Good advice, thanks

I LOVE that imagery - thousands of tiny rabbits!

So true! One analogy I like to use is that Twitter is a giant online chamber of commerce - people go there to interact. If you try to sell immediately, it's as if you are a used car salesman who went to a chamber of commerce meeting and shoved a sales contract's into people's hands before you even said hello.

so true, so true ... scared rabbits or minions

Haha - don't forget you are on twitter as well...

Wouldn't a flock of pigeons be more appropriate? :rolleyes:

You gotta be like the old lady sitting on the park bench, baiting the pigeons in with her bag of cereal. Each time she throws out a handful of goodies, more birds join the party. Gradually they start to trust her more and more since she gives them so much but takes so little.

Then she sells them all bird houses and gets rich!

Well it looks that in Twitter you must be as subtle as possible so you don't scare the "rabbits"...

For those that follow the "make 9 of 10 posts real and spam them with an affiliate link for the 10th" rule, here's another tip; don't pull all your other 9 posts from a book of quotes. At least make an effort to be original and human. Nothing makes someone unfollow you quicker than 9 random quote tweets and then a spam one.

Marketing to twitter needs to be done subtly. You are entirely right in this aspect. You can have an entirely commercial twitter account and get lots of follows successfully, but being intrusive and blatant in your attempts at sales just won't work. i have twitter up for one of my online stores, and i keep my followers up to date on the latest in niche news, with links to niche related news stories, crack niche related jokes, so on and so on, as well as keeping the followers updated with what the latest releases in my store are, items in my store that i think they'd like if they checked out. it is a blatantly commercial profile, yet i still get a fantastic response because i keep it fun in the process.

Great advice. I get so many people tweeting me links but no sizzle to get me to click.

The problem with Twitter - is that the majority of people have jumped onto it and now everyone is trying to sell something.

Everytime I get a thankyou for following response - they all try and get me to a site of theirs.........

Talk about spammy.

There are millions of people all trying to shove something down everyone else's throat and I would assume that a very few limited numbers have good success from it.

Your subtle approach is certainly required.

I personally like the competition method. When you ask who can find the web-page
with the best sales letter or newest or coolest product out right now, this way you have a list of sites that obviously has a few links to your sites.

This way people are dying to see what everyone else found and liked, you get traffic and they have fun, there is nothing like killing two birds with one stone.

Just My 2¢

it's just like any new web2.0 property really. someone has a great idea, people catch on, it goes viral, and everybody is having a good time. then we the marketers hear about it, and destroy the shit out of it with spam. sad, but true. there is nothing sacred on the internet anymore and if the surfers go there, we will follow with our affiliate links in hand. creativity and innovation is what will win the tweeters over. like the contestmethod mentioned...

I like that siteseller.

Exactly, thats like the conduit method.

I would like to add to thegamecat's post - Doing a video review can also improve conversions. Create a screen capture video of you going to the products salespage and then purchasing the product yourself. Explain the benefits and and how the product can help them. Do also include a few weaknesses that the product might have.

Also include a bonus in the review if they purchase through your link. This will certainly improve your conversions, sales and trustworthiness! Not spammy at all..

As we say in North Carolina, there's only one way to boil a frog. You can't throw him into a pot of boiling water because he'll just jump out. But if you put him in a nice warm pot of water with a lid so it's nice and quiet and dark and then turn the heat on slowly....

Twitter is the top of the funnel. You're not going to make sales there, so tweeting links directly to a product page won't go very far. Instead, use Twitter as a gateway to get them into the rest of your web footprint -- blogs, other social media, email lists, etc.

Many Twitter "rabbits" hail from Caerbannog. So, don't group them all into one category.