Twitter marketing has grown to be an extremely complex channel for even the most skilled social marketers. Like any other social networking platform, achieving marketing success on Twitter requires planned strategy and deliberate intentionality to stay out in the public eye and attract your target audience. For many brands, it’s a challenge to maintain a strong presence on this micro blogging platform. It can take weeks, months or even years to develop a meaningful following because so many people are on this site for a variety of reasons.

The best way to drive traffic to your website is to reach your target audience at their level of interest. It’s important that you make yourself visible to your target audience on the social media platform. Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool for doing this. The best brands use this medium as part of their overall marketing strategy to get into conversations with their target audience on an immediate basis. Branding yourself as a helpful, informative contributor makes it easy for followers to know that they will be engaging with content that is relevant to their interests.

Branding yourself as a person of authority creates trust in your niche that allows you to connect directly with your audience. It also encourages your followers to follow you on Twitter in the future. Interaction on a platform such as twitter allows followers to get to know you and build relationships with you over time.

Analyzing the data provided by your analytics platform provides you with insight into the success of your twitter campaign. Understanding how many people are visiting your site, how many people are viewing your profile page and the demographics of your audience are important in creating appropriate campaigns. You can view your statistics through the dashboard or through the individual post for each individual account. A detailed overview of the most active twitter users by industry, geographic location, age and number of followers can be found within the analytics reports section.

The second step is to build on your personal brand by engaging with fans and followers on social media. Posting insightful blog posts, engaging with your fans and connecting with potential clients through various forms of social media are great ways to build on your personal brand. When doing this, you need to remember not to “spam” your feed. Social media is a place for interaction means leaving commentary and sharing links to interesting things. Spamming will most definitely get you banned from using the platform and you could find yourself in some serious legal trouble. Stay focused and engaged with others in your niche.

There are two popular brands that integrate Twitter into their overall advertising campaigns and these are Twitter and Foursquare. These companies have found that by including Twitter in their overall marketing strategy they are able to significantly boost engagement and sales. Both of these brands encourage their users to tweet any news or promotional opportunities they may be aware of. They both have dedicated Twitter leaders who handle the accounts for users and ensure that all messages are direct and to the point. While the functionality of these two platforms differ greatly, both companies have found that the methods used to promote tweets work well together.

The third important element of your twitter marketing strategy is gaining followers. Your goal is to have a large following so that you are seen as an expert in your field by those in your target market. The easiest way to do this is to simply follow along as followers of other people in your niche, providing helpful information to those who are following. If you can provide useful information, others will be inclined to follow you as well.

Finally, the last step to take when integrating Twitter into your marketing strategy is to make sure your content is regularly posted. One of the biggest mistakes that many people make when using twitter is not posting new content. This is the step where you have to decide whether you want to use a more “traditional” format of tweeting or you prefer to be more “social.” If you decide to go with the latter, then be sure to monitor what your followers are asking you and how often you post new tweets.