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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!