I’ve marked this under my “DUH! How come I didn’t do this?” file. One of the artists that I’m following on Twitter, miscellaneaarts has created a special landing page for her Twitter profile.

If you’ve listened to my free audio, “How to Market Your Website Offline“, you’ll know that one of the things that I mentioned is that when you’re pointing people to your website you don’t want to do is to point them directly to your homepage. You want to create a special web page that only people who found your website through an ad, or business card, or a hangtag will be able to get to. This is known as a “landing page”.

Why don’t you want to direct people to your homepage? Because 1) if you’re offering someone an incentive to come to your website (which you should), then it won’t do for you to dump them on your homepage with no clue on where to go next, and 2) creating special landing pages will make your marketing efforts easier to track especially if you’re using a website statistic service or software like Google Analytics. You’ll be able to see exactly how many people found your special page and therefore judge how effective your marketing from that particular channel is.

Now I mentioned the concept of landing pages as they apply to marketing your website offline…like using business cards and product packaging. But the concept works great with online sources as well…including any links from other websites like your Twitter profile, or your MySpace or Facebook profile. Just like what miscellaneaarts did on her Twitter profile and just like I’m going to be doing within the next couple days. DUH!

So, be sure to check out miscellaneaarts Twitter landing page, and if you haven’t had a chance to hear my How to Market Your Website Offline” audio, just click here to subscribe my free newsletter. You’ll receive the link to the free audio after you sign up and you’ll hear a better explanation of what landing pages are all about.

Joining Twitter is pretty useless if you’re not connected to anyone. During the few weeks I’ve been on Twitter, I’ve found that it has become a lot more interesting and useful once I found some cool people to follow. Here are some tips on how to find interesting people on Twitter:

1. Follow people you already know- It’s seems obvious, but some of the first people you follow should be the people that you already know. If you’re using an email service like Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, or MSN, you can allow Twitter to search your address book to see if any of your contacts already has an account. It also allows you to send an email invitation to people from your address book to join Twitter if they don’t already have a Twitter account.

2. Browse the followers of your followers- If you already have people following you, visit the profiles of your current followers and see who’s following them. Chances are that you may find potential followers that have the same interests as you.

3. Don’t follow indescriminately- Try to find people that have the same interests as you. Twitter is as much about monitoring as it is about sending updates. You want the people that you’re following to be talking about things of interest to you. So choose the people you follow carefully. Before you hit “follow” button, check out that person’s previous tweets. What were they about? Are they entirely self-serving, are they just talking about what they last fed their cat, or do they provide some interesting information as well? Because of the nature of Twitter, you will get a certain amount of “chatter” that you may not be interested in, but some of the most interesting people to follow will balance that with something useful.

It’s also a good idea to look at the volume and frequency of a person’s tweets as well. How often do they tweet? When was their last tweet? If it was a month or two ago…they might not make an interesting person to follow. By the same token, you may not have the time to follow someone who tweets about something insignificant every 10 minutes throughout the day.

Now, what if you’re using Twitter as a means to promote yourself and/or maybe to bring more traffic to your website? Wouldn’t you want to include more people and not less? Not necessarily. Not everyone will be interested in what you do, so gathering a huge group of followers that won’t eventually visit your website is just a waste of time. It’s just like I stated in my series on marketing through social networking, you’ll get better results if you concentrate on people that’s likely to be interested in what you’re offering. So do a bit of research before you start following.

4. Follow those who follow you…within reason- On Twitter, it’s usually good form to follow the people that’s following you. But be careful! There are some that try to use this common courtesy as a means to gather large numbers of followers so they can spam them with unwelcome commercial messages. Again, don’t be indescriminate when it comes to following people on Twitter…it’s okay not to follow someone if they seem to be trying to spam you.

5. Use the search function to find followers- Twitter has a search engine that allows you to search profiles and tweets. So if you type in the word “art” you’ll find all of those Twitter profiles, usernames, and tweets that contain the word “art”. Be aware that this is a kind of scattergun approach to finding followers, but it can be a good way to start if you’re at ground zero.

There’s also a interesting service called Summize that allows you to search Twitter conversations. If you type in the word “crafts” you’ll get all of the Twitter conversations that contain the word “crafts”. I actually like this service a bit better than the Twitter search.

So if you haven’t checked out Twitter yet, you can go to the Twitter website…and if you sign up for an account and need someone to follow, check out my Twitter profile and follow me!

So…I’ve been using Twitter for almost a month now…and I must say that I’m finding it very useful. If you’re not familiar with Twitter, you can check out a previous post I did about it.

I’ve found Twitter to be a great way to drive traffic to both my websites and my blog. Every time I put up a new blog post, upload a new video, make an update to my website, or add to my Etsy store, I’ll send a tweet about it along with a direct link. Since I’ve been on Twitter I’ve noticed an increase of subscribers to my blog and to my mailing list. There was one tweet that I posted that resulted in 5 new subscriptions to my newsletter all in one night.

Now, I also try not to make all of my tweets just all about me and my websites, I also try to post links to useful news and websites as well. You find out very quickly that people that do nothing but “tweet their own horns” on every single update are very tiresome. Just like I wrote about in my series about social networking…it’s all about giving as well as and taking.

Twitter also makes a great networking tool as well. I’ve meet a lot of artists using Twitter, and I’ve been introduced to a lot of new work, websites, and information by simply monitoring the tweets from the people I’m following. Part of the value of Twitter is not just in sending tweets, but in monitoring the tweets of others…especially if you’re careful to follow interesting people. Because you can also send direct messages to people that are following you, you can hold conversations with the people that are following you. Through my conversations on Twitter, I’ve found a couple of artists to interview for Interview Tuesdays, and I’ve also got an offer from another blog to write a guest post.

There’s also a lot of great tools that you can use with Twitter too. I already wrote about how you can use Jott to send tweets. There’s also a number of tools that you can use to send tweets without having to go directly to the Twitter website. I now mainly use Twirl to send updates and to monitor the tweets of those I’m following. Another service that I’m using for posting links to my tweets is called Tweetburner. Tweetburner is a link service for Twitter that shorten long links to short ones…a really important service when you’re limited to only 140 characters per tweet! As an added bonus, you can also track how many people click on your links…and Twirl is also integrated with Tweetburner so you can shorten your links directly in Twirl (can you tell I really like Twirl?).

Another cool service I’ve recently discovered is called Twitterfeed. This is service that allows you to hook your blog up to your Twitter account so that it automatically sends an update every time you add a post to your blog. Now Twitterfeed is a neat service, but it’s not perfect. I have found that it sometimes misses posts, so be sure that you keep an eye on it. If you have a Wordpress blog installed on your website, then there is a plug-in called Twitter Tools that can also send tweets to your account every time you put a new post on your blog. I haven’t tested it yet, but since all of my blogs run on Wordpress, I think I’ll give it a try.

So, that’s my experience with Twitter so far! Intrigued? You can sign up for a free account at the Twitter website…and while you’re there, check out my Twitter profile and send me a tweet!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted an Ask a Question reply. This one is by Carol about the best way to learn HTML…

I am so new at this, but I want to learn how to do web sites. I am getting the feeling that learning HTML might be essential. I was going to buy Dreamweaver, but it looks like I should learn code as well. My question is: Can I learn that on my own or should I take some college courses (local Junior College)? Thanks

There’s a lot of ways that someone can learn HTML…here’s what I wrote to Carol…

Hi Carol,

I must admit that I’m an old school web designer. I learned to design websites by hand before there were tools like Expression Web and Dreamweaver, so coding in HTML is like second nature to me. That being said, strictly speaking you don’t have to know how to code in HTML to create a website using a tool like Dreamweaver. But a good working knowledge of HTML will certainly be beneficial because you’ll know what the program is doing to your page behind the scenes.

Now basic HTML is not a very difficult thing to learn, and how you learn it is really dependent on how you learn best. If you’re good studying things by yourself, you can get a good reference book like Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML or Sams Teach Yourself HTML & XHTML in 24 Hours and teach yourself. And while you’re at it you should probably also get a good reference book on Dreamweaver as well, like Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual.

There’s also some online resources that can help you out as well. Web Design from Scratch has a good basic HTML tutorial that you can look at.

If you prefer the multimedia approach, Lynda also has some video training for HTML as well.

If after looking at some of these online resources and the reference books, you feel that you need some one-on-one direction or you feel that you learn better in the classroom environment, you can certainly take some classes at the local junior college. They’ll be able to get you pointed in the right direction and you’ll also have some feedback if you get stuck.

I hope this helps you some…if you have any more questions, please feel free to ask!

Do you have a burning question about websites or promoting yourself online? Click on the “Ask a Question” tab at the top of the page and send me your question. I’ll send you an answer to your question personally.

Last Friday, I posted the first video in my critique of my current jewelry website Mixed Media Designs.com.

Here’s the second video in the makeover series. In this video, I visit my blog and point out more improvements that must be made.

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