No, Jesus wasn’t an internet marketer, obviously, but I’m a BIG  fan, and the more I study the life of Jesus, what he taught us and how he lived his life, there’s a lot Jesus can teach us about internet marketing.

To start, Jesus had all the qualities and characteristics of a brilliant marketer, and ironically, those qualities are the very same things we are taught today with respect to becoming better internet marketers and effective business owners.

Let’s see what they are…

Be a teacher.  Jesus was probably the best teacher that ever lived.  That’s because he lived his faith, understood it and studied it almost to a fault.

What that tells us is that we need to practice what we teach.  Isn’t that what we as marketers are called to do?  We learn by doing and by failing.  Not everything you do will be successful, but your failures can be shared too, just like your successes can be shared.  We all have something to learn from someone who does and knows what they are talking about.

Our ministry as internet marketers is to teach our visitors and customers things that will help them.  It’s how we build trust and loyalty.

We can also teach in a variety of ways.  For example, affiliate marketers can boost their affiliate marketing commissions by teaching and helping  others to make the buying decision.  We can also benefit by teaching our customers how to use our products and how our products or services can benefit them.

Any time you can teach someone something, it builds their trust and faith in you.

Be a story teller.  Telling your story or any story is a powerful way to get people to listen.

Jesus never said,  “This is what you need to do, so just do it.“   He demonstrated the concept by telling a story that drove his message home in a way his audience could understand.

In a similar way, I could tell you that writing articles is what you should be doing to promote your business online, but the message and it’s effectiveness is much better understood if I can tell you my article writing success story.  If you don’t have a story, go out and create one.

The story of your experience is how to demonstrate what you are teaching.  It’s what makes people listen.

Speak and teach with authority. People listened to Jesus.  Why?  Because he spoke with authority, meaning he spoke with confidence.

Part of speaking and teaching with authority is thinking the part and believing in what you are saying.  Be certain in your tone and avoid using works like maybe, ‘kind of’ or perhaps.

Not always an easy task but having confidence is a mindset and it takes practice.   I still have to practice it every day

Just remember whatever you teach, teach with authority.  Be confident in what you are teaching and others will have confidence in you.

Cultivate a following. Jesus didn’t have Twitter and Facebook 2000 years ago but he knew a thing or two of the value of gathering followers and he knew how to get them.

Anyone that listened to Jesus and understood what he was teaching was happy to follow him.  That’s because he spoke with authority , but  he also listened to them, talked with them, showed he cared about them and spoke to them often.   In fact he spoke to them several times a day.   He also mentioned other important figures in his time and in history that helped reinforce his message and he shared many pearls of wisdom.

Creating your own following can be done the same way, connect with others often, mention colleagues or other niche experts that can help reinforce your message and offer wise thoughts that will help encourage and motivate.

Help others first before promoting yourself.  Jesus was compassionate and caring. Often times he helped others first by healing the sick and feeding the hungry before he set out to preach or try to convince the multitudes of his message.

We’re also called to do the same.  Give others your best first before trying to get something from them.   People will listen to you and follow you if you can help them first before thinking of yourself.

Jesus had a message and he had a mission which was to teach us how to live, how to love and be compassionate, and he accomplished all those things by coming to the aid of others first.

So What has Jesus Taught us About Internet Marketing?

Jesus didn’t have anything to sell but his message and his message is still with us today. I think that’s a powerful sentiment.

Jesus may not have been an internet marketer but I think he would have made a darn good one.  I also think it’s interesting how the very things we are taught to do today with regard to internet marketing strategies come from a man that did the very same things over 2000 years ago.

Your thoughts?

Jimmy D. Brown has just released his ’3 membership’ training site called ibusiness Owner and he’s offering all 3 memberships for just $10.

Is that quality and value at a bargain price? You bet!

If you’re skeptical just take a look here to see what I’m talking about…

http://www.homenotion.com/ibusinessowner

I’m not new to purchasing from Jimmy. In fact I have most of his products.

I like his training, I think it’s straight forward, easy to understand and I trust Jimmy to give me the training that will help me advance in my business, and I have.  But what Jimmy teaches is what he does himself every day, and in the world of online marketing that’s important for knowing what works and what doesn’t.

To give you an idea of what this training is about, I signed up for Jimmy’s 3 membership deal for $10 and broke open the contents.  Jimmy’s once again raised the bar on value.

I’m super impressed with what you get for the price of just ten bucks.   There was an awesome special report, swipe file, checklists and templates; one template was so well put together I’ve already put it to use and I just got this a few hours ago. That’s the kind of value I’m talking about

Granted this is a membership site so it will cost you $10 every month until you choose to opt-out, but here’s a cool incentive. Jimmy will give you your $10 back every month to use on other premier products of his.

Let me ask you this.  What training are you giving yourself now?  If you are investing in training are you finding it valuable?  Are you making more money as a result?

If you answered no, then I’d highly recommend checking Jimmy’s membership site. Your business is your investment and quality training from an experienced, veteran marketer can be worth thousands, yet Jimmy is giving it to you for $10.

http://www.homenotion.com/ibusinessowner

Since getting my Kindle last Christmas, I’ve been getting a lot more reading done. There’s a lot to be said for large fonts and not having to turn pages. The only thing it needs is a back light.  I can’t read it in the dark 

Anyway here are a few of the books I’m reading that have inspired me but  I think they’ll inspire you as well.

Crush It! By Gary Vaynerchuk

If  you like down to earth, tell it like it is, no-nonsense  individuals, you’ll love Gary Vaynerchuk,  I did.Gary is an entrepreneur who has built online success with a daily video show on wine.

As soon as you read the first few chapters of Crush It! you’ll know why he’s as successful as he is.  He just oozes character and personality, but he’s amusing and easy to follow as well.

While most of us might not be as wildly ambitious or as willing to tirelessly put ourselves out there as Gary has , there’s a lot we can learn from his successes and about how to find passion, how to work hard and just be who you are.

The book struck a chord with me.  There are a few bitter pills to swallow but they’re necessary if you want to find success in any business.  If you have fears and uncertainties, he encourages you to look past the things you’re fearful of and inspires you to believe in yourself that you can be successful.

Very powerful and inspiring book, I highly recommend it.

Unmarketing by Scott Stratten

I’m not a marketer at heart, but I don’t really think most people are.  It’s something we learn and have to work at.   But the beauty of  “Unmarketing” is that Scott shows us through his personal experience that you can build a successful business, build up a following of customers and do it all without being a natural born salesman.

Scott’s also a big fan of social media, so if you can’t quite get your arms around the whole tweeting and Facebook thing there’s some really useful advice on how to maximize these social marketing tools naturally and comfortably.

Tribes by Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a phenomenal speaker on marketing and social marketing and through his book “Tribes”, he demonstrates that with the reach of the internet, the lack of barriers we have within the online business industry and the abundance of free and low-cost tools of the internet, you don’t need millions of people to create a successful online business.  All it really take is a loyal “Tribe”.  But first you have to find them and then inspire them.

Seth has lots of  ideas for finding and leading a tribe, from being an example, sharing stories, creating a common goal, and so much more.

If you’re especially motivated to stand out in the crowd, become an inspiring leader with passion and vision and truly want to make a difference with your products and marketing, I think you’ll find “Tribes” a great read. I did.

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

I love Zappos for two reasons, I’ve been a  Zappos affiliate for years but I’ve also been a loyal customer for years as well, so the book was a little personal for me.

What’s inspiring about Zappos is that the company has built the majoring of their successes from achieving 75% repeat business.  That’s key if you understand that it’s a lot harder to get a new customer than it is to sell to a repeat customer. That kind of success can only come from awesome customer service and if you’ve ever shopped at Zappos, no doubt you’ve has a great customer experience.

But in Tony’s mind, successful business is not just about keeping customers happy, it’s also about keeping good employees happy too.  He’s  made it his mission to make his employees feel committed and attached to Zappos.  If you have employees yourself you’ll glean some useful ideas from Tony’s somewhat radical, but interesting, ways of doing things.

If you’re not a fan of email marketing, you’ll want to use an RSS Feed so that your followers, fans and readers can easily access your blog content and posts.

Here’s how to set u an RSS Feed and Increase your RSS subscribers at the same time…

If you don’t already have an RSS feed, here’s how to set one up:

I use Feedburner to burn my feed.  There are other feedburners but I think this one’s the easiest and most straight forward to use.

1. If you don’t have an account already, go to the Feedburner site and register.  Feedburner is owned by Google, so if you have a Google account you can sign in with that.

2. Once logged into Feedburner with your Google account, go to the ‘myfeeds’ page

3.  In the prompt box, enter your blog’s address:

4. Next Feedburner will create your feed for you and provide you your feed’s address.

Once your feed is set up, go the the feedburner ‘Publicize’ Tab and where you can get the code to post your RSS button on your blog.  Most blogs today come equipped with the RSS feed button and all you have to do is add your RSS Feed address, but if you don’t have it,  Feedburner will supply it for you.

Now use these 5 ways to increase your RSS Subscribers and get more traffic to your blog posts.

#1  If you use email, include your RSS link in your email correspondence.  You can make it part of your email signature, just like how people include social networking links in their email signature, you can include an RSS link.

#2 Make sure you have your RSS subscribe button prominently placed on every single page of your blog.

Try using a motivational call to action. For example, “Stay up to date with all our content by  subscribing to our RSS Feed.”

#3 Use Your RSS feed with social networking. Use another call to action leading social networking friends and followers to subscribe to your RSS Feed. And include the link in some of the content you publish on your Facebook fan page, LinkedIn communications or Twitter posts.

#4  Provide a link to your RSS feed in your information products, even for your free products.  Always invite people to subscribe and stay in the loop.

#5 When you publish content online, whether article directories, YouTube or some other format, include a call to action, and a link, inviting your audience to subscribe.

RSS is a great way to connect with your audience on a consistent basis without having them give you their email address. Even if you use email, give your users the option of using RSS as well.

Do you cringe at the thought of doing keyword research?  That’s OK, a lot of people do.

But now productive keyword research just got easier with this awesome free report that takes you through every step of the keyword research process.

Many people I talk to don’t do any type of keyword research at all,  and that’s obvious from looking at their dismal search engine rankings.

Keyword research doesn’t have to be confusing or super time consuming, but it does have to be part of your internet marketing process.  That is if you want your customers to find you, if you want to stay competitive and increase revenues, and I know you do

Over the weekend I received a cool free report from Karon Thackston called ‘Demystifying Keyword Research‘.  I finally had time to read it this morning over my first cup of coffee and I liked it.

The report is only 21 pages long, so it’s a quick read, but the real value of this report is that it takes you through every step of the keyword research process using examples found in Google’s keyword tool and Wordtracker.

Karon demonstrates using those tools mainly because they are the two most popular tools for effective keyword research.  They’re also the tools I use for obvious reasons, as you’ll see in the report.

But there are also a few mistakes that many people make when it comes to using keyword tools because they don’t totally understand where the keyword tools get their data.  Not all keyword research tools get the same data from the same places.  Nor do they interpret their numbers the same way.

Three pages into the report you’ll understand these differences and how each tool determines their results.  That’s going to help you significantly in understanding what tools to use and how the results can help you.

Karon also addresses a few popular keyword research questions. These are questions I’ve had myself,  things like:

• How do I choose the right keywords for your website, web pages, blog posts, articles, etc. ?
• Which types of keywords are the best?
• How many keyword searches are enough?

… and the answers are easy to understand

The guide also covers things like:

• How search counts alone can be deceiving
• The relevancy of keywords

Get your free copy of the report today.  Karon’s also tossing in a free copy of her ‘Copywriting makeovers‘ .  This is also an exceptional free guide on real world SEO copywriting tips that will demonstrate how to write copy for more sales conversions and better search engine positioning.   A must read in my opinion.

Both of these reports are awesome so grab them while they’re still free.

We all make internet marketing mistakes  and some mistakes are less costly than others but if your online business depends on traffic and sales, these are the mistakes you simply can’t afford to make.

Having been online for over 8 years with several websites to my credit, these are the 6 most critical internet marketing mistakes I’ve made.

I’m never happy about making mistakes but it’s been in fixing them and learning from them that I’ve been able to create a healthy, more thriving internet business — and I want that for you as well

Mistake #1: Not Knowing Your Target Market

You may think you know your target market, and for the most part you probably do, but do you really know their focus and concerns?   Knowing those things can make a big difference in how you present your information.

Here’s a simple example.  Someone buying a home at age 25 has a much different focus than someone buying a home at 55.  That’s because at 25 people are typically looking for kid friendly neighborhoods with good schools, safe streets and playgrounds nearby.

Someone in their 50′s buying a home won’t typically care about those things.  They’ll want a quiet neighborhood with no kids and possibly a smaller home.  So your marketing focus will naturally take a different tact.

Or think about this, if  you were a shoe salesman selling travel shoes you might be focused on promoting comfortable walking shoes, but your target market may be wanting more style or you may have an audience that wants both comfort and style.

In either case you have to know what type of market your business is attracting and market to their needs and desires as well as their concerns and fears.

How do you know who your market is and what they want?

The other side of the coin is that you might know who your target market is and what type of person you want to attract but are you actually attracting them?

That’s where taking simple surveys comes in super handy.  When people come to your site, what precisely are they looking for?  Survey results will help you know.

Use Surveymonkey.com for this,  it’s free and they have super easy setup instructions.

Once you have your survey created, you can direct visitors to a survey page, or ask people on your mailing list to take the survey.

You’ll be amazed at the little tidbits of eye-opening information you can get from a simple survey.  It’s definitely information you won’t get on your own.

If you’re just starting out and want a fairly general idea of what people are looking for in your market, forums are a great place to hangout and get ideas.  I once hung out at a walking forum and found out that people who walk a lot have problems with their knees.  They wanted shoes that would help knee soreness.

That told me that there were lots of people that needed help with finding good shoes for knee problems when walking.   In fact the keyword ‘walking knee pain’ gets 4400 searches a month …hmmm, great possibility for a  profitable niche, hint, hint

Mistake #2: Not Using Email

People get turned off by email and who can blame them.   We all hate getting SPAM and no business wants to be accused of spamming.

But SPAM really isn’t the problem it use to be.  Just like there are tools to keep spam out of our in box, there are effective email marketing tools and strategies that can make you an effective email marketer.

Even today, email marketing is still effective.  It’s the number one internet marketing strategy that online marketers use.  In fact most marketers will tell you it’s the one strategy they value the most.  That’s because there are truly some awesome benefits.

Email builds relationships, keeps visitors informed about new products, presents news and ideas you might have, it brings visitors back to your website and it creates interaction.

The bottom line is that if you’re not using email but your competitors are, you’ve lost what might otherwise be a very keen competitive edge.

Mistake #3: No Keyword Research

Keyword research, in particular keyword research and the long tail will tell you exactly what words and phrases people use to search for items and information online.  The long tail meaning adding specifics to the basic keyword phrase.

For example, the term ‘womens shoes’ is a basic keyword phrase, but to target exactly what someone might be looking for, the long tail phrase ‘womens wide walking shoes’ is much more specific and zoning in on the request exactly.

If I’m looking for womens wide walking shoes, I’m more likely to click on the page that uses those exact words in the title and description than I would be for a page that merely says ‘women’s walking shoes’.

Your advantage to good keyword research and using the long tail is that most large, well know retail stores won’t bother with targeting the more specific keyword phrases, so if you can know what targeted key phrases people search on, you have a much better chance of grabbing the traffic that the larger sites leave behind.

Using effective keyword research is a solid trick to getting your web pages in front of more potential, focused buyers which gives you a much better chance of making the sale.

Mistake #4: Ignoring Search Engine Optimization

An internet business isn’t like the corner drug store, you can’t choose your location and expect people to see you while driving by.

Unless you’re spending advertising dollars, you’re at the mercy of the search engines to decide whether or not your site is worthy of visitors.

Frankly, the best search engine optimization starts with creating a website that uses a clean website template, provides easy and clear navigation and avoids excessive flash and java script.

Also because the search engines index web pages as opposed to web sites, it will be important to follow the tips for healthy web page optimization along with using the search engine copywriting strategies for writing copy that not only appeals to the search engines but gets the attention of your human readers.

One mistake that so many internet marketers make it a priority to create copy that appeals strictly the the search engines in the hope of getting high search engine ranking.  High rankings is  certainly an important piece of the puzzle, but writing copy that appeals to your human reader is equally, if not more, important to the overall success of your traffic and sales.

After all what good does it do to get tons of traffic if the traffic doesn’t convert to sales?   Search engine copywriting is about appealing especially well to both the search engines and your human visitors, which is how you’ll achieve the sale you need.

If  you’ll be creating a blog, use a good content management systems like WordPress which has built in SEO. WordPress is especially good at taking care of the basics like file structure, functionality and provides good use of title and description tags.

Mistake # 5: Failing to Analyze Your Traffic

Getting traffic to your site is certainly important but keeping it there is another thing altogether.

When trying to keep your traffic on your site and keep them interested,  you have to really analyze it.  That means knowing where your traffic is coming from (the referring sites),  what your traffic is looking for (the keywords), and what they’re looking for once they arrive (the most visited pages).

There are programs that can readily give you this information.  One is your stats program that comes with your hosting service.  My Hostgator service uses AWstats, a program that gives me information like how long visitors stay on my site, what pages they’re visiting and how often, what browsers sent me the traffic, what URL’s are referring my pages and what key phrases visitors used to find my site.

Hostgator happens to use AWStats which gives me all this information and more.  But more recently I’ve been using Google Analytics.  It’s super easy to set up and it’s free.  I actually use it together with my Awstats program for getting a really good glimpse of my site’s activity.

I suggest making it a habit once a month to review your stats. Do a compare and contrast to previous months.   This information will help you make decisions about how to improve your web pages and know what information to add for increasing traffic.

Without analyzing what goes on with your site and your site pages, it’s a lot harder to improve your return on investment, increase conversions, and increase profits.

Mistake #6: Not Using Social Media

All the buzz lately has been around social media and internet businesses have felt the pressure to hop on board.

In the beginning I was overwhelmed with the social media choices and I got burned out quickly with trying to make use of them all, but it’s a mistake to try using them all.

The 3 most popular social media sites are YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.  After a few months of going crazy with the social marketing maze, I’ve narrowed it down to simply Twitter and Facebook. My time is better spent and I’m a lot more efficient using them.

On Facebook,  create a fan page where you can post your store specials,  YouTube videos, comment on blog posts, etc., and people who become a “fan” will get instant access to every update you make, keeping you in touch continuously.

Twitter is a micro-blog platform that is perfect for posting blog posts, quick tips, invitations to special events, and for keeping an eye on what people are saying about your brand.  Using Twitter productively can be a big boost to sales and traffic.

But beware, social marketing should not be used for sales pitches.  You can’t be pushy on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll lose visitors and followers quickly. Social marketing and networking is about building relationships first. People don’t simply buy from just anyone, they need to feel a sense of trust and confidence in who they give their money to.

Use social marketing to build those relationships, make trusted contacts, build your brand and generate interest.  Once you’ve established those things, the sales will just come naturally.

The Biggest Mistake of All!

Don’t become one of those people that expects instant traffic to your website.  Successful internet marketing is a continuous effort using the internet marketing strategies that work for you.

Getting listed in Google is a great start, but it’s just that, a start.  Your next step is to be consistent with your marketing efforts. In fact the more you promote, the more traffic you’ll see and over time your site will become more self-sustaining requiring less work to maintain.  Gotta love that!

So stay with it and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. That’s how you will learn what works for your business and what doesn’t.

How do you build customer loyalty on the web?

How do you get customers to come back to your site time and time again even when you make mistakes?

How do you get them to tell their friends about you?

By dedicating your business to customer satisfaction.

The most successful businesses are the ones that are focused on caring about the customer experience.

My own personal example of outstanding customer service on the web is Zappos.

Zappos shoes was not the first company to sell shoes on the web but one of the reasons they dominated the online shoes industry was because of their high standards of customer satisfaction.

Zappos made sure that everyone that came to their online store was satisfied.  They did that by offering  free shipping, free returns and fast delivery.

That was truly a customer focused move and it wasn’t long after that the other online shoe stores began to follow suit.

I know I was satisfied the first time I bought my shoes from Zappos and I still buy from Zappos today.  I get my shoes in record time, they take my returns no matter what and they always want to know what I think and they respond to all my comments and concerns.

Consequently, they are the one shoe store that I think of before all others.

That’s why today Zappos is one of the most popular and most highly sought after online shoes stores.  They’ve built a solid brand in customer satisfaction.

I hope it’s becoming obvious that a strong focus on customer satisfaction and creating a positive customer experience is what building customer loyalty on the web is all about.

See also these Tips for Better Customer Service – Internet Style

But how do you get started building customer loyalty?

- Keep the customer in the forefront of everything you do. Zone in on what you think would please a customer.  Think about a great customer experience you’ve had  yourself and what made it a great experience.   Consider how you could apply that same ideology to your business.

Ask your customers for feedback. An important part of providing a positive customer experience is knowing what your customers like or don’t like about their experience with you as a business.  Unless you know that you can’t improve your business or be innovative.

Use Surveymonkey.com  to conduct customer surveys.  This is a free service that won’t take but a few minutes to put together a ten question survey that your visitors and customers can complete.

Ask customers about their checkout experience, what their shopping experience was like or if they had any problems using your site.

If possible offer an incentive to your customers for completing the survey.   If online surveys isn’t an option you can also ask for feedback by email or by phone.

Believe it or not, customers will be impressed by your efforts in trying to improve their customer experience.  Even if they don’t respond, they’ll respect the fact that’s it’s important to you and your business.

- Offer incentives. Give visitors and customers a reason to return to your business.  Conduct fun contests.  Offer buyer discounts and periodically conduct free give away’s.

- Exceed customer expectations. For example, if you guarantee a 4-6  day delivery on product shipments, try delivering the product in 3 days.  Customers are always impressed when you can exceed their expectations in some way.

- Have the ‘customer is always right’ attitude. We all know that customers are not always right, but it’s your job to make them feel they are right.

Always work with your customers if there’s a problem.  Let them know that they are important to you by working with them to resolve their problem to their satisfaction.   Putting your best foot forward as a merchant goes a long way in building customer loyalty.

Believe it or not, customers will be impressed by your efforts to improve your customer experience, even if they don’t respond, they’ll respect the fact that’s it’s important to your business.

Your Take Away

Building a great company means creating a brand, a product and providing excellent service that customers will appreciate and love.

It should always be high on your list when it comes to building customer loyalty, on the web or in any business.

How do you use Twitter? … Or do you?

If you’re not a Twitter fan, or even if you are, you should know that Twitter is a viral marketing power house.

It works like this, you send a tweet and your followers can re-tweet it.   If they happen to have 5,000 followers,  your one tweet can become 5,000 tweets.

That’s a pretty awesome way to connect online.

But how do you actually put this powerful tool to work for you?

The object is to learn how to Twitter more productively by creating tweets that get re-tweeted again and again helping boost your business far ahead of the masses.

First of all it helps to understand the Twitter mentality.

It helps to understand how Twitter users think and want to be treated.  Not everyone gets this.

No one wants to be sold to and Twitter users are no different. You can certainly sell on Twitter but you have to do it in a way that Twitter users appreciate.

Twitter users want to hear about things from you, things that are exclusive to you. They want to hear about special, unique content, special deals or things they won’t find somewhere else.

Tweeting about your product that you sell for $27 isn’t going to impress followers, on the other hand, a 40% sale would.

Here are 10 tips to help you not only connect with your followers in a positive, non-marketing way but also take advantage of Twitter’s viral marketing power…

1. Know the Twitter Protocol

There’s a protocol to Twitter and it has its own language and culture, so getting to know the Twitter phrases and concepts will help you use Twitter more effectively.  Here they are:

* The hashtag -  Hashtags keep comments to a single stream on specific topics.  Using hashtags gives  you and your followers the ability to search and access any tweets containing that particular hashtag.

For example, if you ask your users a question and tell them to tweet responses with #lawofattraction, the user would type in their message and add #lawofattraction to the end of the tag.

Likewise if others are using that hashtag you can easily see what’s going on within that topic.

Any user can create a hashtag simply by adding it to their own tweet. To find out if a hashtag is already being used go to http://search.twitter.com/ and type in your chosen hashtag.

* #FF (Follow Friday) – On Fridays, Twitter users will often give recommendations to their friends about who they might want to follow. They do this with the “follow Friday” hashtag, #FF.

* @reply - This is a direct message sent from one tweeter to another. If someone sends you an @reply, you should try to respond.

* RT, Retweet, PRT, Please RT, etc. – These are all abbreviations of retweet or please retweet.

* Trending topics – Twitter displays a list of trending topics on their front page and these are topic that are currently very popular.  If you can tweet about trending topics and link it to your website this can bring you quite a bit of traffic.

One final thing.  People often ask, “How often should I tweet?”

It depends, how’s that for being specific

While you shouldn’t tweet just to fill up space, you also shouldn’t leave your account untweeted for too long.

A good rule of thumb is to Tweet enough so that people don’t forget who you are but strive to make every Tweet worthwhile.

Some people tweet every day whether or not they have something meaningful or not, others don’t like to  tweet unless they have something worthwhile to say.

I’d say a good balance of the two is ideal.

2. Go Viral With Your Tweets

To get your Tweets to go viral, they have to strike a chord with readers.

The tweets that get passed along the most have at least one of these elements:

* Caring & Compassion - Tweets that inspire people to care get passed along. For example, the Japan Earth quake fund raised lots of money and awareness through viral Twitter tweets.

* They’re Funny -  People love good humor, and humor is viral.  Tell a joke or hit someone’s funny bone and you’ll get some great re-tweets.

* Shock, awe or surprise - Saying something shocking or surprising gets attention, and if it’s surprising or shocking enough, it will get passed on.

* News - Tweets that are relevant to news topics or reveal new information about topics people care about will get passed on.

Negative emotions and controversy trigger tweets as well. Always be polite and never be cruel,  but a good difference of opinion can stimulate emotions and that triggers tweets.

3. Create Things that Stand Out in Your Niche

On Twitter we’re all competing for attention,  so if you want users to pay attention to you, you have to Tweet about things that stand out.

That could be a video, an ad campaign, a unique blog post, whatever it is,  your tweets need to jump out of the “generic bin” and catch people’s attention.

For instance, if your niche is weight loss and you interviewed someone with a surefire plan to lose 10 pounds in one week, I think people would be interested in hearing about that.

4. Tie Twitter in with Your Website

Tie your Twitter account in with your website. Here’s how:

Include a Twitter follow button on your main website. This lets people, who come to your site and like what they see, follow you.

Twitter offers several pre-set buttons you can use to add to your site, including the “Follow” button and the “Tweet” button. The benefit of using Twitter’s buttons is that everyone is already used to seeing them and clicking on them.

5. Build a Dynamic Customer Relationship on Twitter

Building relationships with Twitter followers is a lot like building relationships offline.  You have to get personal. The more impersonal your Twitter feed feels, the less people will interact with you.

On the other hand, the more you make it clear that you’re there for your followers and customers, that you respect them and treat them specially, the more they’ll respond.

In short, make friends with your customers. Do what it takes for customers to actually like interacting with you and your brand.

6. Go Viral with Smart Following

It’s important that you get the people you want to follow you, but also that you’re following the right people.

I don’t personally recommend that you follow every person that follows you,  but there are groups you should be following.

First off, follow your competitors. Whenever your competitor makes an announcement, you should know. If they’re having trouble, you should know. If some sort of news event has an effect on your industry, you should know.

Follow your top customers. Many businesses find that 60% to 80% of their revenues come from just a handful of customers. You absolutely want to be following those customers.

Follow the major players in your niche. Following the right people can sometimes be even more important than putting out the right tweets.

Finally, follow anyone who you find interesting or just plain like.

7. Contests Can Go Viral Very Quickly

One of the most effective viral marketing tools online and on Twitter are contests.

All you need to run a successful contest is a compelling prize and enough of a following to launch the contest.  If you can muster up a compelling enough prize, you’re likely to see a boatload of traffic and people from everywhere ready to compete.

For example, take Affiliate marketers.  They often give away top-of-the-line products as prizes to the affiliates that sell the most.  It’s a great way to virally get the message out there and encourage re-tweets.

8. Ask for a Re-tweet

The most effective way to get re-tweets is to just ask.

People on Twitter are in scan mode and they only stop at the tweets that really get their attention, so your focus is to ‘get their attention’.

But once you have their attention they aren’t always aware of what to do, so if you want them to retweet your tweet, ask them. If you want them to enter your contest, tell them and if you want them to click on a link, ask them.

9. How Viral Are You? Let’s Find Out

How effective has your viral campaign been? How viral are your competitors’ campaigns? How well known is your brand online?

Find out by using Twitter’s search feature at  http://search.twitter.com

Search for a company name or product name. What are people saying about it?   Are there any complaints? Are people saying good things, bad things, are they re-tweeting? Etc.

This is where using hash tags comes in pretty handy.

10 Use Twitter to Address Problems

One of the powerful things about Twitter is that you can funnel your message directly to your customers instantly.  This can really come in handy when a PR emergency or customer service mishap happens.

To give you an example,  I had a question once on how to do something on my Aweber autoresponder account.  I put the question out to Twitter and an Aweber rep answered me on Twitter within about 2 minutes.

That’s not only powerful for me, it’s powerful for Aweber and their business, not to mention how impressed I was with their support and their attentiveness.

One other great example was with the online shoe store Zappos.   When they had a staff layoff they faced a serious threat to business.  Instead of shying away from the attention, Zappos encouraged employees to tweet honestly about the situation.

This demonstrated the company’s honesty and how their employees still believed in the company and Twitter helped them effectively do that.

So how do you use Twitter?

If you’re not using Twitter regularly, hopefully I’ve lit a fire under your chair to go out and make twitter work for your business.

With a solid understanding of how to use Twitter you can start building a  Twitter presence and use the power of Twitter as your viral marketing power.