Every so often something comes along that takes the Internet by storm. Right now one of the hottest forms of social networking is Twitter.com. There are numerous benefits to using Twitter to market your business.  Here are six of them!

1. Developing a large list of followers gives you a market that you might not otherwise have had. There are millions of members on Twitter right now that you can follow and create as followers yourself.

The numbers alone suggest that marketing online this way will create traffic and potential business you might not have otherwise had.  Politicians such as John McCain and President Obama already understand the advantage of Twitter and have hundreds of thousands of followers. This alone should tell you that the possibilities for your business are astronomical.

2. Starting conversations on Twitter is extremely easy to do. Every update you make is similar to a micro-blog post and is known as Tweeting. You can get instantaneous feedback and create conversations very quickly this way.

This is where the social networking aspect really comes into play. You will meet people that you otherwise never would have known and develop personal relationships with them.

3. There is a strategy to doing this correctly. You do not want to constantly be promoting products and sound like you’re advertising.  Just as email marketing and discussion forums do not allow spamming neither does Twitter.

However by participating on a regular basis you can include product updates, useful information, blog posts, and so on to update your followers on what is going on with you. By doing it this way you avoid sounding like you’re advertising and you can market as well.

4. You can generate interest in things that are going on in your business by asking questions. This allows you to get the conversation going and easily increase the number of updates you are making. Major corporations are finding they can generate interest for their products on Twitter and so can you as a small Internet business owner.

5. Marketing online can be expensive but not so with Twitter. This is free and the only cost to you is the time it takes to participate in it.

6. Not only is it free but it can be fun. It can almost become addictive so you need to be conscious that you are not wasting your valuable time, but you are using it to benefit your business.

These are six reasons to market on Twitter. There certainly are many more but getting started and learning more about it will help you find out what those are.

You can start getting targeted traffic to your website or affiliate link in a few minutes using a traffic bar. The two most popular ones are Instant Buzz and Free Traffic Bar. They allow internet marketers to market to other internet marketers. They are very easy to setup and use. Basically you build up credits by surfing websites that you are already going to but this time you get ad credits that will display your ad on someone else’s browser. The ads are simple one liner text ads but can be enhanced somewhat like color or text style. You will have to check with each to see what they allow. The quality of targeted traffic you get from these is excellent because most people that have these bars installed are internet marketers.

If you are marketing online then you can use Squidoo. It is a very easy Web 2.0 application. It is very similar to Myspace but is for serious professionals. It allows you to focus on a particular topic in a very unique way. Squidoo is rated in top 1000 on Alexa.com. There are so many internet marketers that don’t even know about this website.

Google will pick up your Squidoo page according to keywords you have used. You can create several of what is called lenses on their site. Use good tags and your lens might get featured. If you get “lens of the day” then you can expect a great amount of traffic. Another great feature is that they share their advertising revenue with you so making many Squidoo lenses can actually generate an income for you. You can create a lens in less than 10 minutes. Go to http://www.squidoo.com/first_lens and get started today.

You can always use the major PPC advertisers like Google, MSN, and Yahoo but they can end up costing you way more than you would like to spend. Lucky for us there are places out there offering free pay per click. These are older PPC engines but they can still bring traffic to your site. Here is a list below of sites that offer free PPC sign on bonuses:

www.searchpost.net/list.htm  $500 Worth Of FREE Advertising!

www.endfind.com/addsite.htm      $100

www.surftheweb.com        $75

www.linkathon.com             $50

www.seekhawk.com           $25

www.kwicksearch.com/signup.shtml  $20

www.esearchzone.com/signup.htm  $10

www.freexplore.net   $10

www.jiffyseek.com/search/signup.cgi   $10

www.linkassist.com  $10

www.searchraider.com $10

www.spiderjump.com  $10

 I am sure you could find more if you keep searching.

Getting noticed on Myspace.com can bring a load of traffic to your website so it should definitely be included in your marketing efforts. MySpace.com is the one of the most popular websites rated by Alexa.com. Its free to get your own profile setup and you can have a link pointing to your site very quickly. The content on your profile should include as much as you can about your niche topic.

Once you have a profile setup, start a linking strategy by searching Myspace users and inviting friends that appear active possibly interested. You can also search for people willing to exchange links with you. Just search for you niche keyword. It won’t be long and you will have many friends. You will then be able to start posting bulletins and communicating with all these people which will bring alot of traffic to your site.  Here is a great tool to get started FriendBlasterPro .

You can build many incoming links to your site by commenting on other people’s blogs. You need to start with a blog search by going to http://search.blogger.com or http://www.icerocket.com. After you found the blog in your niche, you should save it in your favorites so you can visit often.

Look around for a question that you will be able to answer. Don’t post a comment that will seem like an advertisement or it might be considered blog spam the blog owner will delete it. The key is to provide good feedback while providing the link back to your site. You should always offer helpful advice.

This method will pay off in the long run. The search engines and people will find your links. Be consistent and make a few comments every day.