Before you can use Twitter to brand yourself or your company, you need to create an audience. In order to do that, you have to get some freinds especially if your account is new. In order to seed your account you will need to find some people to follow. These people should be people you would actually like to see tweets from, that are releated to your niche. Heres 6 sites to help you do that.

1. Twits Like Me
One of the better Twitter apps I have seen, Twits Like Me helps you find other users who share your interests. All you have to do is enter your username and it will search for people… “like you”. You can also toggle an option to exclude people who are already your friends. Its also another fast, and accurate tool.

2. Twitter Search
Did you know Twitter has its own search engine that is actually really useful? They don’t really advertise the search feature but it’s there. Twitter Search has some powerfull advanced features to search with and also has options for local Twitter searches.

3. TwitterWho
TwitterWho uses Twitter’s people search form found at http://twitter.com/invitations. This tool lets you enter multiple queries at once so you can find people more efficiently. The service has been lightning fast as far as my tests went and it seems to be acurate too.

4. TwitDir
Once you break into Twitter and get some friends, you should move twoards the leaders in your niche at the time. TwitDir can help you locate some of the top Twitter users in the following categories:
The Top 100 Followed
The Top 100 “Updaters”
The Top 100 “Favoriters”
and The Top 100 Followers
The “TOPs” section can also show you what kind of numbers you would need to make it on one of these lists.

5. Twubble
Another Twitter app called “Twubble” helps you find interesting people to follow by searching your social graph. Simply go to Twubble and click “find some friends.” Twubble is hooked up so as long as you are logged into Twitter, you won’t need any credentials. The friends Twubble finds are by how many of your friends are following them. Another cool feature is the ability to follow people that you find with one click, just like being on Twitter.

6. Twitter Local
Twitter Local is another speedy service that helps you find Twitter users in a given area. You can search by zip, city, or state and select the search radius by miles. The app then gives you options for RSS and XML versions or you can view the lastes tweets in that area live. Twitter Local has an Adobe AIR version for download as well.

Now that you know Twitter is a powerful marketing tool, it’s time to get familiar. Heres 89 tools, articles, and resources sorted into categories. Use these to create a powerful Twitter following, and increase the visibility of your brand.

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Twitter 101:      
1. The Big Juicy Twitter Guide
2. Twictionary – A dictionary for Twitter.
3. TwitDir – Another Twitter directory.
4. The Twitter Blog
5. Explore Twitter

Twitter Media:

6. TweetPic
7. Twitxr
8. Twittershare
9. SnapTweet – Send Flickr photos to Twitter.  
10. Twiddeo – Twitter plus video.
11. TwitterGram – Share audio.
12. TwitSay – Give your Twitter account a voice.

Twitter Stats:

13. TweetBurner – Track what happens with the links you share.
14. Twitt(url)y – Tracks what URLs Twitter users are talking about.
15. Twitter Charts
16. Twitstat
17. TweetStats
18. TwitterBuzz – What people are linking to.
19. Twittermeter
20. Tweet Volume – Enter words or phrases and see how often they appear on Twitter.
21. Twitter Vision  
22. Twitterholic

Friends & Followers:

23. FriendFeed – Discover what your friends are sharing.
24. Twitter Karma
25. TweetWheel – Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other.
26. Who Should I Follow? – Twitter Friend Recommendations.
27. Intwition
28. CrowdStatus – Create a crowd.
29. My Tweeple
30. GroupTweet
31. Twitter 100
32. Quotably – Follow Twitter conversations.
33. TwitterLocal
34. TwitterVerse
35. Twemes – Twitter memes.
36. Tweetmeme
37. TwitterWho – Batch people search.

Spam Protection:

38. The Twitter Blacklist
39. Twitter Twerp Scan
40. Twitter Snooze

Twitter Organization:

41. Socialthing
42. Twittercal – Tweet your Google calendar.
43. Twitter Digest
44. Twitku – Read posts on Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce.
45. Twitter Timer – Set an alarm for things you need to remember.
46. Twitt.icio.us – Send links from Twitter to del.icio.us.
47. Twitter Where

Twitter Tools:

48. Summize – Search Twitter in real time.
49. Twitter Search – A customized search engine for Twitter.
50. YouTwit
51. TwittEarth  
52. Twhirl – A desktop client for Twitter.
53. Snitter – Desktop client for Mac and Windows.
54. Twitterific – Desktop client for Mac.
55. gTwitter – Desktop client for Linux.
56. Witty – Desktop client for Vista.
57. Twitteroo – Desktop client for the PC.
58. TwitterPod – Desktop client for Mac.
59. Twitux – Desktop client for Gnome.
60. Twitterberry – Mobile client for Blackberry.
61. Email Twitter – Mobile client.
62. Twoble – Mobile client for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs.

Twitter for Email:

63. TwitterMail
64. OutTwit

Twitter IM:

65. TwitterIM

Twitter Widgets:

66. Twitter Opera Widget
67. Twitter Widget
68. Twadget

Other Twitter Articles + Resources

69. How To Find Your Target Audience on Twitter – SmmGuru
70. Twitter Is A Tool! You Might As Well Use It – SmmGuru
71. Easy Way To Get More Twitter Followers From Your Blog – SmmGuru
72. How Does Twitter Define Spam – SmmGuru
73. 7 Tips For New Twitter Accounts – SmmGuru
74. Tweeting for Companies 101 – HorsePigCow
75. 5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence – ProBlogger
76. 13 Odd Ways to Use Twitter – Social Media Trader
77. Twitter Feeds Made Simple – ClickPopMedia
78. Video: Twitter in Plain English – Common Craft
79. How to Use Twitter to Build Brand Integrity – Marketing Vox
80. Twitter and Business: The Conclusion – Business and Blogging
81. How We Use Twitter for Journalism – ReadWriteWeb
82. 10 Things Twitter Users Should Not Do – Valley Wag
83. Twitter Hashtags and Groups – American Pai
84. 8 Awesome Firefox Plugins for Twitter – Mashable
85. 10 Ways Twitter Can Boost Your Social News Profile – ReadWriteWeb
86. Copyright and Twitter – Blog Herald
87. My Essential Twitter Tools – Web-Strategist.com
88. Twitter May Not Have to Worry About Uptime Anymore – TechCrunch
89. Why Decentralizing Twitter is so Important – Scripting.com

As we know, Twitter can be used to brand yourself or your company with some great success. The key however is to make sure you are prominent in your target audience. Obviously you can spread as wide across the network as you want but make sure to hit your target audience hard.

This is actually quite easy, possibly easier than you thought if you didn’t know about their advanced search engine: http://search.twitter.com/advanced. Using this tool alone you can easily plant a seed in your target audience. Let’s say you are a shoe store working your way into social media. This search could help you find people interested in shoes who also blog, comment, share content, etc. What that means, is that possible customer then has the tendency to spread the word and really do your marketing for you. Or you could go even deeper and do a search for local users. Real Estate anyone? Why not use Twitter’s search to help you draw from people in your area looking for what you provide?

Simple, quick, to the point… you can see there are some dam useful features on Twitter when it comes to branding. The ability to go local is huge and can help you dominate in your niche. Establishing a strong social media presence can increase your business in many ways.

Over the last few days I have made some changes to the layout of SmmGuru.com and added some new ways for people to find me. What I found was a super easy way to increase the amount of people who follow you on Twitter and other networks.

All I did was add links to various social media profiles in the footer of the site. While I can’t definitively prove that the new followers came from the footer link, there was defiantly been an increase in followers since I added it. Just a simple tip to those looking to increase their followers on various outlets. I have also seen increases on SocialBrowse, and StumbleUpon as well.

Another thing I am noticing is that once people become avid readers of your blog they want to connect with you on other services as well. Listing your profiles on other social networks is a great way to increase your brand viability, and give your readers new ways to remain updated. If you have not done so, I recommend putting up some links to your profiles now and see what you have been missing.

Just wanted to do a quick post in regards to Twitter and their spam policies. For the most part they are pretty easy going, but they do have measures in place to keep order. Here’s the bottom line on what Twitter defines as spam:

1. Following accounts in order to gain attention to your account or links there within.
2. Creating updates just to rank in search engines.
3. Creating multiple accounts in order to promote one thing.
4. Sending a large amount of @replies that are not genuine replies.
5. Disguising links, writing about one thing and linking to another.

Pretty easy to follow here people. Basically what this says is unless you are abusing the service to a larger extent, they really don’t mind self promotion. Twitter realizes that many personal brands and companies use the service to increase their reach. Just don’t piss them off because they will ban your ass in a heartbeat.

There’s a beta service on the block called Twiddeo that really kills 12 seconds if you ask me. Created by vSocial, the platform runs off Twitter, the Disqus comment system, and vSocial’s custom video player. This is also one of the first sites to include some of the latest and greatest web2.0 features. Twiddeo does not require a unique login and password. You login using your existing Twitter credentials.

Another sick feature is the ability to post videos from your mobile phone via email. Twiddeo provides an @twiddeo.com address that allows you to send video via any device with email capabilities. You can also upload files from your PC, or do a live webcam capture. After getting your video in, you can add a Twitter message as well. You are limited to 113 characters for your Twiddeo URL to be automatically inserted.

Another genius idea from Twiddeo, they created their own Greasemonkey script that puts the Twiddeo player right on Twitter. That way if you would rather stick to Twitter instead of both you can do so. The service looks promissing, vSocial initally launched it as a demo and decided to make it a full on service.

Twitter is going to be one of the tools you either hate or love, you will see it as either a time waster or one of your top new tools. As you start to tweet away you will notice that people will begin to follow you possibly even flock to you. Whether or not you follow them back is up to you. Here are seven tips to get you started on twitter.

1. Start Tweeting First - Once you get those first few tweets out of the way, it will become much easier for you to make posts on Twitter. Another way this will help you is that people are looking for other people that are into the same things. When people come to your Twitter page and there’s no tweets, they won’t know whether or not to follow you.

2. Reveal Yourself - People want to have conversations with other real people. You will see that most people have pictures of themselves in avatars. I personally tend to sway to real pictures instead of the lame cartoons that many use. Also, fill out your bio and link to your blog if you have one. The more people feel like you are another member of the circle, you have a better chance at fitting in on Twitter.

3. Read Those You Want To Follow First - Start to read up on conversations before you get involved. You will find that simply following everyone you see can make the service a bit harder to use when you really want to use it for communicating and reading up on recent tweets. If what they are tweeting is not interesting to you, keep on movin’

4. Don’t Be A Spammer - Are you following 197 people and only have 6 following you? You might be a spammer. If your not, this would make you appear as one and most people don’t like this bread of Twitter users. Reveal yourself and let people know you are there to add to the Twitter community. Build up your account and you will find that people will start following you regardless.

5. Stray From Twitter Celebrities – Even if you do become followed by someone like Scoble, they are just doing it to build up their visibility. Many Twitter celebrities are there simply for the popularity contest and depending on how you want to use Twitter, following these types most likely won’t help you. Being in their list of followed people really provides no value as they follow everyone and anything.

6. Play Favorites - Use those little stars next to each tweet to your benefit. By favoring certain tweets you let people know what interests you, and what you are passionate about. If you are debating whether or not to follow someone, checking out their favorites is a great way to see what they are all about.

7. Pump The Brakes - Most of the time you will notice that many conversations on Twitter do not really lead anywhere. Sometimes however, conversations can evolve into business ideas, new clients, and new friendships. Take time to tweet and build a reputation before you start to really get yourself out there. Taking your time in the beginning to learn the dynamics will be much more beneficial in the end.

Alright you Twitter n00bs, it’s time to get out there and give it a go. It won’t take long before you decide whether or not it’s a tool you want to stick with.

Once again I find myself face to face with yet another Twitter related service and I have to say this one is pretty useless. Great… you can find out where you stand against the masses in terms of followers and profile completeness (wtf?) but does it really matter or help you in some way? I like to think of Twitter more as a tool than anything else. One that I try to keep myself using as it does reap small rewards (need to increase my followers ) but this service does not give you any real information.

I would say judge your Twitter account based on what you use it for, and what you need it to do. If you simply use it for communicating with a few co-workers, than the value of your account would be based on how vital communicating with them over Twitter really is. I see this as another attempt at a viral service that uses Twitter’s popularity to stimulate growth.

Still can’t make any money on Facebook? Stop crying I’m here to save the day, unfortunately it must be your own fault at this point. Here’s nine reasons why you probably aren’t making buku bucks with Facebook yet.

1. You don’t do any testing. Before you go and sink $100 in to your first campaign, take the time to do some real research. Get in the habit of fine tuning your demographics and research the groups you will be targeting. A simple $10 test can tell you whether or not an offer will sink or swim (or just float even) so why not make the extra effort? Being a lazy tool will not help you in this part.

2. You set it and forget it. Facebook is not a rotisserie oven people… Your ad performance will change throughout the day much more erratically than with most services such as AdWords and TLA. Slowing down your ads during the day and pushing them during the night for instance seems to make better money. Why pay they same amount for clicks during the day if they do not convert as well? Simply lowering your CPC earlier in the day can save you a lot of money in wasted clicks but still allows for some people to click through.

3. You think you know everything. If you do, comment on why you are reading this? I would say I can make a nice buck or two on Facebook and I am still finding new quirks and trends withing Facebook Ads on a daily basis. Read all of the information you can find on Facebook’s Ad Manager and benefit from it.

4. You don’t learn from your mistakes. Any entrepreneur can tell you they have made mistakes. The difference between someone who makes it in this industry and those who don’t are the ones who learn from their (few) mistakes. It’s very easy to go from making $3,000 a day on Facebook to waking up and being $1,000 in the hole for the day because you decided not to read that e-mail about various campaigns ending. Stay sharp and don’t be discouraged by failed attempts.

5. You have no originality. Sure you can sit back and copy everyone from the ad board and probably make some money at it too. However this tactic is not only dirty and time consuming, but if you put the effort into generating your own ideas you would probably make a hell of a lot more cake. My word of advice on this one, be the leader not the follower.

6. You have no fall back strategy. Someone has copied your current Facebook campaigns and you only made $500 for the day compared to your average $2,500. What’s your next move? If you cannot answer that question and have no fall back campaigns ready, expect the money to zoom right by you. Always be prepared for the worst and know how you’re going to respond in these situations by keeping fresh ideas waiting in the wing.

7. You are not aggressive / decisive enough. When it comes down to it, you have to get your hands dirty. I can give you page after page of awesome material to help you but you are the only one who can use it. Sitting back and running your 2 ads a day will not do much if anything for you on Facebook. Change shit up and make your decisions wisely. While acting on impulse can sometimes bring you lucky money, its educated decisions that will make you long term money.

8. You are to afraid to front. The thing with making money is that most of the time you have to spend money to make it. Until you can be comfortable with the fact that you might loose every penny you throw into a campaign, you should not fuck with Facebook. The traffic moves very fast and your daily budget can rocket during the day. Point one is a great example of how to prevent loss of your cash. Facebook is one of the more volatile markets and your money can do a 360 by sun up to sun down. If you don’t have your full confidence in what your doing, you may wan to question yourself why you are doing it.

9. You ain’t got them bommmb cuts. If you have not used NeverBlueAds on Facebook you are most likely loosing out on some good money. They offer a lot of offers that are like crack on Facebook and they always have good pay out. Don’t get me wrong, there are deffinantly other networks for use on Facebook but a lot of my money comes from NBA. Shop around for different affiliate networks to see what offers they have. Chances are you will find some good offers on a number of networks that you otherwise would never have known about.

That’s right I said it, your a tool Twitter… When Twitter came out I didn’t really see the appeal. It may seem a little pointless especially with the advanced text messaging you can do with cell phones. But of course I ended up creating an account (smmguru) and I can already tell how useful it would be to some people.

Now keep in mind that in order for Twitter to be of any use your account will have to have some level of followers… If no one is reading your tweets then you cant expect much. I only have around 30 + followers so the traffic is nothing special (about 40 hits a day.) However if you take in to account what a base of 3K followers does to your visibility, you can easily push decent traffic that also tends to convert well in terms of subscribers. The trends I’m seeing is that many see large increases in RSS subscribers when they receive visibility on Twitter.

To start off, find some people on Twitter that fit into the overall topic of your blog. In the next step you can take two very different paths:

1) You can continue to follow people relevant in your niche and keep your follow list shortened to people you actually want to see tweets from. Pick this option if you plan on using the service for something more than getting as much visibility as you can from it. This will give you visibility but your followers will be much more organic and build up slower.

2) You follow every person you can find relevant, and continue to follow everyone that they are following so on and so forth. This will totally work but it will take some time to kick in. As long as you post quality tweets the visibility of being on all of those people’s pages will draw new followers. The more people that can find you, the better your chances.

Once you have all of your followers it’s time to start pushing links. There are a number of different plugins for auto-updating your Twitter page with new posts from WordPress. There are also various Twitter clients for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Mac, and Windows desktop applications. Give it a try, chances are if you put some work in you shouldn’t have any problems.