Your ultimate goal when using Twitter should be to network, it’s like an online social hour (or social 140 characters). And like every networking organization, it’s all about who you know, or in Twitter’s case, who you “follow” and who “follows” you. The key to making Twitter work for you and your business is to weave the social aspects of your life in with your business.

So how do you do that?

Below, you will find seven steps to help you develop a loyal Twitter fan base.

First, you’ve got to find people!

1. Search for people you know who are already using Twitter via the “find people” link up at the top of Twitter. Once you click that link, type in names of people you know to see if they’re currently on Twitter so you can connect with them.
2. Using the same “find people” link up at the top, click on “find on other networks” to match up your current contacts from your Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail and MSN accounts with your contact’s Twitter accounts and follow them from there.
3. Use the Twitter search. You can either search right from your Twitter homepage or go to http://search.twitter.com. Search using the keywords for your industry and find people tweeting about specific topics in your industry and within your niche. From there you can follow them, and follow their followers!
   Now that you’re on your way to having followers, here are a couple of tips to maximize your “Tweets.”
4. Mix in your “social Tweets” with your “business Tweets.” Remember, people buy people, and that goes for Twitter too! Build a loyal fan base by allowing them to get to know you, like you, trust you and respect you, and then weave in the “I’ve written a blog about social media, check it out at www.celebritysites.com” (of course, you would actually link to the blog post, but since I haven’t written that yet… which now I will… I put our homepage in there for demonstration).
5. You can also use http://search.twitter.com to find other current Tweets about your industry that you can comment on. If you find a Tweet that interests you, you can respond directly to that person by using “@TheirName” in your tweet so they get your reply, ultimately contributing to the Twitter community, gaining more content for your own Twitter account and participating socially with other users.

And finally, here are some of my favorite Twitter tools to make your life easier!

6. TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com) allows you to manage your Twitter account by separating your replies, direct messages, as well as specified groups of people. TweetDeck also allows you to update your Facebook status automatically with your Tweets.
7. Tweet Later (www.tweetlater.com) allows you to setup Tweets to be sent out at a scheduled time, automatically follow anyone who follows you, and send out auto-responders to anyone who follows you.

Remember: Twitter can be used for many different purposes including social networking, marketing a business, prospecting, research and new ideas, reconnecting with old friends, etc. Millions are tweeting every day including just about every TV show, radio personality, movie star, pop singer, rap artist, sportscaster and professional athlete. Although this concept may seem foreign to you at first, remember that email was once that way and now it’s second nature! Ultimately, what makes Twitter so popular is the ability to connect with friends and likeminded people. Remember: people buy people!

Known as the “Online Celebrity Agent,” Lindsay Glass helps her clients tell their stories in the online world. Being brought up around a family of marketers, but a product of Generation Y, Lindsay naturally gravitated to the new world of online marketing. Lindsay began freelance writing in 2000 and soon after launched her own PR firm that thrived by offering an in-your-face “Guaranteed PR” that was one of the first of its type in the nation.

At an early age, Lindsay learned from her father, and business partner, that “people buy people.” Today, Lindsay takes that concept and builds upon it by working with her clients to create Celebrity status for them in their industries. Lindsay’s clientele span the entire business map and range from doctors and small business owners to Inc 500 CEOs.

Lindsay is a graduate of the University of Florida with a Bachelors Degree in Marketing. She is a co-founder of Dicks Nanton & Glass’ Celebrity Branding Agency’s Online Division and was instrumental in the development of the Online Celebrity Platform™ the company’s flagship online offering which builds on traditional media with a slight twist. “The biggest mistake people make online is believing that their web site is just an extension of their business cards and brochures. That approach is not only old fashion, today it’s a waste of time and money. Your web site has to be dynamic, grab attention, tell a compelling story and ultimately convert visitors into prospects and finally into customers. If not, that traffic that you’ve worked so hard to get to your website will move on within 10 seconds, never to be seen again. We help our clients avoid that pitfall to grow their business and their revenue streams.”

Lindsay has also been selected as one of America’s PremierExperts™ and has been seen on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox as well as featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Newsweek.

Social Media, as defined by Wikipedia, is primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

Today, search engines are looking more to the bookmarking trends of these social media sites to determine the quality of websites. According to the Search Engine Journal, social media can help your sites in multiple ways. For example:

• Indexing Sites Faster: Humans bookmark sites launched by their friends or colleagues before a search engine bot can find them.
• Deeper Indexing: Many pages bookmarked are deep into sites and sometimes not as easily linked to by others, found via bad or nonexistent site navigation or linked to from external pages.
• Defining Quality: If someone takes the time to bookmark a site, it usually has some quality to it.
• Measuring Quality: Essentially, if more users bookmark a page, the more quality and relevance that site has. A site with multiple bookmarks across multiple bookmarking services by multiple users is much more of an authority than a site with only several bookmarks by the same user.
• External Metadata: Users who bookmark sites tag them with keywords and descriptions, which add an honest and unbiased definition, which is created by the public and not the owner of the site.
• Co-Citation: Social bookmarking sites tend to categorize sites and pages based upon the tags used by humans to describe the site, therefore search algorithms can classify these sites with their peers.

So, to stay on top in the rankings and to make sure you’re a part of the “it” crowd, you should start implementing some of the different social media strategies. Here are some of my favorites that we use for clients… and better yet, they’re all FREE:

• Tubemogul (www.tubemogul.com) allows you to deploy videos (seeded with keywords) to various video outlets like YouTube, Yahoo, MetaCafe, DailyMotion and many more! You will also be able to see how many times your videos have been watched from each of these sites.
• Digg (http://digg.com) allows you to share content from the Internet that you find interesting. Once a link and story has been submitted you can cast your vote for the story, also know as a digg. Although your story may get submitted to Digg, digg votes are what will get your story on the front page.
• Reddit (www.reddit.com), like Digg, is a social news website where you can post links to various websites. You then can vote on the sites (up or down), thus giving them more presences on Reddit.
• del.icio.us (http://delicious.com) is a social bookmarking web service where users can share with others sites that they like.
• Twitter (http://twitter.com) is a social networking where you can send text-based updates to other users (otherwise known as tweets) to let them know what you are up to.
• Knol (http://knol.google.com/k) is closely compared to Wikipedia, but it’s run by Google. This site is more of an article/blog syndication site where users can post articles/blogs, called knols, versus bookmarking the website page for other visitors to view (like dig, reddit and del.icio.us).

There are many different social media sites out there — these are just a couple of my favorites. One thing to note, don’t overdo it. Not every post should be put through every media outlet out there. Be sure to mix it up a bit with which social media site you are using. Either way, get out there and start digging, tweeting and bookmarking your way to success!

Known as the “Online Celebrity Agent,” Lindsay Glass helps her clients tell their stories in the online world. Being brought up around a family of marketers, but a product of Generation Y, Lindsay naturally gravitated to the new world of online marketing. Lindsay began freelance writing in 2000 and soon after launched her own PR firm that thrived by offering an in-your-face “Guaranteed PR” that was one of the first of its type in the nation.

At an early age, Lindsay learned from her father, and business partner, that “people buy people.” Today, Lindsay takes that concept and builds upon it by working with her clients to create Celebrity status for them in their industries. Lindsay’s clientele span the entire business map and range from doctors and small business owners to Inc 500 CEOs.

Lindsay is a graduate of the University of Florida with a Bachelors Degree in Marketing. She is a co-founder of Dicks Nanton & Glass’ Celebrity Branding Agency’s Online Division and was instrumental in the development of the Online Celebrity Platform™ the company’s flagship online offering which builds on traditional media with a slight twist. “The biggest mistake people make online is believing that their web site is just an extension of their business cards and brochures. That approach is not only old fashion, today it’s a waste of time and money. Your web site has to be dynamic, grab attention, tell a compelling story and ultimately convert visitors into prospects and finally into customers. If not, that traffic that you’ve worked so hard to get to your website will move on within 10 seconds, never to be seen again. We help our clients avoid that pitfall to grow their business and their revenue streams.”

Lindsay has also been selected as one of America’s PremierExperts™ and has been seen on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox as well as featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Newsweek.

There is much discussion about which is better: organic rankings in the search engines or pay-per-click advertisements. My answer: “What are you trying to accomplish?” Like most things, it depends.

Although they are harder to get and will cost more time and money, organic search rankings do offer distinct advantages over pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements and will always be better in the long run.

I recently read an article that compared organic rankings to PPC advertisement rankings. Here are some of the results:

• Searchers are up to six times more likely to click on the first few organic results than any of the PPC ads
• 14% of searchers trust PPC ads (meaning 86% of searchers may not)
• 29% of searchers are annoyed by PPC ads
• Conversion rates are 17% higher for organic results

With stats like that, why would you ever use PPC? Here are a couple reasons:

• Time. PPC can be instantaneous and can jumpstart your website traffic. Organic campaigns can take 3 months (and sometimes longer depending on your competition). So if you have a short amount of time or a seasonal business, PPC might be better suited for your goals.
• Cost. If you are working on a tight budget, then PPC will always cost less. PPC allows you to limit your campaign to as much or as little as you want to spend. And by limiting your keyword and keyword phrases to those that bring the most qualified traffic, you can operate your campaign on a smaller budget.
• Testing. PPC is a great way to test headlines and keywords to see what pulls better for your niche and your market. You cannot do this with organic SEO. By setting up different ads with different headlines, in a day you can easily see which resonates more with visitors and which drives more traffic to your site.

So, it really does depend what you’re looking for. For long-term appeal, organic is the way to go. For short, quick tests, PPC is a better option.

If you’re looking for some resources for finding your keywords to help develop PPC campaigns here are a couple: Google’s FREE tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal; or Bran Callen’s Keyword Elite ($176 – well worth it!): http://www.keywordelite.com.

Known as the “Online Celebrity Agent,” Lindsay Glass helps her clients tell their stories in the online world. Being brought up around a family of marketers, but a product of Generation Y, Lindsay naturally gravitated to the new world of online marketing. Lindsay began freelance writing in 2000 and soon after launched her own PR firm that thrived by offering an in-your-face “Guaranteed PR” that was one of the first of its type in the nation.

At an early age, Lindsay learned from her father, and business partner, that “people buy people.” Today, Lindsay takes that concept and builds upon it by working with her clients to create Celebrity status for them in their industries. Lindsay’s clientele span the entire business map and range from doctors and small business owners to Inc 500 CEOs.

Lindsay is a graduate of the University of Florida with a Bachelors Degree in Marketing. She is a co-founder of Dicks Nanton & Glass’ Celebrity Branding Agency’s Online Division and was instrumental in the development of the Online Celebrity Platform™ the company’s flagship online offering which builds on traditional media with a slight twist. “The biggest mistake people make online is believing that their web site is just an extension of their business cards and brochures. That approach is not only old fashion, today it’s a waste of time and money. Your web site has to be dynamic, grab attention, tell a compelling story and ultimately convert visitors into prospects and finally into customers. If not, that traffic that you’ve worked so hard to get to your website will move on within 10 seconds, never to be seen again. We help our clients avoid that pitfall to grow their business and their revenue streams.”

Lindsay has also been selected as one of America’s PremierExperts™ and has been seen on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox as well as featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Newsweek.