In this article, we discuss some ideas for using Twitter in your attraction marketing strategy, as shared by Curt Frieden in a recent webinar.  Twitter is a microblogging website that allows publishing a limited number of characters per “Tweet.”  One of the big advantages of Twitter is the ability to directly communicate with virtually anyone, unlike Facebook, where you are more limited to your “friends.”

Sometimes, people equate Twitter with Facebook; however Twitter is much more of an “open” system.  What this means is that you have access to anyone, without first establishing a “friendship.”  There are no limits on who you can communicate directly with, which is something few people are aware of or take advantage of.

Use of a third-party tool such as TweetDeck “opens up” Twitter so that it is much more usable.  TweetDeck allows management of your contacts, including not only Twitter, but Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more.  In addition, Tweetlater.com can be used to automatically respond to direct messages coming to you and Twollo.com can be used to automatically follow users based on keywords you select.

Another useful tool in the strategy, is Ping.fm, which allows a simultaneous status update on Twitter, Facebook and other selected social media.  In addition the Twitter Toolbar for Firefox, mytwittertoolbar.com, has a multitude of tips about using Twitter.

The strategy in using all of these tools and leveraging Twitter is in making friends and establishing relationships with people.  Once people know who you are and trust you, it is much easier to send them to one of your websites to opt-in for more information and become a customer.  This is also true of other similar Web 2.0 social networking sites; relationships are the key.

What is a Twitter “stealth” account?  Curt explained that he has a separate account that he uses to follow a lot of the big names in Twitter, who have massive following.  The account is not used to interacting with others, rather to link to his other accounts and to “spy” on what the big name users are doing.  This strategy segregates key users from the “noise” in his main Twitter account, so it is easier to isolate what they are doing.