Starting Your Own Small Business and How to Make it Work

There are a variety of reasons you may consider starting your own business, including gaining freedom from the "daily grind" that sees you working hard for someone else, as a means of self-fulfillment, to capitalize on a great idea or even because of an innate entrepreneurial drive. Regardless of the reason for starting a new business, however, there are a series of steps that new business owners can follow during the startup phase to ensure that they succeed. Just because most small businesses fail within one year of their startup does not mean that yours has to be one of them.

Surround Yourself with a Great Team

This is advice that you may or may not hear often, but it’s probably the single most important thing that a small business owner can do. By "team," I mean the team of professionals with whom you work. This will typically include an accountant, an attorney and a technical specialist. For those whose specialty falls into one of those areas, you can of course serve in place of another professional in that area, but trying to "wear too many hats" is a common failing of business owners.

Make no mistake, you will be responsible for everything from writing the company business plan to taking out the trash at the office and making copies, but when it comes to the specialty areas, don’t skimp on accounting, legal and technical services. A good accountant and attorney tandem can assist with setting up your business’s structure, i.e. - a sole proprietorship, LLC, "S" Corporation or other, and can advise you on things such as tax write-offs, financial reporting, intellectual property and a host of other issues that you will likely face as a small business owner, regardless of the industry in which you will be operating.

Make Sure to Network - It Works

For those who hate to "schmooze," being a small business owner may be a painful experience. Unless you’re starting your small business with a partner who will handle this aspect of the business, it is crucial to get out and network with like-minded people. The number of business opportunities that can arise from casual meetings, a brief meeting over coffee and more formal events cannot be overstated.

Take the opportunity to look for events sponsored by your local Chamber of Commerce and local business associations, then go to the events to get in touch with people who also own small businesses in your area. You may not gain something from each trip out, but sooner or later the continuous contact will lead to some deals for your new company.

You Must Advertise to Succeed

It is generally said that businesses are "growing or dying." If you want to avoid being the latter, make sure to advertise, in addition to networking, to make your business continue to grow. While it depends on your business what types of advertising will work best, a website is a key component almost regardless of what your business does. Likewise, there are a number of online advertising techniques that can be used by a small business owner to establish a web presence that contributes meaningfully to the success of the business. For those with a bit more of a budget, television, print and radio ads may work as well, but in this instance it will likely be best to seek the advice and assistance of a professional.

You’re Probably In for Some Long Days (and Nights)

Needless to say, starting and operating a small business can be exhausting and all-consuming. Even in the evening, when work is supposedly "finished" for the day, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to escape entirely. While there is a certain freedom from operating your own business, keep in mind that you’ll likely be working longer hours than you did in your "real job" - at least for a while. With some hard work, and adherence to the advice above, it really can work.

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How Embedding Content (to Third-party Services) Benefits Your Marketing Efforts

The problem of online content theft has always been hot. You may have spent weeks and months producing some great piece of content (be it a photo, a video or anything else), and once it is live online, before you know it, hundreds of website owners are already republishing it (with or without credit) and getting traffic, links and social media shares that were supposed to be earned by you.
There’s no escape… Unless you give away your content for free and even encourage people to republish and reuse it. Jeremiah Owyang had a great saying regarding this:

If you love it, let it go

If you can’t prevent people from stealing your content, benefit from them reusing it. Make your content easy to embed and re-blog and promote your brand through embedded content.
And if we take this idea even further, not only should you encourage embedding your content, but also you should distribute it to third-party service and encourage embedding from there. The most obvious (and popular) choices to upload and embed your content from are:

• Youtube for videos (and here are other video distribution sites by the way)
• Flickr for images (and more image hosting sites);
• SlideShare for slide shows;
• Proprofs for quizzes
• Scribd for PDF files and documents (and here are 5 more document sharing websites)

Benefit #1: Increase your content exposure to the service users

One of the biggest benefits is added audience reach into communities loyal to the hosting site itself. All of the mentioned services are highly popular and have hundreds of thousands of users.
Exposing your content to them is GOLD. It means higher traffic, more attention and wider viral spread.
Of course, getting popular there is not easy: but the more you try, the better your chances are.

Benefit #2: Make your content “social-media-friendlier”

The users are just more willing to share the content from the sites they feel comfortable to use. Besides, most of those content hosting sites are social-media-friendly and encourage users to share your content.
ProProfs online testing site for example, prompt quiz takers to share their result right from the embed quiz:

Benefit #3: Repurpose your content

Those free content hosting sites give you great tools to make the most of your work by creating new content types:

• Create an embedded slideshow out of your photo collection;
• Create a .ppt slideshow out of your step-by-step guides;
• Create a pdf cheatsheet out of your data collection, etc

This will both increase your content exposure and (viral) reach and, well, re-purpose it. For example, I have mentioned this tip in one of my previous posts on adding “Save as PDF” button to your (most useful) posts:

• This makes it easy (as well as actually encourages users) to save your content locally for further reference (Then in case they have no Internet connection but want to kill an idle hour reading something useful, your article will get the second chance to get noticed);
• It makes your content print-friendly (which is essential for those who prefer to read “normal” books while traveling);
• This makes it easy to save an access from popular devices like iPad (which has plenty of widely used applications for reading .pdf files):

What are your thoughts on re-purposing your content to third-party services? Is it a win or a fail?
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Should You Post (or Buy) Ads on Twitter?

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

I’m going to be up front with you. I’m not a fan of advertising on Twitter. I’m even less of a fan of posting ads to my own Twitter account. So I clearly have some bias. Twitter advertising can be a hot button issue for some though, causing followers to flee or advertisers to come a-calling. Some love it because it’s a way to monetize something they do anyway, or reach a new targeted market. Some hate it because it causes unsolicited clutter and “invades” real relationships. I fall squarely into the latter group.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-advertising in general. And I’m not saying that advertising has no place in social media. But Twitter is an exception for me. Here’s why:
It’s Not What I Signed on For
Twitter is primarily a networking tool. It’s a place for conversations, no matter how abbreviated. For most Twitter is not a tool for simply broadcasting commercial messages. Now I’m not one to say that everyone should or has to use a social media tool in the same way. That would be both ignorant and self-centered. But I will say that everyone has a responsibility to their followers.

Are you conversing or just broadcasting? - Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Twitter can be used in an editorial or conversational way. And yes, it can be used for advertising. But unless you were already regularly advertising via your Twitter account when I agreed to follow you, those ads are 100% unsolicited. If you were already advertising, I could see that up front, and I knew it when I chose to follow you, that’s another story entirely. But in my network on Twitter, that’s rare.
No matter where you’re interacting with your audience, you have a responsibility to respect them and provide what’s reasonably expected to some degree. Behaving in one way to get followers, and then in another way once you have them is misleading at best. I consider Twitter advertising to often show a lack of respect. In my particular network, it’s not the norm. And to litter my stream with ads for (often irrelevant) products and services is a matter of wasting my time. As if there isn’t enough noise on Twitter already.
I’d “forgive” the occasional Twitter ad in general if the person usually shares great tweets or stays personally involved. But I have my limits, as do most. And those limits are fairly low. I won’t hesitate to point out and criticize behaviors that waste my time or show no forethought. I have very little respect for the companies buying these ads knowing they’re intruding on a largely conversational medium of people who have some level of trust for each other (we aren’t talking about blogs here where there are sidebars and headers to tuck ads into separate from the content, or where we have plenty of room for full disclosure). And quite honestly I have less respect for the colleagues who advertise for third parties using their tweets (although I have no objection to them promoting their own books, albums, or sites within reason given that my network is based on primarily professional connections — in a more personal network, that might be a bit different).

The Lame “Just Unfollow” Argument

I know what some of you are thinking — “If Twitter ads bother you so much, just unfollow the person.” I’ve heard that argument a lot. And do you know what? It’s a completely bullshit argument.

Are your Twitter followers HAPPY followers? - Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Unfollowing someone should not be the primary recourse for having unsolicited ads thrown in my face. And I shouldn’t have to eliminate someone from my professional network just because they make occasional poor decisions about what they choose to advertise or how often. As I already mentioned, it’s about respect. And everyone using Twitter or any social media tool has the responsibility to know their audience well enough to know when what they’re doing could be deemed disrespectful.
Remember, just because people aren’t moving in droves to unfollow you, it doesn’t mean they’re okay with your new Twitter ad posting behavior. It just means they like the other things you say enough to stick around (or your ads are buried quickly within other Twitter noise, and they just haven’t seen it yet). But that says nothing about the potential damage you’ve done to your reputation in their eyes. Still subscribing to what you say doesn’t mean they care as much about your opinions. So think about where your “real” money comes from before deciding to make a few bucks on Twitter, and ask yourself whether those income streams could take a hit to your reputation. If they can, by all means, post away.
There’s nothing wrong with diversifying your income streams. I don’t begrudge anyone an income from what they do. Just don’t forget to have some tact. At least a little….
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5 Social Media Strategies to Expand Your Business

A great social media campaign creates viral exposure with the community performing most of the communication.
When you share in social media, if your goal is just to get more people to see your links, you’re on the right track, but at the same time, you’re limiting your potential. You may think that getting explosive results from social media will take more time, energy and money, but this doesn’t have to be the case.

If you’re a business owner, you know that working harder doesn’t necessarily mean better results – what if you’re working hard on the wrong thing?
Sometimes the remedy is working smarter. Here are a few small changes you can make to your social media approach that can propel your social media results from lukewarm to smoking hot.

Strategy 1 – Great Content
The cornerstone to any social media campaign is the content. Content is king on the Internet. If you get this component wrong, it doesn’t matter if all other elements are perfect. Study what’s hot in your market and find an angle so you can distribute the best content.

Strategy 2 – Niched Network Nuances
The more tightly focused your submissions to social media sites are, the more likely they are to go viral, whether they are links you share by other people or yours.
People follow other people with similar interests. They’re on sites like LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg actively looking for new content. Put those two things together and you are on the right track.
Having 5000 connections on Twitter or Facebook is useless if you are connected to people who don’t want your broadcasts, and you’re just as useless to them if you don’t want theirs. If my interest is in improving my existing business and you’re trying to get me to sell your network marketing products, it doesn’t matter how many times you ask me. If I’m not interested, your continued broadcasts will be ignored.
The worst part is, if someone is not spreading your message, then the whole concept of this marketing goes out the window. If you are in network marketing, why not go after people who love the network marketing concept but can’t seem to find the right company? That’s a perfect match.

Strategy 3 – Simplify Sharing
You’ve got great content. You’ve got a massive, niched network. Why feed them content that’s hard to share? Does that report have to be in PDF format? If so, does it have to be behind an opt-ín wall if you’re spreading it among people who have Already opted in? Anyone connected to your business through its Facebook page, or your Twitter stream is also part of your opt-ín list. Yes, it would be best if they were on your email newsletter list, but what faster way to get them there than to show them you don’t need to hold them prisoner there?

If your whitepaper is of such high value that you don’t want it to spread, well, that’s something different. But if you’re sharing it so other people will spread it, make it easy for others to share.
Send your su.pr link so all they have to do is click the Thumbs-Up button, put a few sharing links on your page, make it easy for them to Retweet, the easier it is for them to share, the more likely they are to do it.

Strategy 4 – Consistency
It’s one of the things I know I need to do, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of how to brainstorm, create and distribute quality content consistently, and still give the best possible service and support to my customers and clients.
The other thing that helped a lot was getting over my perfectionism complex. Release your content as soon as you can. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve left on the table from my old fear of the typo and grammar police. Not to mention the fact that I felt like I was leaving my audience hanging.
You subscribe to something because you want to get regular updates. If your favorite daily news show started coming on once a week, you’d probably switch channels. If you’re inconsistent without explanation, your audience numbers will drop and your network will fade.

Strategy 5 – Think Engagement
Measuring your results by page view alone is a thing of the past. When the web was mostly text and images, it made some sense that how many pages a visitor viewed at your site was a true measure of engagement.
Nowadays this isn’t the case. You want to look instead at how long people are at your site. The exception, of course, is when customers are coming to your site to buy, and the order processing system takes them off your page. But if people aren’t leaving your site because they’re ready to buy or subscribe, you truly must look at why they aren’t paying more attention to your content, and what changes you can make to get them to stay.
This is critically important in understanding which content will go viral naturally. What posts are people staying on your site to comment on? When do they take a few extra seconds to retweet? Are they watching your videos all the way through?
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10 Tips for Maximizing Facebook Groups

 Facebook groups are great for meeting new people and sharing your ideas and content. Facebook groups can also help you brand yourself if you use them right.

Following are 10 tips for maximizing your Facebook groups participation:

1Join Facebook groups with the intention of gaining the maximum possible benefit from each group. Do not just click “Join” merely to display interest in a subject or cause.

1. Be prepared to give at least as much to the group as you receive, and in the end you’ll probably receive more than you gave.
2. Abide by each group’s preferences. Look to see whether discussion is taking place on a group’s Wall or on its Discussion Tab.
3. Visit your Facebook groups frequently, as your groups’ updates don’t appear in your news feed and may have insufficient EdgeRank to be appear if and when Facebook allows group content to show up in news feeds.
4. Comment on your groups’ updates and join the conversation. You may disagree with another member’s content or opinion, but please, exercise restraint and comment with respect for that person and the group. Sometimes it may be better to send a private message rather than discuss a delicate or personal matter in public.
5. Add new content to your Facebook groups that will interest other members and stimulate conversation. Include your personal take on the content.
6. Post your own content if it’s relevant, but don’t post your content exclusively, and be very careful not to spam the group.
7. Invite your friends to join the Facebook groups you belong to. Use your Wall, a group’s “Invite People to Join” link or private messages. However, only extend appropriate direct invitations. I’ve been extra careful when inviting people to join the Fabulous Baby Boomers Facebook group, because I don’t want to insult them in case they’re too young to be boomers.
8. Invite group members to be Facebook friends if and when it seems like a good idea. In the invite message, remind them how you know them.
9. Expect to receive bulletins from your Facebook groups. If your groups hold a Facebook Event or even an off-site event, do your best to participate.
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Best Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

Best Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to improve Their Marketing:

1. Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
2. Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
3. For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
4. Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
5. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
6. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
7. Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
8. Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
9. Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
10. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
11. Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
12. Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
13. Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
14. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
15. Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
16. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
17. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
18. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
19. Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
20. Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email me for a calendar).
21. Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
22. Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
23. Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
24. Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
25. Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
26. Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
27. Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
28. Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
29. Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
30. Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
31. Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
32. Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
33. Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
34. Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
35. Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
36. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
37. Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.
38. Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
39. Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).
40. Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
41. Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
42. Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
43. Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
44. Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.
45. Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
46. People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
47. Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.
48. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
49. Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.
50. Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too.
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10 Ways Social Media Can Help Your Business

Social networks are vibrant and constantly evolving. Yet the fact today is that Social media is beyond adding friends and sharing status. More and more people are getting involved in this area to perk up their business. Be it small business or huge, the adoption of social media is just augmenting with time that because of the outcome it has to offer. Some of the reason for businesses to get involve may include, getting new customers, increase awareness and stay connected. According to Jody Nimetz, author of Marketing Jive, there are five major uses for businesses and social media: to create brand awareness, as an online reputation management tool, for recruiting, to learn about new technologies and competitors, and as a lead gen tool to intercept potential prospects

We also know some companies that have made excellent use of social media to establish themselves. If you are selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media marketing is an effective method that would make your site profitable over time. So the important factor here is to know why any company would need to incorporate social media into their ideas and strategies. Once that is clear your quantifying gains become a much simpler task. Let’s now have a look at some of the reasons why a company might use social media and how the approach is different:

10 Ways Social Media Can Help Your Business
1. High Traffic and Links
By using Social Media methods you can bring high traffic to your site. They are of two kinds one is primary traffic where you get direct visitors from social networking sites and then we have secondary traffic, which is actually indirect referral traffic from websites which is linked to and send you visitors. By becoming popular on top social bookmarking sites can boost your site traffic visibly and bring you large number of links, sometimes may not even be relevant, yet useful.
2. Cost Effective Method
A wide-ranging Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy could certainty provide a full or at least partial replacement to traditional advertising at fraction of costs when compared. Social media, which tends to have lower costs than other forms of marketing could be beyond doubt cost effective for those required to get customers spreading and sharing messages. Then again, marketers should be careful, because doing it in a wrong way would result in more work, and at times, brand backlash.
3. Direct Conversation
Conversation is the most important part in any kind of business and Social Media is a source that let you to have direct conversation with your customers. One way it will help you is by providing the products and services they desire and secondly you can get their feedback and ideas to improve further. And these days as social media is more about demographic so marketers are more viable to get new target audience, or new people to do business with. Chrisbrogan writer of Trust Agent shares 50 ways marketers can use social media to improve marketing.

4. Powerful Recommendation
Anybody rather than buying from a company who is faceless would prefer going by some recommendation. Yes, of course even in our daily life we believe to purchase in what is been recommended to us. As we know that influencers play a vital role in buying process, one way you can reach your audience is with Social Media. Once you are popular and trusted there, your brand will automatically be suggested to other connected links. Understand it is not about pushing your message, but putting forward a positive image always, building trust and value, and attracting the right clients to you like a magnet.
5. Shaping Relationships
There are ways you can be social without social media , but the initial goal behind networking online is to build relationships that can be the most effective way towards successful business. You can look at bloggers who are making the best use of it by the RSS feed reader, where one can read the post as soon as published on the blog they admire, which can further be commented on. But through Social media – especially Twitter and Facebook, you can have direct conversation with many bloggers and audiences to shape your relations further in also about 140 characters. That’s the power of social networking for business.
6. Chance To Improve
With Social Media sites you have the biggest market research company at your finger tips. Can there be a better way to improve your offering than by getting direct feedback from your consumers? Obviously not, because with valuable feedback from the customers you have a chance to improve your product and services carving their needs. But be careful while working on their wants, it could be difficult to filter out pointer and work on the valuable ones.
7. Enhance Brand Exposure and Loyalty
Social Media is the quickest way to enhance personal branding, which also makes it easy to track social media buzz around your brand and monitor it. You have higher exposure to your brand with online networking, and with spread you can gather hundreds if not thousands of prospect, and among them at least one web 2.0 company will become a loyal customer for your ongoing annual revenue. Don’t forget to take personal care of your customers, even by adding online events and responding to your users can build loyalty.
8. Time Saving Element
It is always said that everything on Social Network is quick and that holds true for any kind of business too. SMM is unquestionably cost effective from monetary point of view, because it actually does not cost anything and it is also effective from time perspective when compare to traditional marketing methods. All that a business owners need to do is their homework and to make sure they are spending their time in the top social sites in their particular industry niche and their specific business requirements.
9. Get Connected To Your Peers
Social Media again gives you a quick chance to get connected to your peers when required. For example, a web designers, developer and programmer can get help for any related issues just by a tweet message on twitter or status update on Facebook. You can always count on Social Networks for help on any particular issues at the same time you can offer help when required by your peers. While it might take time to get connected to people on other sources, social media work like cream!
10. Obvious ROI
It goes without saying that if you focus on your audiences, customers and add value to their lives, you will surely attract followers. They will soon become your fan and start trusting your brand, which in turn gets you more leads. So all you need to do after that is to measure your Social Media ROI.
It’s Your Turn
So let me know, which of the social media sites you love? How do you use it for your business and how does that help? What’s your strategy and idea? Please leave comment
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Get More Twitter Followers TODAY

Yes, that’s right! YOU can have hundreds and hundreds of new Twitter followers starting today, and it won’t cost you ONE CENT. That’s right. Free! You can have all the glory and benefits of more Twitter Followers (and followers=power, right?) without having to pay someone else, and without having to surrender your login and password to a third party source (who will then just spam all your existing followers with links to their site anyway). Are you ready?
Just be ready to follow these steps!
Get out your pen, your paper, and shut off the cell phone. You DO NOT want to be interrupted while I tell YOU (and don’t share this with your friends) how to get more Twitter followers TODAY!

Get More Twitter Followers TODAY

1. Find great stories from other people and share them with a link (and/or attribution). Do this 3 times or more a day!
2. Share useful information that others can use, too! example: “I’ve discovered that Blip.fm is very useful for sharing my musical interests.” (Bonus points if you provide the URL).
3. Participate in online events that use #hashtags, because others in the event will find you and appreciate you, too!
4. Respond to OTHER PEOPLE using the @reply method. This is advanced, so here’s an example: “@glendawh – Is it true you were out all night last night singing karaoke?”
5. Use Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) to find people talking about the things YOU talk about, and follow them!
6. Add your Twitter URL to your signature line in your email! (Easy to do!)
7. Don’t overtweet (more than 20 a day is a bit spooky to most people).
8. Don’t talk about your food (unless you’re me!)
9. Don’t use Twitter like IM (use direct messages for that)
10. Don’t tweet all about you: tweet all about them.
11. And never, ever, ever invite your friends to be part of your Ninja dojo (unless you’re @cspenn), your mafia family (unless you’re @jgottinotdead), or to participate in a “what type of piercing am I?” quiz.

You’re Almost There!

Can you smell that new friend smell? I know I CAN!
You are almost at the top of the Twitter list, just by following the above steps!
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