Twitter has been a powerful asset for my business!  It's one of those things that has really fit me. I'm not really a sociable person in real life but it really fits me well and it's been a huge asset for my business. I got really into it last November or December. I've a list here of things right off the top of my head that I noticed that people do wrong and that people should be doing and things that I do that makes twitter work.

1. Picture: Your picture (the avatar picture) in almost all cases should be a picture of you. You don't have to have a portrait quality picture, that's not really necessary. What's really important is it's a picture of you.

2. Username: In almost all cases, your username needs to be your first and last names. You need to have your name viewable. If you want to use your business name, go ahead but then also include your real name so that when they click on your avatar, they will see your real name. I see too many businesses on Twitter, people trying to run an online business and don't tell their names - that is crazy! You must  have your name up there. I just use Steve Weber, that's my username and a lot of marketers, that's just what they use. If you have a choice (unless you have a really good reason not to), use your name as your username. You can change usernames any time you like.

3. Tweets: 90 to 95% of the "tweets" need to be about good content. Say something worthwhile! It doesn't have to be about your niche, your area; it can just be about life in general or current events. Post a topic worth reading and is interesting enough to catch people's attention. Point people to links on your site or your blog, to cool links that you found on the Internet. Direct people into that kind of content, that's relative to either your specific niche or to a lot of people who are into Internet and computer because those are the ones in general who are always in Twitter. A lot of people are interested in all kinds, all things in the Internet. About 95% of the time, (that sounds like a lot, but really you need to do that) you are sending them content and not some kind of offer to buy something.

4. Blog: A lot of times, I create blog posts that have really good content in them; but also I have an offer on that page. So it's not like I'm sending them right to a sales page. I send them to a blog post that has really good information and say, "By the way, here is a link to an offer or here's a link to a free download." Most of the time I have a video on that page and they see that I sent them to my page with really good content or to somebody else's really good content. You just can't put up every other tweet to be a link to a sales page. You just can't do that. That just totally defeats your purpose.

5. Be Consistent: If you are not consistent, then don't bother. Don't waste your time. If you're going to get on Twitter once or twice a week, just forget it. You are just wasting the time that you're on twitter. If you want to make twitter work as a marketing tool, you have to get on it every single day. Sure, on an emergency or something that came up that you cannot get on to your computer, that happens, but if Twitter is going to work as a marketing tool for you, you have to login and check your account every single day. Not all day! You don't have to be on there every hour, every day. However, you need to be on there to check the replies and check your direct messages and respond back to people, and communicate with people and put some tweets up and keep your self relevant, keep your account moving forward and keep your account out there in front of people. You just have to do it. If you can't do that, it may not be for you. You don't have to use Twitter as a marketing tool. If you can't be relatively consistent in using Twitter then don't waste your time but it is a very powerful tool. If you choose to do that, if it fits you, then go for it. If it doesn't, then don't waste your time by once or twice a week getting on there.

6. Always Be Present. Always reply; always check your direct messages (DMs) throughout the day. Every time you get on twitter, you should always check your DMs and always check your replies. I highly suggest you to use Tweetdeck; it makes this whole process of keeping up with your DMs and your replies easier. If you just use the web interface for twitter, it's too much work trying to keep up with all that stuff. But Tweetdeck makes it a whole lot easier because it keeps track of that stuff right on the screen for you.

7. Be Social. If people re-tweet you, if they have a little re-tweet right in front of your tweet, re-tweet it to their followers. Always thank them, or say something nice to them, reply or add them to your follow Friday list --- something to acknowledge them. Be social, be nice, recognize and appreciate them. Check your daily feed in twitter, look at some people and try to follow people. Whenever you are on twitter, try to always respond to somebody, you have to be social. You will be amazed at the connections and the contacts you'll make if you'll do that.

8. Make "Retweetable" Tweets. Figure out ways to create tweets that will be re-tweeted. Kind of experiment and see what your followers will re-tweet. Remember, once they re-tweet your tweet, then you're showing it to all their followers. Then, some of those followers will re-tweet, and so it just magnifies in it and it's snowball's re-twitter. Different groups will respond differently to different things. So try to work on what your followers will re-tweet, do whatever it takes with your followers. It's very important to spread your account out there. It will really spread like wild fire if you can get 2 to 3 or 4 or 5 re-tweets a day because it adds up.

I do motivational tweets once or twice a day for example, motivational quotes. They always get re-tweeted like hit across twitter. Just things like that and things related to your niche. If you are targeting your followers like I teach you in Twitterblast, you can tweet about your niche. That will get re-tweeted a lot. If you have done your targeting work correctly, that will work really well.

9. Un-follow people who do not follow you. Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't give this people a week or so, usually, because some people are not that current. It takes some people time to get up on speed on twitter. If you follow on somebody, and they are not following you in a day or two, well don't just un-follow them then. Give them ample time before you un-follow them because if they are like I was (early on, I signed up last May and I hardly did anything with twitter until November), then you might just un-follow someone who can be worth a good follower.  They might be like me in the start, but would later on use twitter a lot, so give people time.

You need to go to your following --- the people that you are following and go into the pages. Go backwards and find that last page where there are people who are not following you. If there is no direct message option, that means they're not following you. So then you un-follow them and you work from the back of your list up. You can stop where you think it's enough, it depends on how many followers you have, but you don't work all the way into the front of your list. You give those people time to follow you. But keep up with that, don't make that drudgery, don't let that get out of hand, where every two or three or four days, go on and un-follow people who aren't following you over time. But like what I've said, do give them time to follow you initially.

10. Tweetdeck. You really need to learn how to use tweetdeck. If you have been using the web interface, and then you try tweetdeck, you will not like it. Most people don't like tweetdeck when they first go to it because its something new and they are not used to it. They are used to using twitter on the web, and it worked and they're just not used to it. It takes time to get used to it. Well, trust me, if you are marketing with twitter, you need tweetdeck because it keeps track of your replies and your DMs right on your screen, and you can delete them in there unlike in the web interface.

11. Tweetlater. Now, there's way to purge your DMs through tweetlater.com (it's free!) There is no easy way to purge your DMs within twitter itself. It's very handy because you don't have to manually delete your messages (that's a pain) and you have an option to delete DMs older than 7 days or 30 days. Keep up with those direct messages and use tweetlater to purge those old direct messages since twitter doesn't have a mechanism for doing that.

12. Auto-follow. A lot of third party tools out there, like tweetlater.com have what they call the auto-follow feature. So you could set that up so that when somebody follows you, your account automatically follows back. Now I do have that set up, and the reason I do (there are pros and cons and I will tell you what they are) is because there are so many people following me that for us to go in I have to follow all those people. It just saves a lot of time in the long run to auto-follow those people.

Now, I'll tell you the down side to that is when you see these porn type scammers out there. These people that you really don't want to associate with, if they follow you, well you're account's going to follow them too. And it looks kind of funky if somebody doesn't understand the process and they come in and look at your account and they see that you are following these porn-looking people. You just have to take the good and the bad there. For us (we've talked about this a lot,) and we think it's better for us if we auto-follow. So kind of do that as you please, as you think and kind of experiment with that. We omit and delete those people if we see them, but there's so many of them, it's hard to do.

13. Tracking Tip. One last little tip that I've started using that's working really well. Tweetdeck has a way that you could follow groups of people but it doesn't work worth anything. It just isn't very good. Well, I will just give you an example of myself in the area of Internet marketing. There are about 20 people that I really want to keep track of, that I want to socialize with a lot, because I can make connections with these people and get to know them. They have big lists and it just works really well if I could get to know these people. Well, it takes a long time to go up into the browser and go to each one of their sites, so here is how I did this and this is a huge piece of advice. You're going to love this.

I use Firefox for my browser, for my normal twitter and everything else. I do not use Internet Explorer very much. But on my computer, I have gone to Internet Explorer and set up another twitter account and I've gone in and follow all those twenty people that I want to keep track of. On my computer, I always have that minimized, I can go to my Internet Explorer and go to that other account and refresh it and I can see what these other 20 people are talking about recently. I can keep track of all twenty people real easy with that other twitter account.

Now, if somebody there says something that I want to respond to, then I go back to Firefox which I am logged in to my regular twitter account, and up in Firefox, I can save (you could use bookmarks or whatever, but I drop them onto the toolbar at the top), I have all twenty of those addresses so I just click that little arrow and all twenty addresses for their twitter home pages drop down. There's each one of their feed and I just click on the one that I want to talk to that I know just tweetered about something. There's their feed and I can hit reply and I can talk to them right there. That works really well.

No matter which niche you're in, no matter which area you are in, you need to seek out those relationships with people who are connected in those same areas as you are and communicate with them and socialize with them. You'll be amazed at the results from doing that alone.  It's a little complicated and I wish there was an easier way to do it but that works really well once you begin using that other browser with that other twitter account to follow those specific people that you want to keep track of.

I think that's it for now. That's my top tips for using twitter for your business. I hope you enjoyed it!