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There are ever increasing ways to promote your blog posts today. Twitter is another tool that you can use to promote your blog. Here are a few ways to use Twitter to promote your blog posts:

• Open your Twitter account in your blog’s name
• Link to your blog from your Twitter profile
• Install Twitter Tools and set your settings to post a tweet for your blog posts
• Send your tweets from your blog using Twitter Tools
• Set your Twitter Tools settings to post a blog post every time you tweet
• Use the daily tweet rollup feature in Twitter Tools
• Send a tweet with a link to your latest blog post
• DM your Twitter friends and ask them to retweet your blog promotion tweet
• Ask your social networking friends to tweet your newest blog entry
• When you comment on other blogs, include a link to your Twitter profile

Twitter is becoming a powerful force in online marketing. I highly recommend it for every blogger.

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Twitter is fast becoming the best way to market your blog. Through Twitter you can promote your blog and your static website easily and widely. You don’t even have to spam Twitter to do it. Follow these tips for the best blog marketing through Twitter:

• Place a link to your blog in your Twitter profile
• Use Twitter Tools to post your tweets from your blog
• Set your Twitter Tools settings to create a new blog post for every tweet
• Have Twitter Tools provide a daily update of your tweets
• Put a widget on your blog promoting your tweets
• Link your Twitter profile to your Facebook profile so that your Facebook status changes on every Twitter update
• Set your Twitter Tools plugin to tweet every time you post a new blog post
• Tweet often, not just when you post to your blog
• Reply to tweets by others
• Use Twitter to establish and build relationships; that leads to new readers

Some bloggers have replaced their blog with Twitter. I say keep your blog and use Twitter to add new readers to your blog. Make Twitter a part of your marketing funnel.

Learn more about how you can use Twitter and a blog - consult with a professional blog consultant.

After Twittering for a couple of months I’ve got a few tips on how to best use Twitter for some effective marketing:

• First, add valuable information, not trivia
• Shorten your long URLs because you only have 140 characters
• Don’t spam - you won’t get link juice from your tweets any way
• Don’t make your tweets short sales come ons
• Be selective choosing your friends and the people you follow
• Manage your time; it’s addicting
• Don’t follow everyone who follows you
• Don’t just click on any link; some people hide malware with short URLs
• Brand yourself with your company name as your Twitter profile
• Block spammers

Twitter is a useful tool, but it is a tool. Know its limitations and don’t expect miracles. You can increase your reach with Twitter, but it doesn’t happen overnight.

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Microblogging has become all the craze and Twitter is the leader in this realm. What is microblogging? If you do it the Twitter way, you write a little post of 140 characters or less. Twitter Tools is a WordPress plugin that automatically tweets your blog post when you post it. The message appears like thus:

namecritic New blog post: Disaster Aid: What Are You Entitled To? http://tinyurl.com/5urc56

It’s starts with your Twitter name, followed by “New blog post” and a short description with the URL to the post linked as a Tinyurl. Beautiful!

With Twitter Tools you can have one Twitter post automatically done every day with no effort. All of your followers will see it and the more followers you have the better off you will be to market your blog. But you have to have a Twitter account.

I decided I’d put a Twitter badge on a client’s blog so I went looking for Twitter badges. Man are they hard to find. Well, if you have a Twitter account and you are active in your account then you should add a Twitter badge to your blog. What better way to attract new followers than right there on your blog?

Here’s what you need to do to find that Twitter badge:

1. From your Twitter page, click on “Help”
2. In the left sidebar you’ll see “Twitter FAQ” - CLICK ON IT
3. Click on 1.1.FAQ
4. Scroll down
5. Keep scrolling down
6. Scroll, like, all the way down until you see “Can I put Twitter on my blog?“
7. Click the link using “put a Twitter badge” as anchor text in the “Can I put Twitter on my blog?” paragraph

Yikes! That’s seven steps just to find the page on which the badges can be found. Five if you count the three step scroll function as one. Facetiousness aside, you’d think that Twitter would make it easier for bloggers to find badges for their blog. And, I’m a bit disappointed in the limited choices available. Oh, well.

Instead of the above seven-step process, just click here and you’ll go to the Twitter badge page. Or you can go to http://twitter.com/badges. Now, from here:

• Click the type of widget you want to use (again, I’m disappointed they don’t have one for WordPress - the most popular blogging platform); if you use WordPress, click “Other”
• Choose the type of badge you want
• Customize your badge
• Copy the code
• Inside WordPress, click on Design then Theme Editor
• Click on the Sidebar php file you want to edit
• Insert the widget code where you want it to appear in the sidebar
• Update file
• Visit Site and make sure the badge appears the way you want it to appear

Don’t have the time to install your own badge? We’ll do it for you. Call Chris at 786-317-8774 or visit the website and fill in our contact form.

I’ve been thinking about Twitter ever since it first came out. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. My thought was that it would just be one more thing I’d have to do every day and waste more time that I could be spending managing client projects. Boy was I wrong!

Twitter doesn’t take long at all. You’re only allowed 140 characters per post. If you don’t post too many times in one day then it won’t take up so much time. I keep one tab open in my browser with Twitter running. All day long. When I’m ready to announce to the world what I’m doing then I just type in a quick “Blogging -” and post a link. Or, sometimes, I’ll ask a question like “Who does Sarah Palin think she is?” then link to my post.

By asking a question and providing a link like that, I leave the impression that I might be reading rather than posting. That way, if people are interested in the topic but don’t really care what I have to say then they’ll click the link. I’ve seen other people use a strategy like this: “Reading” followed by a link.

Over the weekend I posted that I was creating a job opportunity on Craigslist. I had a couple of people message me through Twitter asking me what was the job opportunity. I can’t do that with blogging.

Twitter is what is called Microblogging. It’s another way of marketing your business and you can reach certain people that you won’t find through blogging or other online marketing streams. As you meet new people and follow them on Twitter then some of them will follow you. You can even reply to messages they leave on Twitter and they can respond to yours as well.

Twitter is a nice addition to your blogging activities and allows you to quickly promote a blog post to your followers and fans. Thinking about Twitter? Sign up and follow me.