I’ve been enjoying using Twitter these past few months. It’s an interesting way to meet people and to generate some traffic. Not a ton in my case, but some. Meeting people has been working better for me.

Twitter is highly social, a sort of instant messaging to a group, but you never know which of your followers will be paying attention at a particular moment. I’ve had interesting conversations with people who I know pretty much nothing about, aside from what they’ve posted recently on Twitter.

But yesterday I started seeing discussion on a new service, called Magpie. I put a nofollow on that link, folks, because I really don’t like the service. It’s just not what using Twitter should be about, even if you do other kinds of marketing there.

You see, it’s a service that puts ads into your Twitter stream.

If you’re marketing your own site or products, that’s one thing. But adding in someone else’s ads just strikes me as over the line and a great way to lose followers. I’m already seeing people say they will unfollow (link shows people’s thoughts on Magpie as well as what I think are Magpie tweets) anyone who uses that service to send them ads, and honestly, I don’t blame them at all. I’m likely to do the same.

Might hang around long enough just to see if people let it get obnoxious.

Really, I can’t see this as being worth anyone’s time. I know it will be easy to sign up, but do you really want to annoy people who decided to follow you because you say interesting things?

If you want to earn money from your use of Twitter there are better ways to go about it. Use affiliate links for products you really love. Mention your own sites. Above all else, keep it real.

Your followers on Twitter grow to have certain expectations from you. They quickly learn who does nothing but self promotion or promotion of other products, versus who has something interesting to say. Go ahead and market, but be sure it’s interesting.

Otherwise, you’ll soon be talking to yourself.

With the popularity of sites such as Squidoo, Twitter, Facebook and so forth, not to mention my own enthusiasm for article marketing, the question of how much time one should be spending on creating content for others does come to mind.

Is it a waste of my time?

So much depends on how you use it. Generating content for others can be a waste, but it can also be a great way to bring traffic to your own website. Shoemoney does well with it, for example.

We aren’t all Shoemoney or any other big name blogger, of course. Not everyone will get delightful amounts of traffic from such sources.

The key factor I consider is whether or not I can afford to be dependent on a particular source. The simple truth is that no business should be relying on a single source of traffic. If you aren’t trying to get traffic from a range of sources, what are you going to do when that one vanishes?

Of course, many people make the very good point that if you are creating content for other sites, you’re also helping them to earn money, rather than earning it for yourself.

Honestly, I don’t worry about that very much. It’s perfectly true that these other sites do need to earn money, and what I post on them helps them to do so. But so long as I also get a benefit I don’t see it as a huge problem.

Each source I use has something to offer me in terms of traffic or networking. I don’t get tons of traffic from Twitter, but I do get to meet some pretty great people, and I do get some traffic out of the deal.

Facebook I don’t use much, aside from finding old friends on. My business uses of that are minimal.

Squidoo has been something of an interesting experiment for me, but not one of my big traffic generators. Others have had different experiences. As with anything else, you in part get out of it what you put into it, and that one hasn’t drawn enough of my attention to get much out of it.

Article marketing, on the other hand, has been an interesting experience for me. While many of the links come from sites that aren’t that great, I’ve seen definite SERPs benefits that I consider to be most likely due to the links gained from article marketing. That’s not a bad deal at all.

If you look around, there are ebooks telling you how to earn money using any of these sites. There’s The Twitter Report, Squidoo Affiliate Destruction, and Facebook Fortunes, just to name a few. I haven’t read a one of them, so I can’t tell you about the quality of these particular titles, but they are out there.

The catch to using just one of these sites, of course, is that if they change the rules or vanish away, you’re out of luck. Over reliance can be a poor decision.

So why do I use any of these at all?

Just as with any other method, I know better than to rely solely on a single method, such as article marketing. You never know when the rules of the search engines will change and suddenly everything built from that method will mean less.

Fortunately, just because the rules change at one search engine doesn’t mean they will change at them all. That is one of the advantages of article marketing. If you can get your site up there in more than one search engine, you aren’t doomed by a sudden rule change.

Overall, it all comes down to being sensible about all your marketing tactics. Once you’ve mastered one, keep it up and start learning another. Just about anything you do online depends on another site to bring you traffic. Rely on that one source at your own peril.

I’ve been using Twitter for a few weeks now, so I decided it was time for an update on my experiences with it.

It is interesting. I’ve been able to interact with a variety of marketers, some quite well known. I’ve been directed to articles I never would have noticed otherwise, but were quite interesting.

I have 92 followers as of this writing. That’s not bad considering that I don’t really do much to build the following there, although I do have links to my Twitter profile on some of my sites. But that’s 92 people who might just notice what I have to say.

I do a mix of tweeting things going on in my daily life with links to articles I’ve written or found interesting. I don’t really have the focus I think I should, yet.

How Many Accounts?

Right now I have one account. I am considering spitting it out to a second account, so that each is more focused. Considering that I feel you need to tweet several times a day for any particular account I can’t say I can see going beyond that.

I haven’t decided for certain to do that yet. There are advantages, certainly, to focusing things on a particular niche with an account, just as there is for any other form of marketing. But it’s an additional amount of work I’m not sure I want to put into Twitter yet.

How Responsive Are Twitter Followers?

I can’t say that I’ve gotten a great response on Twitter yet. Some of it is due simply to numbers. 92 really is a small number there, and people are not terribly likely to notice a tweet if they aren’t online at the time. Matter of fact, it can be easy to miss a tweet just by stepping away from the computer, depending on how you check on the people you’re following.

But at the same time I do understand that people can be very responsive on Twitter. People have asked questions there and gotten dozens of responses, just about instantly. That’s not something you can get just anywhere.

Making Twitter Easier to Use

I use Twhirl to keep up with what’s going on with the people I follow on Twitter. As I recall, it was a tweet from Maki that brought it to my attention. There are other programs that do similar things, and of course you can use it from your cell phone if you can do SMS messages.

Who Do You Follow?

Finding interesting people to follow is a big part of the fun. I started out searching for a few of the names I knew would be on there, and then added in by using keyword searches and seeing who looked interesting.

As with anything of this sort, a lot of accounts weren’t particularly active, some with many months since their last tweet. I don’t follow those, as a rule.

Another tactic I used to find people to follow was to look at who people I already follow are following. It’s a way to see a lot more accounts than I would have otherwise.

I also found Who Should I Follow while using StumbleUpon. It’s an interesting concept. You enter your Twitter name, and it makes recommendations. I thought the results were interesting, and did follow some of the people it recommended. Only time and tweets will tell me for sure if they’re good choices.

The Hazards

Biggest hazard to Twitter is that it can be a time suck. Reading all the tweets, following interesting links, tweeting… it can add up.

On the plus side, tweets are short. Reading them doesn’t take much time, nor does tweeting.

It’s just like forum marketing or anything else where it’s possible to get sucked too deep into the social side of things. You need to remember why you’re there and keep some focus on your goals while still having fun and being interesting. No being an obnoxious marketer!

Benefits on Other Social Media Sites

Tonight I had one of the people I follow on Twitter locate me on StumbleUpon. That’s another friend on a site I use regularly, and someone I’ve made some sort of impression upon. Not a bad deal at all.

Other Twitter Perspectives

Of course many other bloggers have posted their thoughts on Twitter, so I’ll close this out with more links you may enjoy.

5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence
Building Your Twitter Presence Part 2 – Pre-Prepared Tweets
Building Your Twitter Presence Part 3 – TweetBaiting
Twitter Networking 101
Tweeting Outside The IM Niche…
Social Marketing Pitfalls & The Twitter Time Suck
Why Twitter Is Not Stupid!
So How Do You Find People on Twitter?

I finally gave in and signed up for Twitter. People are making such a fuss about it, so I thought I would see what the big deal is.

It’s kind of interesting. I picked a variety of people to follow right at the start, although I have no doubt I’ll be following others soon enough. Just have to wait and see how it goes.

I can see where it could be a big time waster, but I also can see the advantage in the short messages. It just takes a moment to say something… because that’s all the room you’ve got.

That said, keeping this post short and sweet. Off to get some more work done around and about the web.