If you’re preparing to take the dive into the world of Twitter but have no idea how or what really makes for a successful Twitter campaign you’re not alone. When most people think about what makes for a successful Twitter account they generally think of it in terms of one thing – how many followers do I have? Having a load of followers is nice and it surely can win some bragging points, but is that really all it takes to be a Twitter king?

Think of Twitter in terms of a car dealership. Your account is equivalent to showroom. You try to tweet as many interesting and relevant things as possible to not just get the attention of people passing by, you want to convert those visitors into clients. Just as having 1,000 people visit your showroom without making a sale is a bust, having 1,000 Twitter followers that do not re-tweet your posts or ever put a penny in your pocket are pretty useless. Would you enter any venture that saps your resources to get zero return? So what do you need to do?

Start with a professional profile. Use your corporate logo as the photo and then come up with the most engaging description you possibly can in 160 characters or less. If necessary, hire someone to do it for you. This is going to your company’s outward presentation to the world so it is worth spending a few dollars to make it the best it can be. Keep in mind that Google will index this so it is definitely not something you want to play around with and skimp on. SEO does count!

Next, get to know your competition. Too many people never even consider looking for who on Twitter is competing for the same keywords as they are. To do this, type http://search.twitter.com . At this point you can type in your keywords and see who is hitting them and how effectively they are doing it. Next, begin tweeting articles from around the web related to your target audience using titles you have optimized. Be sure to credit the original source! This is a great way to get industry specific followers. Once you get them reciprocating, the odds are you will get some of their followers as well.

What else can you do to make a Twitter campaign successful? For starters, be regular. It is important to tweet on a regular basis so people keep your name and product fresh in their mind. If you are asked questions, make sure you answer all that are relevant. Your odds of converting increase greatly if you actually are social when using social media. While Twitter has not banned the use of hash tags in tweets, it is best to keep them to a minimum. People that use hash tags in their tweets all the time are often looked upon as spammers – and it simply does not pay to get that tag.

When you begin following people, make sure those that you follow are people that can do something to raise your corporate profile on Twitter. Keep in mind that the people you follow on your personal account may be of no value to your business account – keep them separate! Like anything else, keep your eye focused on quality and your campaign will be all it should be.

If the Google Panda update has taught us anything it is that what works today may not work tomorrow. With competition for web traffic becoming more cutthroat with each passing day it is more and more important to find ways to hold on to the audience you already have. What you need is a way to keep the customers/traffic you already have no matter what algorithm changes come in the future. How do you do that?

While many people think newsletters are a thing of the past, the truth is they are alive and well. If you can successfully start converting followers into newsletter subscribers you have gone a long way toward protecting the traffic you already have. You will not get every visitor to subscribe to a newsletter, but of those you get, just under 20% will generally share your newsletter with someone else (or their entire address book if you’re lucky) at least one time over the course of a year – assuming you put out one newsletter per month. That will lead to some new visitors and a few new subscribers.

Blogs are always a great way to keep people connected. You don’t want your main domain cluttered with a blog and all the posts it can generate – you want that to be strictly business. Your blog is where you create a community that people connect with others at and participate in discussions. Once people feel like a part of community, the odds are they will remain a member of that community regardless of what SERPs do.

Take advantage of social platforms. Whether you choose to go with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or all of the above and then some, social platforms provide extra avenues for you to engage new clients and get fresh traffic back to your domain. Best of all, these are free and they do not require long posts that are optimized. All they require is you network a little, provide some engaging links and comments a few times per day and reap the benefits. These networks often start slow, but once they hit critical mass they are a force to reckon with.

If you depend on Google for the bulk of your traffic and have geared everything to appeasing the Google gods, take a few minutes to review your strategy and weigh how expanding your interaction with potential customers through alternate avenues can help you build a foundation to withstand algorithm changes. It will take a little time and the results will not be instant, but anything worth doing is rarely if ever easy or instant.

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