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.

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.

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.

When you share your tweets with all of your followers, make sure that you include a “human side” to your posted messages too. It’s acceptable to let followers know some more personal non business  information such as, I just got out of a boring meeting, I can’t wait for the weekend, I lost my keys, I forgot to buy my wife’s birthday present,  I was late to work, I am going to my kids play, or I  just picked up Starbucks. I think you get the point here. By doing this, you will make your business more relatable to clients.

Besides posting your own posts on Twitter, you can share useful tweets with others. This is known as retweeting, and it is a vital part of the social experience within Twitter. When you are retweeting, you are sending tweets to your followers that you basically are endorsing that others have posted. Retweeting goes well beyond just giving someone credit for a good Twitter post. By doing it, you are letting your followers know that you value this person’s opinion, or you like this post, or you find this tweet helpful and informative.

The other side of retweeting is when others retweet you tweets. This can help you get your message out to the Twitter world much faster.