Rapid Twitter Marketing

You can now use Twitter for affiliate marketing purposes, which will help drive more traffic to your site. This assumes that you are an online merchant who has an affiliate program in place, and you have a number of affiliates who are also using Twitter.

This technique is called Rapid Twitter Marketing, because you will make it easy for your affiliates to promote your site (via their aff link, of course) via Twitter. The hope here is that some of their Twitter followers will see their "tweet" and will end up visiting your site.

And here's how this is done...

Step 1: Log into Twitter.com

The technique requires that you and your affiliates are logged into Twitter. This achieves two things: It allows you to check if your pre-made Twitter message is 140-characters or less, and it also allows your affiliates-who-use-Twitter to make use of your pre-made Tweet.

If your affiliates are not logged into Twitter before they click on the special link, this technique will not work. It helps a lot if your message to your affiliates clearly reminds them to log into Twitter.com first.

Step 2: Create the Pre-Made Twitter message URL.

Here's what it looks like (please make sure you're logged into Twitter if you want to see what should happen when you visit the link, which will open in a new browser window):

http://twitter.com/home?status=Reading+%40ManuelViloria%27s+Rapid+Twitter+Marketing!+-++at+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.manuelviloria.com/archives/rapid-twitter-marketing

Okay... let's break it down:

The + symbol represents a space. Normally, you will broadcast an email to your mailing list instructing them to first log into Twitter, and then visit the link that represents your pre-made Twitter message. If you simply use spaces, the link will break and will no longer be clickable in your affiliates' Inbox. By using the plus symbol, you help ensure that the long URL remains clickable.

The %40 symbol represents the @ symbol. In Twitter, placing an @ in front of a Twitter username makes that username clickable. This will help drive traffic to your Twitter homepage.

The %27 symbol represents the apostrophe ('), %3A stands for the colon (:), and %2F is the url escape code for the forward slash (/).

Yes, you can do away with all those url escape codes and simply use this (with + symbols, but no url escape codes):

or even this (no + symbols, no url escape codes):

Those URLs (without the + symbol or the url escape codes) will work in a blog or static web page, but some email systems will not be able to interpret the URL correctly. So if you want to reach as wide an audience as possible and have the links clickable right within their email, please use the version which makes use of url escape codes.

Here's the recommended version (works in both web pages and email messages):

Assuming your affiliates are logged into Twitter before they click on the specially crafted link, your message will appear in their "What Are You Doing?" Twitter box. All they'll have to do to complete the process is to click on the "Update" button.

Step 3: Remind your affiliates to click on the UPDATE button.

In your email message (or in your blog post if you choose to communicate with your affiliates via your blog), remind them to click on the Twitter update button. Otherwise, that tweet will not appear in their Twitter timeline.

And what will the tweet look like? Using the above example, it will look something like this in Twitter (although the long url of your blog post might be shortened with a TinyURL-converted link):

If you create a Twitter message yourself, some of your followers will end up visiting your site. Now imagine what would happen if other people will tweet about your site? Yes, some of their followers will visit your site.

Web site traffic is a numbers game, and this Rapid Twitter Marketing tactic provides a win-win situation for both you and your affiliates, because it allows you to appear in places where people get together online (i.e., Twitter), and spread your message easily.

What if you don't have affiliates? No problem! Simply twist this tactic and communicate with your Twitter friends. If you don't have a product to sell, but are promoting someone else's product (because you are the affiliate), you can get your Twitter friends to sign-up as an affiliate under you.

When your Twitter friends send traffic to your blog post, their own affiliate link can appear in your blog post (with a bit of PHP magic called JV Plus). And even if the full affiliate commission goes to them (which is only fair since it was their tweet that brought in the traffic), you will still earn a commission if the affiliate program you've both enrolled in is a 2-tier type of program.

What are you waiting for? Act today and see your web site traffic rise, with the help of Twitter marketing!

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"Rapid Twitter Marketing"
First Posted: October 8, 2008 | Filed in: Web Traffic

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