Follow Me Don't Follow Me

The opening lines of REM's Orange Crush.  It is obvious that this applies to social networking today in the form of Twitter.

I've been on twitter for the past couple of weeks and I find this a lot easier to do than facebook. 

Whenever I want to update what's going on in my life I can just tweet.  Whether I want to say what I'm doing, where I'm going, when I update my website or blog or anything.  I can even use this to market any products I'm selling as an affiliate marketer.

This is good because you have 140 characters to include in your tweet, and if a link is too long, the link will automatically become a cloaked and shortend URL.  This way you can hide your affiliate id and keep people from taking it out, but to make sure your link becomes cloaked, you will need to use as many of the 140 characters as possible.  Just include long enough of a written description.

Don't try to agressively get followers.  If you tweet enough the followers will come.  Also don't spam by following too many people at one time as that will become obvious. 

While spamming is discouraged it is important to tweet on a regular basis, but you don't always have to market products or stuff.  Include personal details of your life as well.  Then again, if you just read a good book you can comment on the book and recommend it with an Amazon link.  The same with movies and DVDs.

So I will say Twitter is a fun little social networking tool to keep up with friends, let others keep up with you, market products, and build friendships and businesses.  Also, if you get a chance, tweet me.