Seems pretty pointless to me.

Anyway, I’ve just set up a Twitter account for one of our non-IM niches.

I’m not going to show you it or anything just yet but I’m gonna use this account to test whether Twitter has any real marketing value or not.

So, I’ll keep you updated as a go along with it.

The first thing I’m doing is finding people to follow who are in the same niche.

There are two good FREE sites out there that you can try:-

Twitter Search. You just type in some relevant keywords to you niche and it pulls up all the latest tweets where those keywords were mentioned. Check the people out and follow them! Easy peasy.

Twitterell. With this site you enter your Twitter details and then keyword(s). It then runs off for awhile and collects relevant Twitterers. Looks like you can then just group follow them. I’ll report back once the results are in.

I really want to see if Twitter can add any value to a non IM niche and this will be a good test. Like all the niches Thad and I are in, it’s hot, topical and highly competitive.

There is a (mostly) general consensus that the more followers you have the better to spread your message.

But my first reaction was that’s a bit like handing your business card around in the pub. (In some of the pubs I go in that will likely get you a black eye!). It’s all a bit scattergun… and if you are following hundreds of people and hundreds are following you…how the hell can you keep up and actually have a meaningful dialog and therefore build a relationship with more than just a handful.

So here’s an alternative view of Twitter (as in simply gaining followers by following others) …

From the Warrior Forum… guy called Jason Moffat… He’s kinda like Frank Kern on acid:-

Now don’t let this put you off Twitter. Very early judgments from me… I mean I just don’t really do social… 666 and all that In amongst all the noise it is possible to find some nuggets.

What we’re going to be testing over the coming weeks is using both Twitter and Facebook in non-IM niches… that’s where we can see real potential.

I’m gonna spend some time on Facebook over the next week. At first sight it appears more confusing (to me anyway) than Twitter but at the same time we think it has the potential for greater targeting.

We’ll keep you posted…

Twitter can be a really powerful tool in your marketing… Check this video out first…

From John Taylor:-

And then forget about using Twitter in the IM niche (unless that’s your bag)… think about using it in your own niches… to find like minded people… people you can emphasise with… people you can target…

# 1 – register an account on Twitter

# 2 – go to http://search.twitter.com to find people with similar interests, i.e. ‘pet lovers’

# 3 – Once you have found people who are interested in the same thing… click on their followers then begin to follow them….many will reciprocate… YOU start to build a following.

# 4 – If you have a blog register with http://www.twitterfeed.com/ and get your latest blog posts updated automatically as Tweets on your Twit bit.

#5 – Check out these tools:-

• Twhirl
• TweetDeck
• TwitterFox (which is actually a plugin for Firefox)
• TweetyBot

And get Tweeting!!

Check out my Twitter here:-

https://twitter.com/davidrbrown

And Thad’s here:-

https://twitter.com/thadroe

You can follow my bumbling attempts here:-

https://twitter.com/davidrbrown

Or Thad’s here:-

https://twitter.com/thadroe

No idea what I’m doing, so random thoughts for now