Internet Marketing The Right Way Or The Highway
Money Rolling In Freedom Rolling Out

I bet you can't go one day without hearing about the Internet's latest media darling, Twitter. Everybody from the mainstream media to celebrities to your Great Aunt Millie has at least heard of Twitter. Twitter has been used for everything from a critical communications link to the outside world during the Iranian Elections to Ashton Kutcher sharing a picture of Demi Moore in her underwear. As an Internet Marketer the profit making opportunity presented by those millions upon millions of worldwide users happily tweeting away should make your mouth water so much that your literally sitting in a pool of your own drool!

Guess what? You are not the only one with that idea and thousands of would be Twitter marketers are trying to grab their share of the gold rush before the claim pinches out. Most will fail. Twitter users are becoming more sophisticated and lest tolerant of blatant marketing efforts. Let's make sure you are not a statistic. In this article we will provide you with the secret key to required properly mine Twitter for fame and fortune.

Twitter's enormous popularity, like all social media, is built on implicit trust. As an example of that implicit trust mechanism, Twitter only allows you to DM (Twitter shorthand for direct message) those that follow you. The (truly) brilliant minds at Twitter assumed that if a person trusts you enough to follow you, that they trust you enough to accept a direct message.

So you probably think that what I am saying is that to truly succeed with Twitter as a marketing tool you must have thousands, or even better, millions of followers. How does that make my message any different from the hundreds of other Twitter gurus who recommend that you go out and buy an expensive tool, usually from their affiliate link, and mass follow complete strangers, hoping they follow you back and Twitter doesn't ban your account? Well, don't get me wrong, having your own legion of loyal followers is definitely an asset, but many Twitter marketers do not have that luxury when they are first beginning to utilize the Twitter system for marketing.

The true secret to utilizing Twitter as a marketing tool is to embrace the viral nature of the Twitter itself. You might only have 100 followers, but if each of those followers has 100 followers, now you have the basis of a campaign. But wait, what about the trust issue? You need to find a way of reaching the followers of your followers (or website and / or blog visitors). You need a bridge to get over the trust chasm that divides you from the hordes of faithful minions that follow your followers.

The best Twitter strategy to build that bridge and complete the chain of trust is to get your website visitors to retweet (RT in Twitter shorthand) your message to their followers. For example, provide a form on your website or blog that encourages your visitors to tweet your message. This is where your creativity needs to come into play. Craft a compelling Tweet with a subtle, but effective, call to action and then promise your visitor (and deliver) a free report or discount coupon after they complete the act of retweeting your message. For example, a very popular method currently is to conduct Twitter contests. In exchange for an entry into your contest, your website visitor agrees to retweet your message. One company just completed a contest in which they gave away one Macbook a day for ten days. During the span of the contest, this company's retweets trended higher than Michael Jackson's death!

It is such a simple concept that it is very common for even the most experienced Internet marketer to forget; viral marketing is successful marketing. Your website or blog visitors trust you. The Twitter followers of your visitor trust them. By encouraging your visitors to retweet your message to their followers, there is now an implied trust in you and your messag; the trust chasm has been bridged!

Viral marketing with Twitter also has a nice side effect. If your visitor's followers are intrigued by your message, they will voluntarily follow you - no prodding or coercion required! Thus not only are you fully exploiting the very viral nature of Twitter, but you are also building up your ever important followers list, readily available for future efforts!

Self-promotion on Twitter is dead. Promoting your own message is the easiest way to lose followers and potentially get clobbered by the dreaded Twitter ban hammer. Don't let others lead you to believe that Twitter itself is dead.  Twitter profits are still there for the taking, however now is the time to get creative and rethink your Twitter marketing strategy to fully exploit the very viral nature of the Twitter that makes the service so popular to begin with!

To your Huge Success

I hope you have An Awesome Day Too :)