[caption id="attachment_130" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Tweet Sweet and Meet"][/caption] Now we will talk about ways to obtain new customers using Twitter. I have a few great tips for you which will help increase your chances for transforming regular twitter followers in to lifelong buyers.

Let’s hop right in and discuss how you can utilize Twitter to carry out your market research. Every business has a target market however the basic fact is that many decision makers frequently miss the mark because they don’t know the true needs of their market.

Through the use of Twitter, it is possible to easily listen to the needs of your prospects, the problems they are currently facing and the type of help that they want.

Anytime you meet somebody new on Twitter it’s wise to try to establish a good relationship from the start. Think like your customer. You buy from those that you trust and like. Your target market also behaves the same way. It’s important, particularly in social marketing you will get to know your clients and do your best to earn their trust and confidence.

An effective rule of thumb is to try and maintain ninety percent of your tweets filled with helpful content and limit your promotions. In that way, it is possible to attract more followers and subsequently customers.

In order to showcase your experience on Twitter you will want to post quality posts on your blogs, web page and other sites, like article directory EzineArticles.com. Then share them with your followers. As we will discuss in the last lesson post there are numerous resources that work with Twitter that will immediately check the blogs you’ve posted and share them instantly on your page.

Offering educational materials, seminars, video training and social networking activities will also go a long way when you’re trying to convert your followers into paying customers.

As a matter of fact I recently discovered an excellent website that allows you to stream live video on your Twitter page and chat real time with your followers, so if you’re not camera shy, plug in your webcam! This can be a great way to create an immediate connection for you and your followers.

You’ll find out more here:

There are several strategies you can use to help the changeover from follower to customer by using Twitter. Just remember to keep the value of your subject matter high and the amount of your promotions small and you will quickly see real results from your efforts.

Look for your next lesson soon! We will be discussing how you can increase your Twitter traffic

It’s time for the second lesson post on Twitter Internet Marketing. I hope you found the first one informative and you have been using some of the techniques that I’ve talked about in the last post to increase your list of followers.

In this post we are going to go over some tools that you can use to make your Twitter page more interactive and successful.

Whether you want to generate more traffic to your site or you want to increase your social relationships, Twitting is a fun and exciting activity that you can quickly master and use to achieve your goals.

We already know that Twitter keeps people connected at all times. Some people send tweets regularly (every day) and others only a few times a week. Since you are planning on using Twitter to build your IM business the latter is the best option for you.

That leads us to our first tool, Future Tweets. This works great if you aren’t able to send important tweets because you have other commitments. It only takes a few minutes to set up and you can use it to automatically post your prepared tweets.

It is very important that you don’t use this tool to auto spam your account with worthless information and constant offers. That will only lose you followers. Here is an example of proper ways to use this tool would be to remind your followers of upcoming seminars or meetings, maybe even let them know about products and offers to help build a buzz.

You can find out more about Future Tweets here: http://futuretweets.com

Note: for more advanced version of Tweet Generation that runs on a server check out: http://bit.ly/TwitBot. And for an alternative that runs on your PC visit: http://bit.ly/twitapp

Sharing pictures and product images is also possible with Twitter by using the tool Twitpic. When you make new contacts there may come a time when you want to share some of your pictures with them so that they can get to know you and your business better.

Once you’ve created your Twitpic account you can upload your pictures and quickly post them on Twitter. Another great thing about this tool is that it is also compatible with mobile devices which make it easier to share pictures from your mobile phone.

You can find out more about Twitpic here: http://twitpic.com

If you are using Wordpress for your blog, there are quite a few tools that you can use to automate your Twitter activities from inside your dashboard including:

TweetThis plug-in – It will encourage your visitors to tweet your blog post. TweetThis also adds a Twitter link in every blog post you create plus gives you the ability to shorten your blog post URL to fit the 140-character limit.

TweetMeme button – Helps other people to easily retweet your post on Twitter and it also shows a count of how many times your blog post has been retweeted.

Twitter Tools – This plug-in integrates your blog with Twitter by pulling all your tweets into the side bar of your blog. You can also use it to post new tweets from inside your WordPress blog.

You can find these and a whole slew of other tools for wordpress by doing a search for ” Twitter Wordpress plug-in”

Now let’s talk about Twollo. It is another Twitter tool that you can use to find people you want to follow. Just type in the subject or topic that interests you and the tool will find people who are talking about the same thing and automatically follows them for you.

And the list goes on. I could literally list hundreds of tools that work with Twitter for you, but then we would be stuck on this post for days, so instead I am going to suggest that you do a little home work after you are done reading this post lesson.

All you have to do is open up your favorite search engine and do a search for “Twitter tools, plug ins and add-ons” you will find more that enough to meet your needs. You can narrow your search even more if you are looking for something more specific.

For instance I did a search for “Twitter tools business” while I was writing this lesson and came across some that I didn’t know about.

Before we close this lesson I do want to tell you about one more tool that you can use to find out who you are following that don’t follow you back.

It’s Tweepler and all you have to do is type in your Twitter username and password and it will give you detailed list of who is following you and who you are following. It also has a very nice point and click interface, so that you can quickly sort through your peeps.

It does take a few minutes to populate the list but it is well worth the wait. You can find it here: http://tweepler.com

So, go do your homework and find some Twitter Tools that will work in your niche and start using them to make new contacts, automate your posts and promote your site better with Twitter!

Look for your next lesson post soon! I will be talking about gathering new customers through twitter.