First of all if you ever want to shorter a web link that you’re going to use on twitter you have to use www.bit.ly . Bit.ly is an excellent free tool to shorten your url. For example: you have this address: http://twitterskills.com/twitter-marketing/7-steps-to-a-ton-of-traffic/ you can use the url shorter  Bit.ly to make this address smaller in size so your whole tweet is not just a web address. You would go to bit.ly and submit this url and they will give you a shorter url, for example something like this: http://bit.ly/911A0 . The whole purpose of this tool is to shorter your url so it doesn’t take up your whole tweet you tweet!

1.  go to bit.ly submit this url  http://twitterskills.com/twitter-marketing/7-steps-to-a-ton-of-traffic/

2. Bit.ly will  come back with shorten version of this site such as http://bit.ly/911A0

3. Use the short url to tweet the website!

So now that you know how to use bit.ly to shorten your url we can go to the pro league of using bit.ly. Many people don’t know that you can track the statistics or how many people have clicked on your shortened link of bit.ly/website-that-you-shorted. Yes you can run statistics on your free short url, why you would want to run statistics on websites you tweet is a whole new subject that I promise to cover soon because its very important for you do so.

Here is 1 step to track your Tweet link:

1.  After you created your short url on bit.ly just add /info/ right after bit.ly

here is an example:

bit.ly/info/911A0

That’s it guys, nice an easy twitter skill for your business.  Soon I will cover the topic of using statistics and why your business absolutely  needs it.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Since Twitter was launched more then 10 BILLION have been sent on Twitter.

The milestone was announced by GigaTweet, a site which records a real-time history of all tweeting activity. However, they weren’t able to reveal the actual message because it was sent by someone using a protected profile. Perhaps it was interesting and insightful? We’ll never know.

Twitter usage continues to grow at an exponential rate. It took more than 2 years to reach 1 billion tweets, 15 months to reach 10 billion, and the 20th billion is expected some time in July 2010. An estimated 600 tweets are sent per second resulting in 50 million per day.

It’s a worrying statistic. By 2020, Twitter will account for 99.4% of all Internet traffic and every man, woman and child on the planet will be sending 350 tweets every day. Should we be concerned?

Who would have thought that something such as Twitter would become such a huge phenomenon as it has. You can find any subject to read about on Twitter and can share anything you want to. It is another way for over crazed fans to know exactly what their favorite celebrities are doing on their down time and for friends to keep in touch and share their most exciting and gloomy news to their followers. It gives us all a way to keep track of public news and affairs and learn different sides to every point.  We live in a world where it is perfectly acceptable to post your everyday activities for the public to see.

But it is so much more than just that. It is an excellent way for businesses, large and small, to promote themselves to millions for free! It is an excellent marketing tactic that actually does work! Small businesses are constantly looking to get their name out there and expand. The number of businesses on Twitter makes me think that it must be a successful strategy. Check out all your favorite businesses tweets and know all their latest news and promotions. Also follow me at www.twitter.com/skills4tweeting

Yes I mean it, do not over tweet or over update because if you send too much information out into your stream, people will tune you out or even worse, they will even un-follow you.

Here is sixteen and more reasons why your business should start using Twitter!

1. Dell

2. Starbucks

3. JetBlue

4. ComCast

5. TheHomeDepot

6.  Southwest Airlines

7. Whole Foods Market

8. HRBlock

9. Best Buy has built Gina Community

10. Popeyes

11. ATTNews

12. Forrester Research

13. BreakingPoint

14. Ford

here are some cool Ford Twitter accounts you can check out:

• FordCustService;
• FordDriveOne;
• FordDriveGreen;
• FordTrucks;
• FordMustang;
• FordRacing;
• FordRacingNWide.

15. Samsung

16. Kodak Chief Blogger

So if you don’t have a business twitter account GO and set one up now. Stop being ignorant, you and your business need it! These million billion shmillion big brand companies use twitter to create buzz and new costumers, and if they need twitter to create buzz and new costumers you definitely need it too!

The ultimate goal when using Twitter is to network, and to do that, you have to begin by finding people to follow. It’s a good idea to build a list of followers that are within your industry’s target audience, it is beneficial to add Twitter users with outside interests to your list as well who might add some variety to your network.

Twitter isn’t just a place to update what time you brushed your teeth or what you thought of today’s cloudy weather. It is much more powerful than that, especially when you’re following a network of people in your industry.  Twitter allows you to connect with your peers and get new ideas, start joint ventures, and other deals that may not have been able to materialize in other typical business activities.

Aside from the amazing business opportunites that often arise, Twitter also allows you to simply “vibe” with your peers and those in the same industry that understand everything you’re passionate about as well as the trouble you may be having. What would once be limited to a very small network of people “at the office”, can now virtually be thousands of people who connect with you on several levels. The support that you can get out of that connection is priceless.

Sounds, good, right? But how do you go about finding these people to connect with?

Well, there is more than one way to find followers on Twitter. Here are a few:

• Choose from “Everyone”
  When you’re on your main home page, you can click the link on the right column that reads "Everyone". This will literally show you tweets from everyone on Twitter. Grab yourself a cup of joe and scroll through until you see something that catches your attention. Click their name to see more of their tweets, and if you like them, follow!
• Find People!
  There’s actually a button at the top of the twitter home page that allows you to search by people’s name. This is great for whipping through a list of people you already know to see if their on twitter, either by their real name, or by a username you know they typically use.
• Other Networks
  If you have email contact lists on any of the major accounts online (Gmail, MSN, etc.) then you can choose “Find On Other Networks” on your twitter home page as well, and it will allow you to import any contacts you may have that are in the Twitter system.
• Suggested Users
  Twitter has a “suggested users” link as well, but all too often it’ll just show you celebrity names and other people that won’t actually do much for your business. However, if you’re a huge fan of Brad and Angelina, then you might still want to check out this feature.

There are still a few other obvious ways such as using the Search function that will show you results based on name ot topic that you enter.

You can find someone with a list of the same type of people you’re looking to follow. On their home page, you’ll see a link on the right that reads “following”. Click that and you’ll see their whole list. Start browsing!

Of course, you will also be following people who have chosen to follow you. It’s a good idea to take a look at their latest 10-20 tweets before you actually click the follow button though, because you do want to have at least something in common. Some people choose to simply make it a rule to follow whoever follows them. It’s up to you. Either way, start building your followers!

The best way to get started harnessing the power of Twitter is to just jump in with both feet by creating an account and starting to tweet!  A twitter account will only take you a few minutes to create and you’ll be addicted in about 15 minutes afterward.

The main Twitter page is certainly not confusing or difficult to navigate. Simply go to Twitter.com and you will see a page that looks like this:

Click the green button that reads “Get Started – Join”, and you will be taken to very basic registration form that looks like this:

Choosing your username:

Give some thought to your username if you’re using it to represent yourself as a person, or a marketer, and not just your website. This is the name people will know you by, so try to find an available name that suits you, and not just a name like “twit579J” that would look like a spammer’s account.

You are able to choose a name that i a maximum of 15 characters (without spaces) so you need to use that limit wisely. If you want to choose a name that directly promotes your business, that’s acceptable, but having a sort of personal touch seems to work better on the big scheme of things.  The key to all this is the “being social” part, and in most cases, a more personal name will seem more genuine.

Other Settings:

Once you’re finished creating a username for your account, you’ll be taken to a screen that auto-suggests some followers for you. You can quickly glance through these or you can simply skip this step and be taken right to your new account home page.

That was basically it. No sweat, right?

Now, you’ll have a page that asks you the infamous “What are you doing?”.

However, don’t forget that, unless someone happens to stumble across your account, nobody is going to see you until you have followers so you might want to add a tweet or two and then head off to find some people you’d be interested in and choose to follow them by clicking the “follow button” at the top of their page.

Customize And Personalize Your Account:

You still have some settings in the backend of your Twitter account that looks like this:

From here, you can choose to set a couple notification preferences (such as mobile communication via Twitter), add a short bio, and customize your Twitter page a little bit visually (which is highly recommended).

Twitter has some built-in designs for the background of your page under the “design” tab, but you also have the option of uploading your own custom image to be used as a background as well!

That’s it! Now that you have an account, start tweeting and networking in!

What’s up tweeples? Anyone who wants to follow me, please do so, and send me a quick tweet on Twitter.

If that makes absolutely no sense to you, then read on, because you need to get involved and grasp the power of  one of the hottest (if not THE hottest!) marketing tools available on the Internet right now!  That tool is known as Twitter.

Twitter is a website that allows you to keep in contact with people in an ultra-compact way known as micro-blogging.  The term fits Twitter perfectly as each post made from a user is limited to a maximum of only 140 characters. Now, when you first get a glimpse of the size of a 140 character message, the first thing that comes to mind is probably something like “what could I possibly say of any value that would fit into that amount of space?”.  However, once you start particpating and get the hang of things, you’ll quickly be amazed at how informational a “tweet” can be.

A “tweet” is the user’s term that replaces what you would typicall refer to as a “post”, or a “message”. In fact, many Twitter users also refer to themselves and others as tweeples.

The Basics Of Twitter

Twitter is a social platform that allows users to share their tweets with each other in real time similar to a chat program. There are millions of people currently signed up with profiles on Twitter and the messages range from every end of the spectrum from life’s little chit chats, to marketing tips and business deals.

When you create a profile on twitter, you get to choose a unique user name, and your page has a bio section that also allows you to upload a photo, create a short bio, and link to a url of your choosing.

This same profile page has a link that reads “follow”.  This is where the magic happens. When you’re using Twitter, you only see updates (tweets) from people that you choose to “follow”.

As your list of followers grow, so does your network capabilities as you can reach all those people who have chosen to follow you, instantly. The power lies in your network. As you begin to capture the interest of your followers,  you have the potential to reach their network of followers as well…and so on…and so on.

Twitter is free, it’s fun, it’s great for business networking. The only possible bad side is that it takes discipline to not get addicted and spend too much time on it when you should be working on other things, so maybe you better stick to a rigid schedule with your “tweet blogging”!

With over 6 million users and counting, there’s no debate as to whether or not Twitter is popular. At present time, Twitter is estimated to be growing at a rate of 8000 new users daily.

Twitter’s attracts all kinds. You’ll find famous actors as well as your average citizen in small town USA. There’s writers, designers, small business owners, big corporations , and even the leader of the free world had a team of Internet savvy supporters that used Twitter as part of the massive campaign that led him to win the 2008 election.  If Barack Obama encourages Twitter, then you might want to check it out.

So, What Makes twitter So Popular?

The funny thing about twitter is, at least at this point, it’s popularity is a huge part of what makes it popular!  When you have a social site with over 6 million users, including large TV networks, the President Of The United States (indirectly), you know it’s beywond “catching on”.

When something is this viral already and then gets major mainstream attention, then it becomes THE place to connect with people, and like it or not, that’s what it is fast becoming.

Before the current hype though, Twitter gained it’s initial popularity from solid features that were new, exciting, and worked well in today’s fast forward digital lifestyle.  Everything constantly needs to be faster and easier, and Twitter delivered that with micro-blogging.

Humans thrive on relationships and interaction with each other, and Twitter created the ability to do that in real time at an extremely fast pace. In addition to the speed, Twitter also makes it possible to make the connection with your friends and followers at any given time. It’s not just for marketing either. Let’s say you’re working late and you  have trouble with an application you are using. Jump on Twitter and post for help. Often, depending on your number of followers, you can have a solution to your problem from a friendly follower in a matter of minutes.

Twitter is also extremely addictive which adds to it’s popularity and viral movement. If everyone you know is “on Twitter” whenever you asked them what they’re doing, then you feel obligated to try it out. Just don’t let yourself get too addicted!