The Webmasters Network

A lonely fact of a webmasters life is the time spent locked away in solitude as we notch up backlinks to our websites. Some come organically through people visiting our sites and bookmarking us on a do-follow social networking site or by placing a link to us on one of their own websites such as a free Wordpress or Tumblr blog. Other links we create artificially by connecting with other webmasters and asking them to link to us in return for a link back to them or we add our sites into the many directories that are available to us. It takes a lot of time to build backlinks even when auto submitters are used.

A couple of days ago I learned about a directory project that is changing all that. It is called BungeeBones and offers 10,000 backlinks for the price of 1. Intrigued, I took a look, thought this sounds good – too good to be true; so I looked more deeply into it and contacted the project’s leader to find out more details. After several email exchanges, which I might write about in a later article, and a bit of research I concluded the project is genuine and will do as it heralds, namely, give thousands of backlinks for the free price of one.

BungeeBones is a directory with a difference – it is a remotely hosted human edited directory hub that allows webmasters to plug-in to it and display it on their own websites.  Any webmaster can submit URLs to the directory and can optionally place a version of the directory on a submitted  site. Each version of the directory is a stand alone product. Thousands of webmasters are already plugged in and connected through it so a link submitted to a directory on one site will potentially display in every other directory that is connected to the hub.  It is like using an automatic directory submitter: one click submits a link to thousands of directories.

If you are already inspired enough to use the BungeeBones directory to increase traffic to your website then please feel free to click here and move on to the Installation guide otherwise please read on if you need a little more conviction…

The hardest part of setting up any directory is getting people to submit to it. A directory is like a city – it is either living, breathing and bustling with activity or it is a ghost town with sand blowing in the wind, shutters banging and a few tombstones poking out of the ground. Most webmasters won’t submit to a dead directory that gives them the spooks. So the more links a directory has, the more alive it looks, the more likely a webmaster will submit to it and recommend it to their buddies.

The second hardest part of setting up a directory is convincing visitors to browse it. Again, visitors prefer directories that look busy and well used.

It is common knowledge that some webmasters make their directories look busy by pulling in links from other, better established, directories like DMOZ and Gimpsy. Such a tactic might give the impression of a thriving directory but it has one very big flaw: it gives away loads of valuable backlinks; and most of them are nonreciprocal. It creates a flood of traffic away from the directory with little to no traffic returned. Does that sound like a good deal to you?

The BungeeBones’ directory is already fully set-up, has thousands of users, is growing daily and is getting a lot of publicity. The iron does not get much hotter than this.

This is the first remotely hosted directory I have seen that apparently functions as a cloud network. It is a cross between a directory, an exclusive do-follow social bookmarking site, a search engine, an ad network and a traffic generator that provides serps benefits to webmasters. To submit a link to any one of the directories connected to the BungeeBones’ network is the same as to submit it to any other node of the directory. It is a one-to-many equation: one link submission equals many link submissions – a submission to one directory will potentially display at every other directory connected to the BungeeBones’ directory hub. It benefits all connected webmasters mutually.

Each directory set up within the network drives traffic to every other website plugged in to the network.

Each installed directory node has its own meta tags and webmasters have some control over the links displayed in their directory node. This reinforces the uniqueness of each directory to search engines.

You’re thinking, “Yeah, but, all the links and descriptions will look the same.” That is true, but ask yourself how many descriptions you use for your own sites when you submit them to multiple directories.

Most webmasters repeat the same anchor text and URL description in most of the directories they submit them. Search engines will arrive at each BungeeBones directory node, spider it, see a similar set of links, see different meta tags, see a different directory URL, will decide webmasters are too lazy to provide unique descriptions for their links then, after a cyber chuckle to itself, will index the directory as being different to every other. Consequently, each spidered link will count as a unique backlink.

There is no need to worry about spam. The directory is self-policing. Submitted URLs have to be approved by a human editor before they are added into the directory. After a URL has been approved for entry into the directory, webmasters and visitors can rate their value. The more valued the URL the more prominent its placement within the directory – in lay terms, higher votes, better placement. The system is hard to abuse due to IP monitoring and other, non-disclosed built in fail-safes.

So, what could make this directory better? It’s already set-up, it’s self-policing, provides traffic and backlinks; could it get any better?

Try this: participating webmasters earn commission from the sale of featured links and the sale of multiple category placements by the webmasters they refer to it. Plus participating webmasters get their links featured and inserted into multiple categories for %50 of the typical price. Remember the initial URL insertion into one category is free per domain so there is no cash outlay to join this expanding network.

To recap, the BungeeBones directory offers:

1. An easy to set up, fully functional directory
2. Pre-installed links which make the directory look busy and active
3. A directory that can be set up for each website a webmaster owns
4. A free to install, free to set up and free to submit to directory
5. A directory that can be uniquely styled to make it stand out
6. An easy to manage directory. It looks after itself – it is managed by BungeeBones so you can set it and forget it
7. Multiple category listings for any URL for a modest fee
8. Featured listings
9. Commission from upsells
10. Built-in anti spam system
11. Thousands of backlinks from the many websites that are already plugged into the directory
12. Targeted traffic
    

Installation

Installation is easy. It comes with one prerequisite: you must submit a URL to the directory before you can install it under that URLs domain.

There are two forms of the directory:

1. A standalone installation
2. A plugin for Wordpress and Joomla!

URL submission is simple. You can submit through any of the directories that are currently connected to the BungeeBones hub or you can add your submission through BungeeBones when you install a plugin into Wordpress or Joomla!

The directory can be installed into a folder under the top level domain (TLD) or in the root folder of the TLD of the submitted URL. You can install the directory as many times as you wish under as many names as you want under as many TLDs as you decide provided you install the correct code issued for the TLD you wish to install it at. For example:

If you go to my standalone directory at http://journalxtra/directory and submit your URL then you could install your directory on your own website at (assuming you submitted the URL http://example.com) either of

• example.com/directory.php, or
  
• example.com/subfolder/directory.php

The installation code for a directory is tied to the submitted domain to ensure accurate referral details and to maintain unique metatag information for the directory displayed at that domain.

To install the standalone directory

1. Submit your URL to any of the directory’s access nodes. This gives you access to your user control panel and enrolls you in the commission share program;
2. You will see your URL listed in the User Control Panel under the “User CP Home” tab. Next to your URL are the words “Add a Widget”. Click them.
3. The next screen provides both instructions for the installation and questions about the directory you wish to install. There are 7 questions and instructions in total, let’s go through their answers one-by-one:
   1. You have the choice to create an installation folder under your domain’s root folder. For example, your-domain.com/some-folder . If you create a folder for the installation then you should put the name of that folder as the answer to question number one. If you choose to install your directory at the root of your domain (e.g your-domain.com/directory.php) then you should answer “root” to question number one;
   2. Decide what you want to call the file that will hold your directory’s installation code. This file must be given a php file type (for example, directory.php). Whatever you name this file is the answer to question number two. Ensure there is no other file with the same name where you intend to create this one. Use your server control panel to create that file either at the root of your domain name or under the folder specified in answer to question number one (for example, create it at either http://example.com/directory.php or http://example.com/sub-folder/directory.php);
   3. Your directory will need a title so that it is easily recognized by human visitors and distinguished as unique by search engines. Think of a title and use it to answer question three. Whatever you put into here will form part of your directory’s metatag information. Do not use the name of your domain in this section or your metatags will display your domain name twice;
   4. Create another part to your directory’s title, a short slogan, and enter it in response to question four;
   5. Decide whether you want to display non-paying links or not. If you want your directory to be small and to only show paid submissions choose “no” in answer to question 5; otherwise choose “yes” and use question 6 to select whether non-paid (free) link submissions should be displayed indefinitely else for any period up to a year. It is this option that helps multiple directories to appear as unique entities to search engines due to the differences created among them by virtue of the links they display.
   6. Branding. Your directory can be branded as either BungeeBones or AdvertiPage. The differences between the two options are purely cosmetic from a human perspective and only affect the submit URL button and the landing page webmasters reach when they click it. Choose the brand that suits the impression you want to give fellow webmasters – AdvertiPage is more stylish.
4. Click “Submit Link Info” to be taken to a confirmation page. Check the setup details you entered on its previous page and click either back or next to cancel or confirm as appropriate.
5. The installation code. You have two options: use a predefined template or create your own template. The code should be pasted into the file specified during step 3 of the set up process. For example, if you created a file called directory.php then that is where the code should be pasted. The directory will not function correctly if the installation code is in the wrong place. The two code formats are:
   1. Code Format One which can be copied and pasted as is into your directory file, it will need only minor tweaks to style it;
   2. Code Format Two which is for more advanced webmasters and provides only a page header and the content creation script. This should be used by those who wish to create their own directory layout. Line 4 of part one of this code must have your affiliate ID entered into it. You can copy this from line 4 of Code Format One (displayed above it).
6. If needed, you can recreate your directory code if you make a mistake, want to move your directory to a new location or want to change the directory’s metatag titling.
7. Unless already present, remember to create a robot.txt file (can be left empty) and an .htaccess file (apache/linux servers). The .htaccess file should contain the line “DirectoryIndex name-of-directoy-file.php” (change “name-of-directoy-file.php” to the name of the file created in step 3.2 and do not include the quotes). Do not overwrite those files if they already exist.

To install the content management system widget

Wordpress

At the present time, the Wordpress plugin is still in beta and only works with the default permalinks structure. However that is no reason for you not to enjoy using this wonderful directory. You have at least four options to connect your own directory to your blog:

1. Use the plugin
2. Create a direct link to it in your blogroll
3. Put a link to it into a text widget
4. Create a page with a link to it inside of it

To use the plugin

The plugin is now at beta version 0.0.3 (although Wordpress still displays it as 0.0.1)  and now works with permalinks. It is under heavy development. I have spoken with the project’s leader, Robert Lefebure, on many occasions this past week and sincerely trust he will have the plugin out of beta soon – he has already made great strides toward that end. Here are the installation instructions:

1. Install it from here at Wordpress or locate it from your Dashboards Plugins tab by clicking Add New and typing BungeeBones into the search field.
2. Create a blog page called Directory (or anything else you like) and enter the following shorttag into it:
   
[bungeebones_directory]

   
3. Save the page and make a note of the page ID (it will look similar to this ?page_id=544). If you are using permalinks, you might need to disable them while you get the page ID (re-enable them after you have got your page ID). Disabling and re-enabling permalinks will not affect your blog’s functionality provided you re-enable the same permalink style.
   
4. Go to BungeeBones or one of its access nodes and submit your URL. Make a note of the URL number it displays after the submission process.
   
5. During the submission process you will be given the option either to create a Directory Widget or to just Add Your Link. If you wish to add your link at a later time then you can re-visit your Bungeebones Control Panel (User CP Home) and click the “Edit This Widget” link listed next to the URL you wish to place a directory at. The instructions for adding your directory either during the URL submission process or afterwards (at a later date) are the same as listed below.
6. The next screen provides both instructions for the installation and 7 questions about the directory you wish to install.The answers depend on where your blog is installed, let’s go through those answers one-by-one:
   1. The first question requires you to state where your Wordpress blog is installed. When you browse the homepage of your Wordpress blog, does your browser’s address bar show your domain name (e.g http://my-blog.com) or does it show your domain name and a folder name (e.g http://my-blog.com/superblog/ or http://my-blog.com/superblog/extra/). If your address bar only displays your domain name then your answer to question one is root if your address bar shows a folder or series of folders then your answer will be all those folder names inclusive of the forward slashes between them (e.g superblog/extra).
   2. The second question asks you for the name of your directory page. Enter the page ID you noted in step 3 above (e.g ?page_id=544).
   3. This question is split into two parts and is about meta tags. This question is optional but their completion will help distinguish your directory from other BungeeBones directories. In case you didn’t know, meta tags control information such as the title that is displayed within a web browser tab and the keywords that are displayed to search engine spiders. They do not affect the display of the page but can help to improve search engine placement.
      1. The description meta tag is often the description of a web page that is displayed by search engines when it is returned within search results. Enter the description you would like search engines to display to potential visitors when they see your site in their search results. A description should be less than 250 characters (approximately 50 words). BungeeBones automatically provides a description via dynamic meta tags. This description is complete and unique for each BungeeBones page but the same across all sites. If you want to make this description unique for your site, add a few words, say 10 (50 characters) that will inspire someone to click your link and not someone else’s link.
      2. Keywords are used by search engines to help determine the relevance of a website or web page to a search request. Search engines prefer to gather keywords from within a web page but placing them into a meta tag can help a search engine determine that your site is just what someone is looking for. Keep them relevant to your directory and separate each keyword or key phrase with a comma e.g “search directory,music search,find,”
   4. Decide whether you want to display non-paying links or not and if so for how long you want to display them.
   5. Your directory can be branded as either BungeeBones or AdvertiPage. The differences between the two options are purely cosmetic from a human perspective and only affect the submit URL button and the landing page webmasters reach when they click it. Choose the brand that suits the impression you want to give fellow webmasters – AdvertiPage is more stylish.
7. Click “Submit Link Info” to be taken to a confirmation page. Check the setup details you entered on its previous page and click either “Go Back” (to change them) or “Continue and Finish” (to confirm them).
   
8. All being well, when you submit the form you will be taken to a new page that shows some code. You need to get your affiliate number from it. Don’t worry, it’s easy to find. Look at Code Format One and find the 4th line down that looks similar to
   
$affiliate_num = 2584;

   The number at the end is your personal affiliate number. Make a note of it.
9. Return to your Wordpress Dashboard and click the “Editor” tab under “Plugins”. At the top right hand side of the plugin editor you will see a drop down menu, select the plugin called “BungeeBones Remotely Hosted Web Directory” and edit the file “bungeebones_config.php”. There might be two of them so edit both. They are listed toward the bottom of the file list on the right hand side of the page. One of them is as described below (it is usually the second bungeebones_config.php).
   1. Near the top of the file is a line that reads
      
$affiliate_num = ????;

      It’s the forth line of text from the top. Change the question marks (here highlighted in red) with the affiliate number noted in step 8.
   2. If your Wordpress blog is installed in a subdirectory of your root domain (e.g http://example.com/myblog as opposed to just http://example.com) then you will need to edit the eighth text line from the top that looks like this
      
$offset = -1;

      Raise the offset number by 1 for every folder listed in your blog’s URL address after the root domain name when you view your blog’s homepage in your browser’s address bar. For example, if when you view your blog your browser’s address bar reads http://example.com/my-blog then the offset number is raised by 1 from minus 1 to 0, like this
      
$offset = 0;

      Likewise, if your address bar reads http://example.com/folder/my-blog then the offset number will be raised by 2 from minus 1 to 1
      
$offset = 1;

   3. Are you using permalinks? If you are you will need to edit the eleventh text line down that read
      
$bb_permalink_name = "bungeebones-distributed-web-directory";

      Swap “bungeebones-distributed-web-directory” for the name of your directory page (e.g links-directory) so that it looks similar to this
      
$bb_permalink_name = "links-directory";

   4. If you wish to set up dynamic meta tags you will need to perform some minor surgery to your theme’s header.php file. The instructions for this are listed in bungeebones_config.php. I know they work on some blogs but getting it to work with some themes can be tricky. I’ll add these instructions here as soon as I am more familiar with setting them up
   5. Save the file and test your new Directory page. Some themes require new pages to be activated before they become visible in their menubar

To create a regular blogroll type link

Firstly, install create a standalone directory as described above. Then go to your Wordpress Dashboard and look down the left hand side of the page. Near the top is the “Links” tab, click Create a Link Category, create a category called Remote Directory then click Add New and enter the URL of your standalone directory and assign it to the newly created Remote Directory category. This will place a link to your directory on every page that displays your blog links. Some themes might need the link to be enabled before it becomes visible.

I won’t provide instructions for adding a link into either a blank page or a text widget because doing so is fairly straight forward once a standalone directory has been created.

Joomla!

The Joomla! directory component has been available for much longer than the one for Wordpress hence it is a much more mature and more popularly used product. I’ve not yet tried it. I promise I will create a test installation of Joomla! this week to try it and write up the installation instructions. In the meantime the Directory component and full installation instructions are available here at BungeeBones.

I will update this BungeeBones direcotory installation guide whenever merited by the script’s and plugins’ development.

Those Web Links Again

Submit a URL to BungeeBones

View my BungeeBones’ standalone directory

Download the BungeeBones‘ Wordpress Widget (please sign up through my URL to make me look good )

Download the Joomla! plugin, again please make me look good by signing up through my URL.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010

Some people love it, others hate it. Some think it’s what the Internet was created for yet others think it’s the biggest waste of bandwidth ever envisioned or created for use anywhere in the Universe. Like it or love it, Twitter is here, it’s staying and it’s getting BIGGER.

To understand why Twitter will feature big in the arsenal of webmarketers, socialites and me-mes everywhere we need to know who use it, why they use it and how that knowledge can be used to grab followers and sell products.

• An easy to use interface,
• A clear-look, no clutter design, and
• a configurable layout,

In short, Google and Twitter could be distant cousins. Both let people turn-up and browse; both let people sign-in and take ownership of their homepage; and together they satisfy our basic human drive to forage and to socialize. Not satisfied there, they then crowned those big gnashes by quenching our thirst to be control freaks; and Twitter goes that little bit further by allowing us to feel special, wanted and interesting by allowing us to compete for followers and shout to the world about what we are doing, when we did it and who we did it with. Indeed, in the 80’s and 90’s we had the mile-high club and now we have the tweeting riders club. Yes, some people can’t wait to drop their kegs and start twittering as they’re shivering with pleasure.

Before moving on, know that what follows below is information that most Twitter users will find useful and enlightening; however, it is intended for webmarketers and whoever wishes to artificially increase their number of followers. I only recommend the described practices for those who are not real microbloggers i.e if you are a genuine Twitter users then you shouldn’t really use these methods because you’ll only pollute your twitter stream with too many tweets to follow.

The best advice I  or anyone else can give anyone who wants to increase his or number of followers is this:

Be genuine and treat Twitter users as real people. Most Twitter accounts (over 1 billion of them) have a real person tweeting real thoughts and feelings who responds with thought and feeling to other people’s tweets. Do not find and create followers under the guise of friendship when your sole interest is to advertise. If you intend to use Twitter to advertise then say so or at least give some entertainment in return for loyalty.

I use my main Twitter account to microblog and to inform my followers about new posts at JournalXtra. I do not sell products through diondeville@Twitter.

However, I do have several other Twitter accounts that I do use to sell products. Through some of them, I offer their followers serialized narratives from fictional characters in which I plug the products I wish to sell them. I advertise that fictional status so that followers can make an informed decision of whether or not to follow.

With the above advice read, continue to read onwards and learn something new about twitter marketing and about increasing your number of twitter followers without getting your account suspended by Twitter.

So what is Twitter?

Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows its users to post up to 140 characters of text which can be read by other people. To give that short explanation a more meaningful definition, here are some example ideas of what it is to different people:

1. Webmarketers view it as an opt-in/opt-out marketing platform,
2. Networkers see it as a way to meet like minded people,
3. Most people see Twitter as a good, cheap, easy and convenient way to communicate,
4. Sociopaths think it’s a popularity contest,
5. Me-mes think it’s a cool place to show-off their latest antics,

To sum up Twitter in my own words:

Twitter is a wild west saloon in a town without a sheriff: a free-for-all micro-forum that lets people join in when they want, leave when they want, lock the gates when they need and sell snake-oil to whomever will buy.

Who uses Twitter and why?

Sociable people who like to chat with their friends, meet new people and flirt with deranged, hairy truck-drivers masquerading as twenty something pornstars;

People who want to know what their favorite celebrity had for breakfast or who their role models are bedding;

Webmarketers, businesses, celebrities and socialites who feel the need to blast us with their latest products, offerings and activities; and, on the more criminal side

Drug dealers, escorts, their punters and the rest who find it a good, near anonymous, way to arrange meet-ups.

In short, Twitter is used by everyday people, everyday stalkers, everyday criminals and everyday spammers – nearly all the people who were put into a ship and blasted off to a planet called Earth in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and all the rest who stayed behind to do something useful: the hair-dressers, the plumbers, the quantum physicists, the mothers, the politicians, the health and safety executives… Twitter doesn’t discriminate. It has something to draw-in everyone and its simplistic interface is so easy to use that not an airhead nor genius struggles to operate it despite lacking the regular common sense that is second nature to most.

How do we turn this knowledge into followers?

Firstly, we know that most tweeters see Twitter as a popularity contest so will follow almost anyone who follows them and any tweeter they happen to notice who follows someone they follow or someone who appears popular.

Secondly, by following people whether we know them or not we get a bit of a status rub. Some of those people who follow celebrities often follow their followers because they want to be part of a bigger group. That status rub makes an even bigger mark on whom their celebrity follows.

Thirdly, people search Twitter for text that relates to a subject they care about like their celebrity, role model, country, workplace, environment or a current news item. People search Twitter for just as many different subjects as they do Google, Bing and Yahoo. Mention someone’s search terms in a tweet and your tweet is likely to be found. When a reader likes it he or she might retweet it to his or her followers. Some people who read retweets look at its original tweeter’s profile and click the follow button.

Let’s convert those three observations into productive actions and short statements:

Action: Follow people to grow your followers

Statement: The more followers you have the more followers you will attract

Action: Follow celebrities to gain some of their status rub

Statement: People like to join up with other fans of their celebrities

Action: Follow celebrity followers and those whom are followed by celebrities

Statement: Many celebrity followers are predisposed to follow others

Action: Follow your competitors’ followers and the people your competitor follows

Statement: Your competitors will already have followers who are inclined to buy their products. If you can offer better for less then you might just steal your competitors’ customers.

Knowing how and why people use Twitter alerts us to how we can create attention grabbing tweets to increase our market reach. To my mind, there are four important characteristics of a good tweet:

1. It must appear to be natural,
2. The content must interest its intended target audience,
3. It must illicit an emotional response, and
4. The text must contain the right keywords and must impart the right meaning to create the desired effect.

People do not like to see their twitter stream filled with URLs and sales blurbs unless they choose to follow the sender because they are specifically interested in the products offered so try to keep a low ratio of tweets containing URLs compared to those containing no URL’s. It’s often a good idea to send three or four tweets consecutively within as short a time span as possible with a “click me now” URL embedded in only one of those tweets to ensure that your message is visible among the vast number of other tweets in your followers’ twitter streams.

Treat your twitter page as you would any other website you promote: give it the right look, send visitors to it and attract visitors to it.

Answer this question:

when you scan your twitter stream for tweets by a specific sender, what do you look for?

I reckon you look for the tweeter’s avatar. You are not alone. It’s easier to recognize a picture than read a name. Use an avatar that attracts attention and stands out from all other avatars. Only change it if it does not grab enough attention.

How do we make use of this dream marketing and social networking platform?

The Five Steps to Twitter Success

There are 5 steps to Twitter success. Yes, you read that right, just five steps that will help you utilize the information described above and earn and collect followers, talk with your followers, and organize them into related topic groups for easy access to their tweets.

1. Create a Twitter Account
2. Register with SocialOomph
3. Connect with Refollow or Twerpscan
   
4. Register with different Twitter directories
5. Engage your followers

Those five steps are the important factors of successful twitter management. Let’s work through those steps one-by-one:

Create a Twitter Account

Give this one a little thought. What’s your purpose for using Twitter? Do you want to connect with like-minded people? What are you trying to sell? Gather a few ideas then decide whether you should register under your real name, a pseudonym, your business name, your website name or a title that relates to your product. Remember you can have multiple accounts. There are many free desktop and web-based twitter applications that assist the management of multiple accounts.

Click here to go to Twitter

Register with SocialOomph

SocialOomph is a Twitter, Facebook and StatusNet automation service. It autofollows new followers and sends them one of any number of your preset welcome messages and it lets you create Tweets to publish at scheduled times. It does not recommend people you should follow nor does it use access to your account to advertise itself. SocialOomph will not, on its own, cause your account to be suspended provided you use it responsibly and follow its usage guidance notes.

Do you use twitter lists? SocialOomph can automatically organize all your twitter followers into twitter lists; I’ll explain more about these lists in a few moments. It does much more to ease the burden of looking after a large number of followers than any other twitter app I have so far found.

It comes in two and a half flavors: free, paid and trial. The free version is very usable and allows you to schedule tweets, to auto follow new followers, to auto unfollow those who unfollow you, and to create welcome messages to be sent automatically to new followers. The paid version additionally offers automatic twitter list creation. Both flavors do much more besides. The trial of the paid version is well worth taking up just to get your twitter lists organized and your followers categorized accordingly. Make the most of the trial version, build up your followers before you decide to use it.

Click here to use SocialOomph

Connect with Refollow or Twerpscan

This is an online application that allows you to sort your followers, mass unfollow those who no longer follow you and mass follow those who follow (or are being followed by) other tweeters.

Do not follow or unfollow more than 50 people per day or Twitter will label you a bot or spam account thus will suspend you or remove you from Twitter search results.

Click here to use Refollow

Click here to use Twerpscan

Register with Twitter Directories

Some people find people to follow by visiting the many twitter directories to search for people who share their interests or who tweet about subjects they care about. You won’t get many followers through them unless you’re particularly unique or famous but you will get some over time so register with them. Used in conjunction with Refollow, these directories can dramatically increase your entourage of followers who are interested in your products.

Use directories to find people who might be interested in your products then use Refollow to find and follow all of their followers and all of the people they follow.

A note of caution: do not follow and unfollow more than a 300 people per day or Twitter will label you a bot or spammer thus will suspend your account.

Here are 6 Twitter directories to get you going:

TwitDir

Wefollow

Twellow

JustTweetIt

My Twitter Directory

Twitr

Engage your Followers

You must interact with your followers if you want them to click your links, read your tweets, retweet your tweets and suggest you to their followers. The best way to interact is to read the tweets that appear in your twitter stream and reply to the ones that you can meaningfully comment on. Remember to read your @’s and private messages and reply to those that warrant it.

Click the Trend Words displayed to the right hand side of your twitter stream to find tweets to which you can send @messages; and use the many tweet search applications to find tweets that mention subjects relevant to your interests. For example, were I selling travel products I would search tweets for the key words “I”, “want”, “travel” (or their equivalents) then send @messages to some of the tweeter’s who wish to travel. To be careful, I would follow them too and possibly strike up a conversation first.

Twitter is a free-for-all quick-fire forum where people expect to receive regular updates about the people they follow so update your status regularly with meaningful tweets.  Make statements, observations and witticisms about anything and ask questions to elicit responses. Don’t make every tweet a sales tweet or URL tweet, they’re not required, expected or liked except when the recipient has followed a tweeter to specifically receive sales and promotional tweets.

And for that extra smile, go that extra mile

Join some of the games that are available to Twitter users. I’ve joined several games and have met some delightful people and made good friends while playing them. Twitter games are a good way to increase your reach to real people – when people like your playing style or if they want to chat with you they follow your twitter profile.

As said earlier, those are the five steps (plus the sneaky sixth) that will help you develop you online social profile with Twitter. Many people who use Twitter also use Facebook, MySpace, Digg and other Social Networking and Bookmarking communities. If you have a proven track record and strong following through Twitter your twitter followers will also join you in other online social communities.

Here’s a Little Bonus Information

Twitter’s Mysterious @ and # Marks

There is much more to twitter than just sending and receiving short messages. The message box accepts a whole range of commands that make it easy to connect with others and join in conversations. Here are two that are very useful for marketers but be careful not to over use them because doing so could get your twitter account suspended:

@ is a way to communicate with a specific user with a tweet targeted at him or her. The great selling point of these @ communications is that you do not need to be following or be followed by the recipient; all you need to send an @message is the recipient’s user name. It’s usage is simple: put an “@” immediately in front of the recipient’s user name then type your message. @Messages appear in your twitter stream and in the target recipient’s twitter stream and @Messages page. @Messages are public and do appear in all of your follower’s twitter streams.

# is a method of tagging a tweet. More commonly known as the hash symbol, when used to tag tweets it as called a hashtag. The idea is simple: place a hashtag in front of a word within a tweet and that word then categorizes that tweet. Any word may be used as a hashtag by placing a hash symbol (#) in front of it. Ideally, that word should describe the tweet’s subject but some people try to gain extra popularity for their tweets by tagging words that do not relate to their tweets but which are highly searched for at the time of the tweet’s creation. Multiple hashtags may be used within one tweet and they may be placed anywhere within it. Savvy people who search for tweets search for hashtags. More information about hashtags is available here at Twitter.

More messaging commands are detailed in Twitter’s help page.

…And Twitter’s Not-so-Secret Functions

Twitter provides some excellent functions to make it easy to share, organize and search tweets, pictures and videos

Retweet is a way to send a tweet from any twitter user to all of your followers. It could be a tweet from one of your followers or a tweet from someone you do not follow or who does not follow you. A retweeted tweet is a good tweet. It could get you more followers and it could get your products better noticed.

Lists are a means to categorize the people you follow. This allows you to view tweets from a specific group of followers e.g family members, news broadcasters or cartoon creators.

Twitter Search and Twitter Advanced Search is Twitter’s own search engine that allows people to search the global tweet stream. It is not the best option for searching Twitter (two better alternatives are given below).

TwitPic is Twitter’s own answer to Flikr; it allows tweeters to upload and share their pictures.

TwitVid allows people to share videos and tweet via video. I am unsure whether TwitVid is an official Twitter product; it probably isn’t but what the hell, it’s functional and useful.

These next two products are not official Twitter offerings; they are produced by third parties. Both make it easier to search tweets and see current hot trends:

TwitScoop is a tweet search engine and trending application. This package connects with your twitter account and assists with analyzing it.

Tweetzi is a simple search and trending application that does not require access to your twitter account.

The Six Most Common Twitter Mistakes

It’s very easy to be get a Twitter account suspended or removed from Twitter search. These are the six actions that will definitely get you into Twitter’s blacklist:

• Repetedly posting duplicate or near-duplicate content (links or tweets)
  
• Abusing trending topics or hashtags (topic words with a # sign)
• Sending automated tweets or replies
• Using bots or applications to post similar messages based on keywords
• Posting similar messages over multiple accounts
• Aggressively following and un-following people

That list comes directly from Twitter’s list of no-no’s. Pay attention to that list because Google indexes Twitter Search. The last thing you want to do is to be banned from appearing in Twitter Search because it will damage the reach of your tweets.

If you do find yourself blacklisted then all is not lost. A quick guide to getting de-blacklisted is available here.

To Summarize

Write good tweets, do not send links in every tweet, communicate with your followers, use hashtags to categorize your tweets, organize your followers into lists make use of SocialOomph to engage and organize your followers, use ReFollow to find followers, use TwitScoop to research current trends and find tweets that might be good sales leads and register with the many available Twitter directories. Now go forth and twitter

You can read some facts about Twitter, Facebook and other social bookmarking sites here:

Trak.in – Social Media Statistics Facebook Twitter Flickr Linkedin

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