How to Use Twitter (I know you think it's useless, try this anyway)

First of all let me start off my saying I don't believe in spamming. If you expect this to be a guide on how to Tweetspam 15,000 people... sorry. But, I will help you grow a decent number of followers each day that actually read what you tweet. I know, revolutionary. So what's the plan?

First, get a twitter account and make your profile nice and pretty. Link it to your site's splash page; we want to move twitter followers to email lists quickly (if you don't have an email list, stop reading and sign up with Aweber or MailChimp).

Next, download TweetDeck or some other Twitter program (HootSuite is another good free one). Now, for the easy part.

Find 5-10 big names in your industry. Yes, there are big names in your industry; it just might not be a person. No huge knitting guru? Find craft stores. Every industry (so far that I've found) has someone big on Twitter.

Time for your daily chores: Using your Twitter program, schedule tweets in groups of 3-5 3 times a day. For me, one is just what I'm thinking at the time, one is a question, and the last is either a link to a post on my site or a giveaway for people to retweet. Also, at least once a day I try to link to outside interesting content. After your tweets are scheduled, pick one of your big people and follow 50 of their most recent followers. Doing this consistently you should have no problem getting 10-20 new followers a day, and that will grow with your reputation.

For those that want to know more about doing a Twitter giveaway, check out Petco on Twitter (@Petco). They're running an extremely good campaign at the moment to grow their list. Hope it helps, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer. Thanks!

Sean