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I have to admit, when I first saw Twitter - I thought it was pointless. To me, it was too much like lifecasting to be anything worthwhile. After all, who wants to hear my every thought or “What I am doing” throughout the day?

At first, I set up a profile to see what the service was all about, as I do with most new web apps. But then I started getting these email alerts about people following me. So I logged in to see what I was missing! Here, this entire little ecosystem of mini-blog posts erupted in my Twitter page! So, immediately the wheels started turning. What can this do for my business? Or my client’s business? Is it worth the time?

Twitter as a Social Media Marketing Tool

Ever since Ritu and I partnered up to form Axiium and launch Ghostblogging, I have been amazed at what social marketing can do. The first day Ghostblogging was live, we recorded almost 2200 unique visitors. I remember logging into Feedburner Pro launch night and having to pick my mouth up off the floor because of the traffic Twitter, Reddit, Stumbleupon and Digg sent us.

The simple fact is – social marketing works. If done right, it can bring traffic that a startup couldn’t hope to pay for through Adwords, SEO, or any other medium. And at the heart of it all is networking.

Networking both online and offline is key

In traditional business, it’s all about who you know. It matters who you talk to on the phone, who you keep email updates of, and who you go to lunch with. Here’s a little secret – the online world is the same way. If you want to harness the power of social media networks, you have to be well networked yourself. You have to put in the time digging and stumbling and reddit’ing (?) in order to have any influence whatsoever.

Finding friends via Twitter

One of the hardest and most difficult things to do is find friends in Twitter (or ‘follow people’ in Twitterese). You can view the public timeline or enter their email address. And even though I have probably 700 or 800 email addresses, there are a lot of business contacts that just wouldn’t understand the web app.

WebWorkerDaily posted two applications that I really like that will help you expand your network:

• Twubble – which looks at your friend’s friends and recommends other people you could follow.
• Twits Like Me – which looks at your tweets and finds other people talking about the same thing.

Both of these applications allow you to follow new people very quickly. The nice thing is, once you follow someone, they tend to follow you!

Increasing your Social Networking Mana

By using Twitter, hitting up Twubble, and following 50 or 100 people (who reciprocate the follow) – you are increasing your own reach. You now have a direct, one on one connection with that many more people! So the next product you launch or blog post you publish, it will be pushed in front of all those newly acquired friends (who themselves have social networks and can promote it further).

Needless to say, the more people you can connect with, the better your marketing efforts. But I can guarantee that by taking a long look at social marketing and using Twitter as a medium, you will be increasing sales before the day is out.

[img niallkennedy]