By Robert Lockard

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but according to one blogger, the key to getting more website traffic from your Twitter account is to tweet less frequently. Of course, Dan Zarrella is not just any blogger – he’s a self-proclaimed social media and viral marketing scientist. That’s a pretty cool title.

In his blog entry, “Want More Clicks? Tweet Less,” Zarrella made the bold statement, “If you want your Tweet to get noticed and ReTweeted, you should slow down your posting rate.” Twitter is all about speed, though. It’s an instant message service. Why would a smart blogger suggest you slow down your tweeting?

According to this study, Twitter users who only tweet one link an hour have a much higher rate of getting that link retweeted than those who post two, three or 13 links an hour. The same is true for days. One link a day gets a better click-through rate and more retweets than multiple links a day.

What does all this mean? I’ll try to interpret. I think it means Twitter users can tell the difference between people sharing genuinely interesting news, ideas or offers and robots or marketers who are just trying to sell their products through Twitter. Twitter users like people who listen as well as share. That’s called a conversation, and it’s what customers expect more and more from ecommerce companies in our current marketplace.

What does this mean for your Internet-marketing strategies? I think it means you should be just as eager to talk about your company as you are to talk about your customers’ needs, industry trends and other things outside of your company. Twitter may not be easy to navigate when you first start out, but as you learn what you’re doing you should try not to focus too much on yourself. Sharing one link or one promotion a day can be more effective than sending a barrage of offers in a short period of time.

Think about your audience. Think about how you respond to tweets. Sometimes it seems like there are way too many to ever keep track of, just from the people you follow. Keep that in mind as you formulate your Twitter strategy. Keep the line of communication open, and try not to jam the line with too many messages.

This blog entry is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post, “Successful Twitter strategy: Tweet less.” The photo of the birds on a fence is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Sister72.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites have become a major tool for bloggers around the world.  These sites help bloggers increase awareness, loyalty and traffic to their blogs.  How do they do this?  By posting tweets that describe a certain blog post and include a shortened link in the update.  Here is an example of a tweet that was in my home stream this morning:

This type of update is called a teaser.  It entices your followers to click on your link to read more about whatever it is you’re talking about.  Your teasers should be carefully crafted in order to create the most effective tweets.

Here are some qualities of succesful twitter teasers:

They ask a question (i.e. “What’s the deal with Twitter Lists anyway?”)

They use strong words that catch the eye (i.e. vampire, CNN, H1N1, bacon… use your imagination!)

They talk directly to individuals (i.e. “Do you have a custom logo to brand your business?”

They’re weird, original, personal and quirky (i.e. anything that @s***mydadsays tweets about–[insert profanity warning here])

Once you start crafting some teasers and trying them out, you should keep track of which links receive the most clicks.  This will tell you how you’re doing and what type of teasers are most enticing to your followers. You can do this by using a third-party Twitter application like CoTweet or HootSuite, which use URL shorteners like bit.ly and ow.ly.

As a final tip, make sure you leave some space leftover in your teasers (including the link) so that your followers can retweet you.  When someone retweets you, your entire username (plus @ and “RT”) will need to fit in the tweet, so make sure your teasers are short enough to allow this!

By Britnee Nguyen

Google and Bing have both announced that they are going to start including Facebook and Twitter posts into their search results. They also claim these will be real-time searches. Social media has so many internet users that Bing and Google want part of that action in their search engines.

They have said that they will start letting users search for Twitter tweets and Facebook statuses on the general search engine sites. In addition, Google is going to include a social search tool that shows a user’s friend’s posted information on various social sites. Google is also partnering with La La music to start offering music downloads on their site as well.

Lately, there have been many on-line social media sites where more people are going towards to get their information from instead of through the traditional on-line searches. It sounds like Google and Bing are trying to steer that group back to their own websites with this new strategy.

According to reports, web traffic to search engines increased by 15 percent in the past year with Twitter increasing tenfold and Facebook tripling its numbers. So they are all growing immensely, but Google and Bing still want to remain the main place to go for information.

This is great and all that the search engines are still working hard to keep business thriving, but I haven’t found out yet how those who don’t want to be included in the search results to opt out.

Personally, Facebook is my private space and I don’t want everybody to be reading my statuses. Which is why on Facebook, no one is allowed to look at your profile unless you make them your friend. Allowing access to this through search engines interferes with this privacy.

Twitter on the other hand is okay to do so. Most everyone’s T

witter accounts are open to the public that anyone can view. When I write something on Twitter, I write knowingly that anyone could see it. With Facebook, it’s more private. This is from a personal opinion, from a business opinion this is great news. It means more coverage and chances to get your name out there through search results.

It’s great that search engines are being innovative and offering new services, but I do hope they provide a way for personal social media users to block the search results if they want that option.