When it comes to using Twitter to promote a brand, a lot of people just don’t get it. Here are a couple articles I feel really hit home when it comes to using Twitter correctly. Follow these guidelines, and you’ll start to see more and more success in your Twitter campaigns.

5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter
Copyblogger gives some bullet points on structuring your tweets in order to facilitate mass retweetage and follows.

Did Phil Baumann Just Save Follow Friday?
Follow Friday was becoming a day of random chaos, it’s about time someone set the etiquette in stone.

Twitter 101 For Business
A special guide, directly from the hoses mouth. Twitter covers the lingo, good practices, use cases, and resources for a business owner looking to dive into the Twitterverse.

Incease Your Blog’s Retweet Rate
You’re using Tweetmeme.com or Retweet.com, but not getting that many successful retweets, what gives?

Hey guys, welcome to another installment of Monday’s Marketing Mashup, where DaftSEO brings you the latest by the greatest in search engine strategies and marketing tactics!

10 Way to Launch a New Blog With a Bang
Web Designer Depot shows us what it is to truly be prepared to take on a new blog, and what it takes to truly make a new endeavor successful.

Link Building is Faster with BuzzStream
Colin LaHay takes a look into the new Link Building CRM software, BuzzStream, and shows us how to manage our backlink campaigns.

7 Rules for Link Building in 2009
Eduard Blacquiere, also known as EdWords, gives us a couple tips for having a really solid link building strategy, maximizing the points of inbound traffic and link juice.

Well, that’s all for now, stay tuned for the next Marketing Mashup!

Many people complain that when they ask for links, or try to share their link on various communities, that they experience little to no success, or even get banned from the venue they are trying to reach.

Well, you have to make sure to follow the rules!

When you’re posting your links on forums, make sure it is allowed by the community to append your link to your signature. Don’t post your link in new threads and replies all throughout the message board, instead, look for an advertising or promotion specific forum where the administrators want these sort of threads to be placed. (e.g. a “post your link” forum, or a “review my site” forum.)

When posting comments to blog, don’t clutter your post with links to your blog, instead focus your energies on contributing something back to the blog (provide information, ask a question, etc.) and leave your link in the URL field. I can pretty much guarantee your comment will be approved and you will gain a relevant backlink.

I hope this has helped you out, following these guidelines has ensured that 99.9% of my comments get approved, and I’ve never been banned from a message board for promoting my website within a reasonable means.

Social Poster is a new online application that creates an easy regimen for you (as per your criteria) to submit your article to many different social networks. You can specify to include social networks with or without dofollow links, eliminate websites by category and language, or choose Pligg based networks.

You can of course select from Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Newvine, Propeller, Google Bookmarks, and you can choose from many more social networking websites.

I’ll be using Social Poster to bookmark and spread the fire about itself! (And of course to submit my own articles to other social bookmarking websites.)

Someone asked this question on a message board I frequent, and, while this question is asked all the time, day in and day out, I realized that no-one in all the blogs, message boards, and documentation websites I visit has seemed to visit this topic yet.

There is really only one answer.

Ready? I’m going to sound like a broken record.

Constantly update your site with fresh, related content and always be on the lookout to build quality backlinks with other sites in your niche.

Sound familiar?

Also, be sure to stay on top of new search trends and marketing strategies, you must stay informed so you can inform others.

Now you have the knowledge of how to receive 10,000 visitors under your belt, happy?

You should be spending more of your time involved in online message board communities posting information and adding value to the discussions and using that leverage to gain links and readers for your own website. Lots of professional bloggers build their authority and popularity by having a fanbase on popular forums related to their niche.

Sure, certain posts on message boards have hoards of useful information and tips, but most rumors and shinfo (shitty information, something that isnt needed and doesnt relate to the topic at hand) find their roots in some frenzied discussion in a thread on a message board.

You should avoid getting sucked into the pointless conversations and e-drama that has a frequent connection with the anonymous users of any online community, unless you have to wade through that muck in an actual need of researching information for a problem you actually have.

Save yourself a headache and tons of wasted time by being brief and to the point. Ask what you want, and contribute back.

Sure, on the long run, from a statistical point of view, if you have steadily increase your flow of traffic, you will steadily increase your conversions. But you are not increasing your conversion rate, merely adding to the tally of actual conversions.

A website that converts well naturally gains more traffic, so it’s good to make this your focal point. Make sure you try and test different advertising strategies and placements. Maybe you should try to find another venue or medium to market your brand in.

Perhaps you need to change the way you write your headlines. Could it be possible you aren’t submitting your social bookmarks to the category that most fits your article?

Is AdSense not converting well for you? Try out another pay per click network, or maybe experiment with some affiliate programs!

Just remember, don’t ever be afraid to try something new! It just might be worth it!

What have you done in the past to increase conversions?

You just have to remember … “Constant Vigilance!”" Always remember to update your site, try to write a new blurb or article at least twice a week to keep things fresh.

Don’t you notice that after every post you make, your subscriber count jumps a little, but then it’s all downhill after that.

Sure you can submit your websites to RSS feed directories or services like FeedStub and RSS Submit … but the only way to earn readership and greater ranks in the search engines is to consistently have updated content for the masses.

P.S. To those who asked me from a couple posts ago, I bought a 2004 Toyota Corolla S Series (dark metallic blue) Cheers!

Finding “do follow” blogs is probably on everybody’s “most annoying menial task” list … but it is something that needs to be done.

On your daily hunt to find places to sneak backlinks (or legitimately fish for comments back to your blog) … don’t you get tired of using custom Google search queries to find blogs with decent PR and Alexa ratings related to your blog’s niche?

Well, look no further! Here are a few Do Follow Blog Search Engines that have been crafted from Google’s Custom Search feature. Some DoFollow Search Engines are better in my opinion because they have a feature to contact the owner’s to offer suggestions or even report blogs that appear in the search engine that do NOT follow the “DoFollow Blog” rules.

Jerry’s Search Engine – www.jyse.com

DoFollo – www.dofollo.com

Backlink Spot – www.backlinkspot.com

w3ec’s DoFollow Search Engine – www.w3ec.com/dofollow/

Comment Hunt – www.commenthunt.com

Remember, you shouldn’t spam links back to your blog, try to read the various blogs and comment on ones that interest you and really reflect your niche. These are the best backlinks.

Now let me update you with some quasi bad news.

In a previous post, I mentioned several ways to bolster your Alexa ranking.

During a recent update, the redirect function that was available off of Alexa’s website was disabled, so this trick is no longer effective.

P.S. Sorry for the lack of updates for the past couple weeks, I haven’t had a stable internet connection.