It is hard to find anyone who haven’t heard, used or seen of Twitter these days. It’s popularity has increased even more within the business world. It is open source of information for anyone and everyone to use. But still some of us are not sure of how to make the most out of it. When I first started using Twitter for my work, I was bit lost, even though I had idea about what Twitter was and how it worked. I put together this basic guidelines for anyone interested in using Twitter or already have account and want to make more out of it.

First step is to get a account. You can go to Twitter and create account. Once you have account setup it is important to customize your profile to something familiar with logos, picture or products etc. Click on Profile next to home on top. Then click on edit your profile. Or click on setting where your picture and account name is displayed. Then you will be presented with options to customize your profile. Click on profile and make sure, if it is for company you have company logo and if it is personal Twitter have your picture. Icons are outdated and nobody likes to follow icons. Use the space for Bio wisely with strong and specific message regarding your business or you.

You can always use your own background image to make it more attractive and familiar.
To change the background image.
1. Click on Design.
2. Then Change Background Image, browse the picture you want displayed and Save Change.

And of course the most important, your tweets. Make sure they are engaging, relevant and interesting to your followers. Hashtag and trending topic are also good strategies to tie your tweets to send your message beyond your followers. Hashtags and trending topics are displayed on right hand side of your Twitter account. Twitter is not only about informing your customer but also about communicating with them answering their query, solving their problem, listening to them and taking actions, keeping close eyes on your competition, following the trends on your industry.

First and most important is always research your competition. You will know about what your competition is doing and may also be able to find a niche where they are falling behind. With Twitter it is open and easy. You can locate their Twitter account through directories like wefollow. You can include your own Twitter account with 5 interest categories. Lets you find the top Twitter accounts with categories. Very effective in finding the influencers in particular industry.

Once you have followed your competitor or subject of interest create a list. This helps you to be informed on what your competitors/subject are doing and how they are handling their Twitter strategies, special offer or other promotion or their weak points. For easier access to the information you can create a lists for each competition/subject so that you don’t have to search for their tweets in jungle of tweets. Here is how to do it. Find and follow them in the Twitter. Then you will get option of create a list. Follow the instruction and you will have the list with all the tweets for that Twitter account.

Once the account is set up following is the next step to get followers to your account. The key to following is look at the number of people they are following and number of follower they have. 1:1 ratio means if you are following that person it is most likely they will follow you back. Finding people is easy, just click on who to follow and type in your interest/company or keywords you want to follow in the search box. Check the follower to follow ratio.

If someone follows you and they are relevant to your business or interest make sure you follow them back and send a direct message. Make the direct message short, relevant and personal.

Hootsuite is important tool that helps you monitor you Twitter. The great thing about this tool is its free and after signing up you will be able to monitor your Twitter performance in one platform. You can monitor mentions, direct messages, searches and Twitter lists by setting upto 10 columns at a time. With the search you can use the keyword related to your industry to see the real time tweet queries and direct them to website/blogs or answer their queries with @username.

Most important aspect for any media or marketing effort is flawless integrating with other marketing effort and continuous and engaging communication. Integrate your social media into other aspects like website, blog, email signature, advertisement etc to get the best results and maximum exposure. There’s ton of tools, both free and paid versions, that help monitor Twitter analytic for your business and it’s worth trying few of them to figure out what works best for your scenario and goals.

Social Bookmarking has played a major role in reducing the labor all surfers used to face while trying to remember their preferred locations and also to channel targeted traffic onto their domain.

Due to the enormity of cyberspace, the social bookmarking mechanism has proven its worth by making it effortless for Web users to not only remembering their favorite Web page or website in order to diminish the time spent on searching for them, but also to share these bookmarked Web pages and websites to other Internet users in for mutual benefits.

Social bookmarking system basically allows Internet users registered at social bookmarking websites to recognize sites related to their interests or search and discover fresh assets that fall under a particular class where the user enjoys niche.

Although social bookmarking has a lot of advantages to offer different Internet users yet it also has a certain disadvantages to its credit such as:

1. One of the major drawbacks related to social bookmarking is associated with its tagging system. The Tag based system does not follow any particular standard. There is no restriction in the application of keywords, controlled terminology and of course the standard of the vocabulary used.

2. Other than these problems, social bookmarking is also vulnerable to corruption and conspiracy due to its popularity. Often the traffic is guided onto a particular domain solely on the basis of sales commitments, by the application of certain false declarations and appeals. The prospects within such traffic usually loose their faith in the overall market strategies and may loose interest in the product itself.

3. Social Marketing plans take time to mature. Hence the dealers need to have a high degree of patience while committing to such a strategy.

4. The internet is littered with spam marketing schemes, and you have to toil hard to keep yourself out of such schemes. In case of social bookmarking, it becomes even more difficult, due to the redirection capabilities of certain Spam bots, as a result of which even you may be in risk of getting black listed as a Spammer.

There are many aspects to affiliate marketing and it can be hard to get a good overview of how the whole process works. This guide to affiliate marketing will provide you with a good understanding of what is involved and how it all works. If you just want to know how to get started then scroll down and read the last paragraph. Otherwise, continue reading for an overall guide to affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing involves helping a customer connect with a product that will fulfill a need or desire for them. By providing helpful information that assists in making an informed decision and ultimately guiding them to make a purchase, you can earn a commission. To be successful in affiliate marketing requires that you target a large, but focused, market with a quality product that many people are interested in.

The main tools needed for affiliate marketing are a computer and internet connection. There are also many tools that can help make your task easier. There isn’t enough room to list all of them in this guide to affiliate marketing, but the most common tools are: keyword research tools, email auto-responders, website building tools, and market and product research tools. Having said this, I would say the most important tool is you and your understanding of the strategies and techniques that are necessary in succeeding. There are many training resources available but ultimately you have to be your own guide to affiliate marketing.

When choosing a market and a product it is best to keep your focus narrow. This means targeting a small niche that is part of a larger market. For example, rather that target travel, focus on promoting to people with children looking for cruises in the Mediterranean. Being more targeted will make your marketing efforts much easier.

A major part of affiliate marketing is getting your message to the people who it applies to. This requires various techniques to guide targeted traffic to your website. Techniques for achieving this include article marketing PPC (pay-per-click), forum marketing, video marketing, social marketing, and others. You don’t need to do all of these things – you just need to pick one and make it work for you.

Setting up a campaign involves the following steps:

• Picking a niche and an affiliate product
• Creating content that will attract the target niche. This usually involves providing relevant and interesting content including general information, product reviews and comparisons.
• Driving traffic to your website using at least one of the techniques described above.
• Making sure that your visitors understand how to purchase the products you are promoting
• In addition to the above people often include a newsletter which they use to provide more interesting content along with occasional product recommendations

Once you have your campaign set up the most important thing to do is consistent action. Without consistently working on your campaign day after day to bring it to your desired level it is unlikely you will achieve the success you are looking for. Just follow the steps outlined in this guide to affiliate marketing and you will be well on your way to having a successful campaign.