1024x768 and gives you about 120 pixels of space on the left hand side of the screen to add information.

Of course it's not suited to for the "New Twitter". Here's what it looks like now:



As you can see the new Twitter interface obscures the Twitter background's branding efforts. I'll be creating a new background with further discussion and details to help you out in the near future and will update this lens then.

For now here's a couple of blog posts I found that cover the topic well...

What Size Should the New Twitter Background Be?

New Twitter and Your Brnaded Twitter Background Dimensions

With the old Twitter if you wanted to include more information on your background then you could design for a 1280x800 resolution. This give's you about 250 pixels of space on the left side. The thing is people with lower screen resolutions will not see all the information on your Twitter background. It will be underneath the main twitter timeline (area showing messages and tweets).

According to a survey by www.w3schools.com done January 2010 36% of screen resolutions are 1024x768 and 57% or more use resolutions higher than that. So that adds up to 93%.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_resolution_higher.asp

I notice most professional Twitter backgrounds (designed for the old Twitter) are using a design for a resolution of 1280x800. Extropolating from the W3schools stats it's safe to conclude a design for that screen resolution limits about 40% of users from seeing all of the background. The final decision is up to you and what strategy you choose for your business.

You'll first want to find people to follow on Twitter. And the best strategy is to find those in your target market.

Once you start following people some will follow you back automatically (many use services and tools that do that for them). And once you start participating in conversations you'll catch the attention of others and they'll follow you back too. Of course not all will follow you back you but that's ok.

To clarify. the first step in this Twitter Strategy is to gain targeted followers by following them first, and most eventually follow you back. And once following you back they'll be sent all of your tweets (posts).

Two of the most common manual (and tedious) ways of following targeted Twitter users include:

1. Searching directly on Twitter using Twitter search (with keywords your target market would use in their tweets)

2. Visiting other Twitter users list of followers. Then visit the profile page of each of their followers one by one and choosing who you'll follow. This is very tedious and time consuming.

Luckily several excellent Twitter Tools are available that make following targeted Twitter users easier and leverages your time.

First up is Twellow

Twellow is an excellent directory of Twitter users categorized by keywords on their Twitter profile page (specifically the bio). There's no need to add yourself, but you can if you have a Twitter account and aren't listed yet. You see, Twellow automatically reads feeds it accesses from Twitter. From these feeds it picks out keywords found your Twitter bio and places you into categories in the Twellow directory.

Twitter Strategy: Be sure to include targeted keywords related to your business in your Twitter bio. This way you'll be categorized properly in Twellow.

To find followers on Twellow use a targeted search term related to your business or just click one of the directory categories. You'll then see a list of people you can follow.

I find Twellow easy to use and like that you can actually include links to other social sites you are a part of like Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Digg, and many more.

Twellohood

Twellowhood is a part of Twellow that lists Twitter users based on their geographical location. You can click on the Twellowhood link on the Twellow site to get to it. As of this writing only Canadian and U.S. Twitter users are listed but users from other countries should be added soon.

So if your business services a specific geographical area then following people this way is a smart strategy to use with Twitter.

It seems Twellowhood searches the location section of a users Twitter profile. And not everyone lists their location. So not everyone can be found in this way. But you'll definitely find some.

Second up is Twollow

Twollow is a simple tool that let's you automatically follow people whose tweets contain keywords that you specify. You can login to Twollow.com using your Twitter username and password. It's free for up to 5 keywords. For a fee you can upgrade and add more keywords. This Twitter tool will monitor Twitter and whenever someone mentions your targeted keyword it automatically follows them for you.

Tip be sure to use specific keywords (really I mean keyphrases) related to your business. Keyphrases should be at least 2 words, but I recommend 3. This will effectively target your market.

And don't set this tool to auto-follow large numbers of people before you've made anywhere from 50-100 tweets and have several hundred followers already. Otherwise, Twitter may consider you a spammer and ban your account. When Twitter sees an account that is not participating in conversations (tweeting) yet gaining followers quickly it sounds the alarm bells.

Similar services to Twollow are out there. Some will target followers while others don't. Twollow is great for targeting people you'll follow. But watch out for the untargeted Twitter tools that simply just follow anyone. An example is Tweepme.com

Beware of Tweepme.com

Tweepme.com launched when I just started using Twitter. I was excited and thought this would be an easy way to get lots of followers fast! So I tried out this Twitter Tool with the best of intentions.

Within a few days I gained over 500 new Twitter followers!

The thing is these followers were untargeted (poor quality prospects). Even worse mass following for the sake of gaining followers is a violation of Twitter's terms of service and can result in your account getting banned.

To make a long story short, I began talking about my results on Twitter. Luckily, I follow @pageoneresults. He informed me about the negative implications of tools like TweepMe. After learning Twitter's policy on mass untargeted following and the realization that the followings were poor quality prospects. I immediately stopped using that service.

Following back on Twitter show's you're courteous and have good manners (good for trust and credibility).

Plus it keeps your list of prospects (followers) from unfollowing you (as proven by a little experiment published in Advanced Twitter Marketing).

Lets start with...

It's Good Manners and Good for Credibility to Follow Back on Twitter

The most important reason to follow someone back is common courtesy. This helps nurture trust and credibility. Now if you are a high profile business or celebrity that gets thousands of followers you may decide not to follow everyone back. That's ok. The bottom line is its your decision based on your Twitter strategy whether or not you'll follow everyone back or not.

Generally speaking I recommend following almost everyone back. Using the "follow targeted prospects first" strategy ensures the majority of those who choose to follow you will be interested prospects. This strategy, of following targeted Twitter users first, to ultimately attract targeted followers, is different from businesses with Twitter accounts that follow anyone. In fact, this is what a lot of spammers do and you don't want to get involved with that.

Problem is untargeted individuals will slip through the cracks (including spammers). The only way to tell if they're spammers or untargeted is to check out each of their profiles one at a time. And that is a big time consumer. For the time being I haven't figured out a time effeicient way to filter out those I don't want to follow. I'll let you know when I find a way. So for now the strategy is to just follow everyone back.

Prospect / Customer Retention - Following Back Keeps Them Following You

Another reason to follow back everyone that follows you is that it keeps them following you (as proven by a little experiment published in Advanced Twitter Marketing). If you don't follow back there's an increased chance that they'll unfollow you, your list of targeted followers will drop, sending private direct messages won't be possible, and those ex-followers won't see your tweets anymore.

And if you started out as recommended, following your target audience, then you may be losing valuable prospects and networking opportunities.

Manually Following Back on Twitter is Time Inefficient

Manually following everyone back that follows you first is very tedious and time consuming especially if you're getting a lot of followers each day. This is done manually in Twitter by clicking on your list of followers, going down the list, visiting each person's Twitter profile page, and clicking follow if they're your target market.

This takes up a lot of valuable time. Heck, even if you don't visiting each profile page and only click the follow button next to each follower its a time drain. Twitter tools like Twitter Karma do help to follow everyone back but there is still some manual work involved.

So lets discuss how...

Twitter Karma Helps You Follow Back

Twitter Karma is a tool where you enter your Twitter name and password. After a few minutes it'll show you a list of people you follow, those who follow you, and follows that are mutual between you and another. There's a lot you can do to manage your followers and followings. For the purpose of this section we'll focus on the people who follow you.

There is a drop down menu where Twitter Karma will show you those who follow you but who you don't follow back by selecting the "Only Followers" option. Once you've done that and the page loads scroll to the bottom and click "check all". Finally you simply click the "bulk follow" button and that's it.

Beware: If you're following someone because you want to keep up with their tweets but they're not following you back, then you won't get their messages anymore.

Using Twitter Karma for bulk following could take anywhere from five to ten minutes of your time.

Tweepler

Tweepler is an easy way of processing your New Twitter Followers. View a list of New Followers and classify them in one of two "Buckets" Follow (meaning you wish to follow them back) and Ignore (meaning you don't wish to follow them and want to archive them out of the way, reducing clutter).

Save Time: What I like about this tool is you can view detailed stats for new followers, eliminating the need to go to each individual profile. This speeds up the decision process on whether or not you want to follow back or not.

Other Twitter tools that are similar to Tweepler.com are Tweetsum and FriendorFollow.

Mr Tweet

Mr Tweet will give you a list of 200 that follow you but you don't follow back (even if there's more than 200). There's no bulk follow feature either. For these reasons I prefer Twitter Karma and Tweepler.

The Follow Back Tools Mentioned Still Involve Time

The problem is the tools mentioned so far still involve some sacarfice of your time. And time is valuable.

SocialToo

Truthfully, I prefer (and use) a twitter tool / service that I learned about through the Advanced Twitter Marketing System. It's called SocialToo. This service will make sure whenever someone follows you that you auto-follow them back with zero time or effort on your part.

Doug Champigny, teaches you exactly how to use it in the Advanced Twitter Marketing System.

And by the way after purchasing this system, my Twitter Strategy has dramatically changed and improved. Its shown me how to cut my time on Twitter down to minutes instead of hours, yet achieve sensational results.

TweetLater

TweetLater is an incredible Twitter tool that automates a lot for you including auto-following those that follow you first. But that's just the tip of the iceburg. Truth is you can do so much that a whole book can be written on this tool alone. This Twitter tool will save you time and increase your productivity. Go ahead and check it out and be sure to try it out for free.

Avoid Auto-Direct Messages to new Followers

Note: Without getting into the details, I'd recommend avoiding using the auto-direct message to new followers feature available on TweetLater (or on any Twitter Tool that offers it). Mainly because (among other reasons) auto-DM abuse has rendered it ineffective in most instances. I also feel auto-DMing a new follower does more harm than good for your credibility and trust building.

Twitter can be used for competitive research by seeing what people are saying about your products, services, and industry. And those of your business competitors too. You could use this as part of your SWOT analysis (determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).

All you have to do is come up with a list of keywords/keyphrases to search for on Twitter. Examples include your business name, competing business names, product and brand names (your's and your competitors), industry specific terms, etc.

Once you have your list of keyphrases you could do a search for them on Twitter. Of course I don't recommend using Twitter's search function. If you did then only one keyphrase could be searched at a time. This is tedious and time consuming. Luckily, several Twitter tools are available to make the process more efficient.

TweetGrid and TwitPipe are examples of Twitter tools that can be used for competitive research (although they can be used for more than this like getting the latest news or seeing what people are saying to and about eachother).

TwitPipe

TwitPipe is simple to use. On the website there's 3 columns and you can put a different keyphrase in each. If there's a lot of tweets containing the keyphrases (which is usually the case), then the tweets will fill the columns quickly and move down making them difficult to read. There's a pause button on the upper right of this page you can use to stop everything so you can read it.

TweetGrid

TweetGrid is more powerful than TwitPipe mainly because you can search up to nine keyphrases at once. Once you head over to TweetGrid you'll be able to click on different "grids" of varying sizes such as 1x1, 1x2, 1x3, etc. The largest is 3x3 which gives you a maximum of nine keyphrases to search at one time.

And I'm sure there's plenty of other tools that are similar.

If you're trying to run a business you know that time management is important. So taking care of your Twitter tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible is important.

You'll be glad to know that Twitter desktop tools (also called Twitter desktop clients) are available to help businesses manage marketing communications on Twitter. Best of all they reduce the time you'd require if you sent your tweets right from Twitter's site.

Dozens of desktop Twitter tools are available that make great additions to your Twitter strategy. But what ones are the best?

Personally, I've used TweetDeck for a while and think it's just great.

I've heard good things about Seesmic desktop and have used that for seven months. It's an excellent tool.

From experience I'd say each of these desktop Twitter clients are excellent. They even allow you to group people you follow as you see fit. Making it easy to manage your Twitter business communications, especially if you're following thousands of users.

Here's a list of a few other Twitter desktop tools (I've never used them) that you can investigate if you like. And if you do please let me know what you think of them by commenting at the end of this lens.

DestroyTwitter
Spaz
Snitter
TweetR
Twhirl
Twitterific - for Macs

Be sure to let me know you've checked out this lens by following me on Twitter and sending me a message. Here's my Twitter account....

@AJ2000 - my web design and Internet marketing Twitter account.

Oneforty.com is the most comprehensive directory of Twitter tools I've seen. As mentioned earlier in this lens There's thousands of applications and services for Twitter -- way too many to keep track of! Oneforty is a community based website where you can find, rate, collect, share, and see what other's think of various Twitter tools.

At this point, I've seen so many Twitter tools, the majority
of which I would never recommend to anyone. But
I have to admit the FREE tool released March 25,
is the most POWERFUL I've ever seen.

Its called Tweet Traffic Rush

Not only does it help build your Twitter following but it drives
tons of TARGETED TRAFFIC to your sites. Please understand,
it only takes a few minutes to set up (just copy and paste some
code onto your web site). One thing I want to stress is that it will
generate long term traffic, quite possibly, for years to come.

See for yourself and start building your traffic
and Twitter following today!