This is what the marketing model looks like when applied to social sites like Twitter.

1. Target your customers quickly and easily through Twitter

You can find and follow potential clients online very quickly by using the Advanced Twitter search feature that lets you geo-target them within a certain radius and city. With it, you can get pretty specific quickly with Twitter when it comes to reaching out to potential clients. You can also use sites like Nearby Tweets to target in on future customers with their geo-targeting and industry specific search features.

2. Build Your Twitter Followers

Once you have located and followed them, tweet about content that is helpful and informative to your potential client, and they may return the “love” and follow you back. If you badger them with sales messages, you can expect a very poor follow rate.

3. Create a Blog

Include your link on Twitter in your profile that gives people the option to dig a little deeper into what your services and products are. You do not have to set up a blog but you will get the most benefit if you do and we will discuss why in the next step. You can also use a website or your Facebook page to provide more information about your products and services. Make it easy for visitors to find your services, products, and special offers once they arrive from Twitter onto your site.

4. Write Quality Blog Content

There are plug-ins available for Word Press that allow you to tweet the title of your blog posts automatically to Twitter. The tweet will include a link back to the blog article where people can read the full blog post. Once they are on your site, that is your chance to sell to them. These Twitter posts that include your links may get retweeted to their followers which will bring your blog more traffic.

5. Track the Traffic and Results

You should be tracking and taking a look at your traffic statistics to get a good understanding of where your traffic is coming from and how much traffic you are getting. Google offers the very popular free tool known as Google Analytics to help you do this. It is very easy to set up and only takes about 10 minutes to do so. By tracking your Twitter traffic, you will see what is getting you the best results and you will be able to adjust accordingly for better results.

There are many forms of media that can be utilized as tools for an effective marketing campaign. There are billboards, magazines, websites, email campaigns, brochures, direct mail pieces, posters, television ads, newspapers, radio spots,  promotional items such as your company slogan on a coffee mug, and lastly, social media sites like Twitter. We will refer to these tools as forms of media. All of them can be effective when used properly. Over time the tools in our toolbox may change, but the laws of marketing do not and must be applied to every tool in our  marketer’s tool belt. When a new tool appears it does not change the laws of marketing, it just changes how we reach the customer. It is merely a channel.

Here is a quick breakdown of the 4 laws of marketing that are used without such tools as Twitter and other forms of social media:

1. Locate Your Customer

First we must create a profile of the ideal customer. We need to determine  such things as their age, race, gender, yearly income, location, and educational level to name a few. We also need to know how and where they spend their time. Whether it’s when they are online, at work, or in a store. The data that we are gathering at this stage is commonly known as demographics.

2. Create Your Campaign

Once we know who our customer is, then we must reach them with the best tool or tools in our tool belt. For example, if you know that women who go to a certain mall purchase high end purses, then a billboard closely located to the mall featuring your high end purse would be the proper tool to use to help influence the desired purchase, even if you sold solely through an 800 number, and did not have a store in the mall.

3. Track the Campaign

You need to know what your sales numbers are before and after the campaign in order to measure the results effectively. It’s obvious that if net profits increased then the campaign was a success, and if they went down, we need to analyze the campaign to determine why. Once the campaign was run, we then must make adjustments to the campaign even if we had a net profit. With just a few little tweeks, we may be able to make more money from an already successful campaign.

4. Survey Your Customers

Poll your customers to find out where they saw your ads. Continue to put the most marketing dollars into the highest performing ads while closely monitoring the lesser performing ads. Don’t cancel the weaker ads immediately. Be sure to give them a little time before you declare them a success or failure.

When you go to Twitter.com, you will notice that you can send Tweets and DMs on the homepage, but you are restricted in what you can view on your screen.  Twitter only allows you to view a couple of tweets at a time. You can set up groups, but if you are following a lot of people or companies, then you will miss out on a lot of tweets because of the limited screen space.

What many people choose to do is to use free software that is readily available online. By doing so, you will have increased control to read, post and reply to tweets. Some of the more popular free solutions out there are:

Spaz – Which offers a mobile version and changeable skins. They also offer a desktop version of their application as well.

Tweetdeck – Allows you to create groups, auto shortens URLs for you, runs on Mac and PC, and you can organize everything into columns.

Twhirl – This application can be downloaded and run on your computer. It allows you to handle a few Twitter accounts at the same time. Twhirl also lets you update other social media accounts such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace to name a few.

With any of these free Twitter interface solutions, your Twitter experience will be more enjoyable and more productive.

Listed in this article are some more important Twitter functions, jargon, and URL shortener tools for making the most of Twitter. Please be sure to view Getting a Grip on Twitter Basics Part 1 where we cover more Twitter functions such as Tweets, @replies, and Hashtags#.

Direct Messages: Direct messages are used to communicate directly and privately with other Twitter users. Direct messages are commonly referred to as DMs within the Twitter landscape. If you would like to send a direct message to another Twitter user, Type D and then follow this with the Twitter user name for the person or company that you would like to direct message.

Since we are limited to 140 characters within Twitter, it is a good idea to shorten the length of links or URLs that you post within Twitter. The best way to do this is with a URL shortener. URL shorteners will shorten the number of characters in the posted URL to about 16 to 20 characters. Some of the more popular free online URL shortener services include tinyurl.com and bit.ly for squeezing down the amount of characters used in your URL. If you would like to track the amount of clicks that your shortened URLs generate and generate shortened URLs at the same time, then be sure to use twitalyzer to track your traffic.

Coming to grips with Twitter is fairly easy. Even a child can do it. Better yet, even grandparents can do it.  Here are some definitions of common Twitter functions and jargon:

Tweets: In short, a Tweet is a quick, precise text message that contains 140 characters or less. That includes spaces and punctuation too. Grammar and punctuation suffer a little bit due to the 140 character limit. People often use “w/” for with, “ppl” for people, “4″ for four or for. Messages can contain a variety of content.

@replies: This is used when you want to reply to someone else’s Tweet. Click the “Reply Button” or type @ followed by the User ID of the person that posted the message that you are replying to. By using @reply, you are letting other people know who you are talking to and it also allows people to know when you are talking about them.

Hashtags (#): Hash tags enable you to make groupings, and they allow you to draw attention to a particular keyword or subject. Hashtags can be about news, tips, events, sports, a sports team, a sale at your favorite store, your business, a product,  and the list goes on and on.