I have to say I'm not a fan of twitter. As with everything I come across, I gave it a go before shooting it down, but I didn't find it very good. It's not particularly interesting or useful and is a really badly constructed website. Possibly if they added more functionality to it I would go back on it but until they give it a little more clout and purpose I'm afraid I'm out!

Fair enough, I think its a pretty useful tool in following what businesses are up to and what not. But each to their own. Its catching on pretty quick so I thought it best to get on board!

OH and my twitter is http://twitter.com/KatieHoughton for anyone who is a fan.

Hi

I have not really used Twitter at all - I am going to give it a go though - I signed up about two years ago and have never used it once! I have just ressurected my account and clicked follow on your link!

Hope you don't mind - The people in my address book who are Twitterers don't seem to be doing much!

It might not be the huge following you suggested but it is a start!!!

Cheers
Tim

ps http://twitter.com/tdl123
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Hey Tim,

Thanks for following me on Twitter, I didn't have the highest of hopes for the massive following I implied, but as you said its good to get something going!

If you use twitter correctly it can really help drive traffic to your website
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Hi,
yes , is you use it in correct way its a useful for traffic generation tool.........
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http://www.impactlogos.com.au/logodesigners.html

I'm not really understanding your idea, care to elaborate more? :-)

As for Twitter - I am usually the first to jump on the bandwagon with these things but to be honest I have been avoiding it like the plague and in my industry I really do not see much benefit in it anyway.

As with a lot of these web 2.0 user based sites, you can end up putting more time and effort into them than you get back in return. Obviously it will work well for certain niche groups with large followings but just not mine so until someone persuades e otherwise or i "see the light" then i be a Twitterer not : - )
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Matthew Anderson
UK business franchises for sale and franchise information resource

Hi Matt,

Basically I thought it might be nice to for those who were interested to find eachother on twitter, as the more people who are following you, the more interest you are likely to get from (potential) important people.. In short, making more contacts and doing general networking.. which I've found to be at times a little limiting on here.

I don't currently use twitter enough but I think it can be really useful for getting an instant response about a question, or getting small jobs done. I don't think it takes up a lot of time, the post you can send are only short so they have to be to the point, y'know?

But I can see what your saying, I suppose it depends on what you do, as a freelancer myself, it's quite handy to see what's going on in the world and making new contacts. It's just another social networking site, but I think its a good concept. I'm in no way trying to persuade you though

I hope this shed a little light.

Well

Since posting my "i do not use twitter" post I have signed up! I also signed up to a twollo which automates some of the work of following people and have received 100 site visitors in 3 days of using it, although untargeted traffic it's still nice to get a boost

I'm still not 100% sure of what you are trying to say but.... There seems to be a fair few people having already seen the "power of twitter" and are offering additional twitter services. http://www.twollo.com being one. If you were to start a Twitter service then now looks to be the right time for it before too many other jump on the bandwagon.
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Matthew Anderson
UK business franchises for sale and franchise information resource

Hi

Twitter is a fantastic tool for driving highly targetted traffic to your website, I have dozens of profiles based on different 'keywords'.

The quick and easy way to get followers then traffic is to set up a twitter account based on your keyword so if you want to set up a 'car styling' twitter account then use car styling as your username (just got this for a client),.

Once you are set up then go to http://www.twellow.com this is a directory of twiter users. Here I looked in the Automotive section and found a guy who works for Ford Motor with about 11,000 followers.

Next go to http://www.flashtweet.com/ and log into your twitter account then go to mass follow, then paste the person's username in that you want to follow.

Check select all then click follow. (do not do more than once every 24hrs)

This will give you people that are targetted to your offer.

The key to this is to offer quality information on your site and not to spam them, I know that every time I tweet it's money in the bank!

Kind regards

John
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A Free What to Do Guide BEFORE you Set Up Your Website! http://www.smallbusiness101.co.uk/blog/resources
My Free Traffic Blog http://www.trafficsecrets101.com/

Hi all,

Thats some really useful info, thanks John! I'm just going to look into that now I'm in serious need of some site traffic. I found this which is quite interesting and twitter related...

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1773161

KHM

If you want to drop me an email letting me know your site address I can give you some ideas on getting more traffic.

John (john 'at' johnpawlett.com)
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A Free What to Do Guide BEFORE you Set Up Your Website! http://www.smallbusiness101.co.uk/blog/resources
My Free Traffic Blog http://www.trafficsecrets101.com/

I hatedit at first but now see Twitter as an incredibly useful source of stimulus, ideas, information and news. My conversion to the Twitterverse came about by taking the following steps:

1. I radically cut back on the people I follow and regularly do a pruning exercise. It doesn't take long to sort out the most useful of the twitterati. In my case, these mostly tweet links to articles and blogs, rather than uttering gnomic wisdom about their toothpaste preferences. I now know which people post links that are usually worth reading.
2. I don't obsess about how many people follow me. I'm not trying to be Stephen Fry. I want to use Twitter as a business tool, so focusing on a small number of highly valuable twitterers makes sense and in turn I only want followers who share my interests and specialisations. I can see no benefit to either of us in a Minnesotan farmer following me (unless of course he needs a marketing strategy!)
3. I try to be generous. When I like a link I re-tweet it and give credit to the source, using the recognised RT and @ Twitter conventions. That way I get re-tweeted too and that's a much better way to attract relevant followers
4. I try to be disciplined. I use it for down time, over a coffee, while travelling or for defined short periods, otherwise I can get very distracted and go off piste on a wondrous 'follow that link' journey that leaves me forgetting what I set out to do in the first place.
5. I use it for research. If I need to know something I tweet a request for information or suggested sources.
6. For my start-up (completely separate from my marketing consultancy) I have a separate Twitter account with a completely different group of followers and people I follow. Posting links to my site and blog and seeding links on theirs is a fantastic tool for building highly relevant traffic to the site.
7. I have nothing to do with “bulk” followers – you can usually tell these as they have massive follower numbers but no postings! They have acquired their followers via a bought programme – and rely on the fact that so many people have “auto follow” set up.

So now I am a Twitter convert. It enables me to keep up to date with developments in my chosen fields. It has introduced me to new sources of information and valuable opinion and, now that I have got used to processing the 140 character tweets and have limited these to people worth listening to, it is a fast and efficient way to get to the stuff I really want to read.

www.antconsulting.co.uk

i am not really convinced on it.. basically because i don't find it convincing.. i mean, i would prefer Facebook if advertising is the sole purpose in joining networking communities.
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Sales Agents

I've not really got into Twitter and can't understand the whole fuss. I'm sure I'm missing something because it's clearly very popular! No doubt I'll be converted in the not too distant future...
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everythingZing.com
Gyms | Pilates | Yoga | Fitness

I use Twitter all the time...not directly as a business tool but, if i need an opinion on something quickly the community is there to respond worldwide. Also if i need some one to test a web page on a particular mobile phone that i can't emulate..someone around the world will help...it's something else.
Chris
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Chris Briggs - iTact - The digital business card solution: www.16tons.co.uk

I am not a big fan of using Twitter, but you can't knock the site/company at all. They are quickly creating a massive empire.
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I'm another who's yet to be converted by twitter. I'm still skeptical despite it's growing popularity. The question I would ask is how do "I" use twitter to direct traffic to my site? But some suggestions are already posted above. I'm going to have to take a while to see what information and twitter tricks would actually be useful in my trade.

I will say that should facebook shudder or ever stumble, it's likely that google will suddenly have a whole load of features ready to be added to twitter. They're smart to develop a very narrowly focused tool and not compete with an all purpose website like facebook or myspace. But when the time comes, they'll have such a widespread user base already that they won't have to worry about the user adoption rate. Kudos to google if that be in their plans.
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