Below, an introduction to Twitter and how you can tap into it as a marketing tool.

Twitter is a community where members leave short messages (twits) on what they are currently doing. It could be as simple as “I am going to the movie theater” or “I am reading about the Apple iPhone.” The thing about Twitter is that you don’t have to be fancy with words or lengthy. In fact, they limit each twit to 140 characters.

Twitter page showing messages from twitterer and friends

The main reason for using Twitter is so that you can, to some extent, let your friends know what you are doing and keep track of what your friends are doing.

Leveraging Twitter

The cool part about Twitter is that you can add links within your twits, which results in traffic to that linked site. If you are looking to drive traffic to your website from Twitter, here’s how to do it:

• No man is an island: Twitter is a community-oriented service, so make sure you put yourself out there and start getting to know other members. The main way you can do this is through friending other members, which will cause many of those members to friend you back. All of the members that friend you back will then see all of your twits on their Twitter homepage.
• Use the resources at your finger tips: It may be hard for you to friend thousands of users, so why not leverage your website and have users friend you. With a Twitter Widget for WordPress or the badges Twitter offers for use on any web site, your visitors will see what you are doing. Naturally some will click through to the Twitter website and friend you.
  Twitter badge
  
• A picture says 1000 words: There are thousands of users on Twitter. If you want people to start friending you, you will need to have something that improves your odds. Each profile has the option of containing a user image, so make sure you add a creative and appealing icon so people want to click on it and friend you. There are no rules that say that the user image has to represent you….so why not use a humorous or sexy image.
• Participation is the key to success: The best you can do to get more friends is to add good twits. If you break news or keep on twitting about cool stuff that others want to find out more about, then they are going to friend you. If you don’t participate in the community, getting hundreds or even thousands of friends can be a tedious task. One of the things that I do that seems to work well is twitting about Twitter. Right now, the majority of people on Twitter are interested in all things Twitter.

If you do these things you can succeed on Twitter. The goal is to get as many people to friend you back, causing your twits to appear on their homepage. If you want a quick way of find friends, I recommend starting with the top 100 Twitter list.

Don’t forget — you can also keep up with Search Engine Land stories via Twitter. Follow Search Engine Land On Twitter explains more about how.

Neil Patel is co-founder and CTO of ACS and writes regularly on social media issues through the company’s blog, Pronet Advertising. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.