I'll start with a few.

1. Get you twitter profile honed to make it interesting, and to the point.
2. Start a few interesting tweets on the account, and keep tweeting relevant material.
3. Now start working on following relevant accounts whilst retweeting others, and commenting on others. If they find you and your account interesting they should start to follow you back.

Thanks engine, that's a good start.

A couple more questions:

1. Anyone show me a profile of someone else that's "well honed" ?

2. Maybe this should have been asked first - Should I start out with writing as if to get people to visit my site and should the site URL be given in every tweet?

FarmBoy

do not promote your site in your tweets at all (well maybe occasionally) - not until you have built up a following (this takes months not days)

use twitter as much as you can, you'll begin to see patterns quickly - like the accounts that have a large following who follow you, they'll unfollow you a few days later if you don't follow back, even if you do follow them they'll never even see your tweets as they follow so many other accounts ... they probably use lists and only look at the tweets from accounts on their lists ... if you're not on one then they'll never read a single tweet. many other 'types' of user become apparent very quickly ...

my view is to try and connect with accounts that seem to be real people and who retweet. befriend these people, build relationships with them.

send personal messages, don't get into an ego zone regarding number of followers, as soon as you begin to get a few loads of business accounts will start following you, nearly all are a waste of time.

Thanks for the info

nearly all are a waste of time

I've seen that with a number of Tweets I've read. It's almost got me wondering 'What's the point?'

Which brings me to another topic, hopefully not too off-topic - Has anyone tried TinyLetter? They seem to have some connection with Twitter.


FarmBoy

>> 'What's the point?'

there is a point!

i'd honestly say the majority of twitter users are businesses trying to promote their businesses and have no clue - i look at some/most people's/accounts tweets and they are just a list of links to their website ... who is ever going to click through, who cares about them, they genuinely add nothing to the 'community' (whatever that means)

i think a lot of users are following some guide to riches they've seen on the internet at some point... you can retweet the same stuff often, use programs to automate your posting, post simultanously on twitter/facebook/etc etc.

i'm no guru, the limited success i've had with twitter has been unexpected - in that, i'm in niche retail and also connected with a specific area - what i've got from twitter is that i've learnt stuff about my own business that i didn't know before (by reading what others have to say), i've been in my game 30 years and thought i knew most things :) ... i've also met real people in the 'real' world through an initial twitter contact ... i might have made a sale or two from one of the websites, that may have come from someone who initially found out about me from twitter, but for me that hasn't been a big part of it at all ... i have had a couple of articles written about via connections made in twitter ... so possible web traffic and the odd sale has coem like that ... but direct sales not so much ... i think it is a subtle medium.

I am also pretty new to Twitter, I have only been using it for a few month. I must say the results have been very positive. I operate in an very small niche industry, driven mostly by academics (which I am not). Twitter has allowed me to connect with some of these people and begin to gain their respect.

I post a link to my blog every few weeks whenever I post something new, these post get little traction. In between these posts I watch what is going on with others and when something interesting arises, where I can contribute something meaningful, I participate in the conversation. This participation drive those participating or watching the conversation to my twitter page, they then see my blog posts and then check out my website. Direct traffic from twitter is minimal, but I have gained links and exposure and that helps drive traffic from Google.

I have used Facebook for a few years now and it stinks, my posts go no where, they get seen by nobody, not even the three people that friended me. Nothing! Wait no... not nothing, in return for my posts Facebook spams me with messages and emails about promoting my posts. The only reason I keep my Facebook page alive, is simply so that it exists. Otherwise it is a complete and utter waste of resources.

Think of twitter as MLM (multi level marketing) where you walk into a convention hall with a 1,000 voices going at once and just hope you can find some one to talk WITH much less talk to.

You have to be more educated, more witty, more suave, more sophisticated, more energetic, more focused, more prominent, more extroverted, more introverted, more casual, more upfront, more more, more...

Make yourself an ICON on TWITTER ... then drop the "website word".

twitter is all about them, not you. You'll have to sneak your stuff in through the backdoor.

And you CAN'T do this in less than 90 days and I mean 3-6 hours a DAY EVERY DAY for the fastest results. Otherwise you're talking YEARS.

I am learning a few things about Twitter, thanks to everyone for participating and please add more as you see fit.

Here's a basic question. Let's say I collect and study Red Rocks (hypothetical). Will my Twitter posts about Red Rocks be picked up and distributed by Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. like I would expect for a web site?

Same question asked a different way. Does a person need a web site or can he survive/thrive via Twiter only?


FarmBoy

Here's a basic question. Let's say I collect and study Red Rocks (hypothetical). Will my Twitter posts about Red Rocks be picked up and distributed by Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. like I would expect for a web site?

Same question asked a different way. Does a person need a web site or can he survive/thrive via Twiter only?

Maybe I should ask that a different way - Other than Twitchy, are there other places that act as a "search engine" for Twitter messages?

FarmBoy