Using social media outlets like Twitter to connect and network with other people can help promote your business or blog.  But how do you find people to connect with on Twitter?  Using the “new Twitter” format, connecting with people has never been easier.  Here are some tips to help you find people on Twitter.

• Look at the “similar to you” list available in the “new Twitter” format

This list appears on the right side of the new Twitter page.  If you don’t see it, try clicking on the “lists” icon.  Scroll through the list and click the “follow” button for people, businesses, and causes that you wish to follow.  If you don’t think that a particular person or business is a match, click on the X at the top right hand corner of the tab to close out that option.

• Click on the “who to follow” bar at the top of the screen

Click on the “who to follow” bar at the top of your screen to find a list of people with similar interests as yourself.  You can scroll through the list and “follow” those who appear to be a match.  If you see a person or a business that does not appear to be a match, you can click on the “hide” button.

• Click on the “who to follow” bar and then click on the “find friends” tab at the top of the screen

You can search for your friends using this method  and find their Twitter accounts.  Then, you can follow them.  You can check for your friends on Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, and LinkedIn.

• Send your friends and business associates a personal invitation

You can also personally invite your friends or business associates to follow you by sending a message to their email address.  Simply click on the “invite friends” option at the right hand side of the screen on the “who to follow” screen, and type in the required information.

• Search by name

Probably the easiest way to find people is to simply type their name into the search box at the top of the screen.  You will either see a “no results” message on your screen, or a list of matches.  If you see matches, they will be listed on the left hand side of the page as well as the upper right hand side of the page. Matches include “tweets” or posts that have mentioned the name of the person for which you are searching.  Scroll through the lists to find the best match and “follow” that match.

Author Information

Darren Main writes on the topic of free people search and how to find people for free online.

Writing effective content for a business website can make all the difference between a vibrant, successful site and one that languishes unread and at worst, may even damage your business’s reputation.

But, perhaps you are happy with your website’s content. If this is the case, it is still worth taking a step back and looking at your site with fresh eyes. Perhaps it’s time for a change, or perhaps it’s time to move things up another gear.

While effective content is central to a website, the ability to use it to further your own brand is where an online site can really come in to its own. There are a number of ways of doing this:

SEO Content

Maximizing the use of search engine optimization can really make a site, but even more significantly, it can help enhance your brand so that customers identify easier with what you have to offer. Think about your brand and the words that best describe your product or service. Perhaps you have a brand tag line. If so, make sure you incorporate it into the site so search engines can easily locate it when anyone uses it as search criteria.

Emotional Buy-In

A brand is a great way of getting customers to “buy-in” to what you offer. A website can really come into its own here as you can (and should) tailor its content to enhance the brand. So if you were in the business of selling organic, locally sourced food, it would make sense to extend this brand.

You could have a section of the site with links to farmers’ markets or recipes for healthy meals. You could write articles yourself, or even better, use a business blog writing service to create content that compliments your brand. This helps create a self-contained “world,” which should encourage customers to explore what you have to offer.

Inspire Loyalty

Always working with your branding in mind is a great way to increase customer loyalty. Filling your site with articles, blogs and links that help reinforce the message of your brand will create a sense of belonging for your customers.

Remember that many successful sites aren’t just online stores, but foster a sense of community by discussing ideas, issues and news relating to your product. If you sell CDs, then why not include reviews so customers think of your site not just as a place to spend money, but a resource from which they can learn.

Call to Action

Don’t forget the call to action. What do you want the reader to do after they read what you have to say? Do you want them to fill out a form, call you, request more information? Be sure you use proper calls to action that can help your bottom line, while also considering all the other factors we discussed.

Writing onsite content with branding in mind will help create an overall sense of identity and a place where customers will be happy to return time and time again.

About the Author

Steve Lazuka is owner and operator of Interact Media, a website content company based in Ohio that services social media, content development, a business blog writing service and more. He’s also an avid tweeter (@SteveLazuka), and a guest blogs regularly.

Though I don’t call myself an SEO expert — I’ll leave the bragging to those who have built up a name for themselves over the years — I’ve had to ask myself the same question several times since I launched my freelance writing site, The Article Writer, in May 2005: would I do better building up my personal network of sites or should I take on client work?

Well, that answer would be “all of the above” as I like to balance the work that I do for my clients with the small network of sites I own and manage.  Definitely, I like receiving money from a client for work done, but I also like to monetize my sites and use them as one way to showcase my talents.  My thinking in this area is probably best described along these lines:

Build, Monetize, and Sell — Over the past three years I’ve built up more than a dozen sites from the ground up, monetized almost every single one of them, and later sold off ten forums, blogs, and websites during that period. There is a certain thrill that I get when I build a site from scratch, attract a following, make some money off of it and, when tired of it, am able to sell it for a profit.

Fix, Improve, and Move On — When working for a client, I almost always am brought on to help improve an existing site. I’ve gotten away from building sites from nothing as the time involved in this work is intensive. Besides, I haven’t kept up with my web design skills other than being able to build a decent WordPress blog with the assorted tools I like to use. What’s fun about this option is that I can measure a job’s progress and show the client where improvements have been made. In most cases they quickly see it for themselves which makes my job a snap.

Mixing Things Up — I promised myself when I became self-employed in 2002 that I wouldn’t grow stagnant in my work. My last full time paid position hindered my growth, something that I will not allow to happen again. I do have a long term strategy in place, but I also make adjustments along the way. I find that making careful changes helps me to work better, a benefit for my clients as well as for my sites.

How about you? What is your business strategy? Do you like to work for clients exclusively? For yourself? Or do you balance the two? Inquiring minds want to know, so please hit the comment button and share what’s on your mind.

Marketers watched closely as the new search engine, Cuil, got its start this week quickly recognizing that the product being offered was oversold. Nope, you don’t pay to use Cuil, but like any freebie web based product, its success or failure depends a lot on user reaction. The “sale” being  made in this case is the traffic to the site — monetizing your online product comes later.

With nearly every account of what I have read, Cuil failed to measure up. I won’t rehash what I and others said about Cuil over the past few days as there isn’t any need to go in that direction. Instead, I would like to offer something different — tips on how you can launch your product without it bombing. Failure happens, but it certainly isn’t cool.

Five Steps To Successfully Marketing Your Product

Know Your Market — Just because you have all of the workings of a product doesn’t mean that you should introduce your version to the market. Then again, search is dominated by one company and only Google does search so well. With more than 60% of the US search traffic going through Google, having a product that can compete makes sense. You just may not the one to deliver the new product!

Know Your Product — Maybe you can provide a greater quantity of something for your customers, but quantity never should replace quality. Although I like the magazine style SERPs offered by Cuil, many of the returns weren’t accurate and, perhaps what was the most embarrassing of all, too many of the photographs served up with the results missed the mark. Relevancy matters!

Know Your Audience — Exactly what does the customer want? Or, are you telling the customer what he needs? Top notch marketers find out the former while still managing to do the latter, but you should never assume that what you think she needs is what she really wants. Persuasion is very important, but you must offer something of substance in exchange.

Test, Refine, Test, Refine… — Before launching any product, test it again and again and again to see that it operates according to the way you planned it to work. Gauge customer reaction, measure results, and implement changes prior to launching. If anything, Cuil should have slapped up a big fat BETA sticker on the site to explain to people that the search engine was still being tested. When people discovered that the navigation bar was broken, it wasn’t hard to think that the product never made it out of its ALPHA development stage.

Save Face — A terrible launch of a new product isn’t necessarily the end of your aspirations. Then again, an explanation and an apology to your customers are in order. People are slow to forgive a fool, but will consider giving supposed smart folks a break if they admit to the error of their way. Marketing students remember the New Coke campaign of 1985 and how a soft drink giant quickly reacted to customer outrage and mended their ways.

Success Is Possible, But Excuses Aren’t Welcome

In my heart of hearts, I want Cuil to succeed. Google is too big to be left unchallenged, dominating and dictating the market at the same time. Just as Firefox has grown into being a respectable alternative to Internet Explorer, Cuil has the potential to shake up search by giving people a different way to find what they want online.

Provided, of course, Cuil retreats, rebuilds, and releases a product that nobody has to be shamed of and without offering lame excuses explaining why your product looks so bad.

Sphinn, the Digg-like internet marketing news and discussion forum, is one site that everyone even remotely interested in online marketing should acquaint themselves with. You don’t need to be an SEO expert to benefit from Sphinn, in fact I have found the site to be full of great articles that can help anyone who wants to maximize their impact online — sort of like an online tutorial where you can glean vital information from many of the articles featured.

Sphinn, Search Engine People, Danny Sullivan, and Third Door Media

For those of you who aren’t familiar with how Sphinn came about, there are two names you’ll want to remember: Danny Sullivan, who is the content manager for Third Door Media, and Search Engine Land, which is probably the most well known of the Third Door Media brands. The company registered Sphinn.com in April 2007 and launched it soon thereafter.  Almost overnight, Sphinn has become the site where nearly all of the movers and shakers in the SEO/SEM world congregate — which is the purpose of Sphinn fulfilled.

Unlike Digg, Sphinn has a much more community feel to it, a level of professionalism not apparent on Digg. Certainly, there are those who post articles simply to benefit themselves, but then we’re talking about marketing and that shouldn’t be a surprise, nor is that wrong.

A Level Of Professionalism Not Found On Digg

What really separates Sphinn from the pack is that the participants are careful to only select (Sphinn It!) articles that meet their approval. Though there aren’t official gatekeepers to Sphinn, you aren’t likely to find 20 people who would be willing to click on your poorly written article for no reason — the all-important threshold to push your article into “hot” territory and linked under Sphinn’s “Hot Topic” tab (Hot Topic is the default home page for Sphinn too).

How To Use Sphinn As Your SEO Tutorial

Now for the main reason for this article: Sphinn can teach you many things about online marketing thanks to the high quality of contributions made to the site. Specifically, if you want to learn more about how three major search engines work — Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft — and how to maximize search, search marketing, social media, and online marketing, then Sphinn has that information neatly categorized for you.

Of course, given Sphinn’s democratic nature it is still possible to read an article that isn’t entirely accurate or contains some information that is absolutely incorrect. Thanks to a commenting system provided with each article excerpt, you can read what others have to say about the article and usually find those challenges prominently listed. One way to avoid uncertainty about content quality is to restrict your research to the site’s “Greatest Hits” tabs to find those articles which have received the most approvals. Of course, there are a handful of articles (including the all time most “sphunn” article) that are just for the fun of it, but the instructional (tutorial) articles seem to rise to the top as well.

Among the top reads on Sphinn are:

Sphinn – The Social News Site Every Search Marketer Should Be Using: Written by Seomoz CEO and cofounder, Rand Fishkin, the article lists ten reasons why you should use Sphinn, especially if you are an internet marketer.

How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes — Matt McGee wrote this article, but Tamar Weinberg “sphinned” it. No matter, both people are reliable and trusted authorities in the SEO community. This article makes for a good primer on how to make your site SEO-friendly, offering tips any webmaster should follow.

Yes, Virginia, Google Will Hurt Your Site For Selling Links — Danny Sullivan himself was one of the first to spot the crackdown Google made when it began punishing link sellers in 2007. Lest you be tempted to take up this practice in 2008, you may want to read what Sullivan has to say about it. The penalties Google is dispensing are still far reaching, including complete loss of PageRank.

The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t — It is easy to overlook the little things, especially when it comes to promoting your site. We often think of that wonderful backlink we got when our article was mentioned by an internet guru like Jeff Quipp or from Marty Weintraub, excellent sources in their own right, but not having an XML Sitemap in place, skipping press releases, and not taking advantage of MySpace and Facebook, are some of the smaller tasks which when added together can have an even greater (and adverse) impact on your site.

No, Advanced SEO Does Not Mean Spamming — Again, Danny Sullivan weighs in on an important issue — advanced SEO. Sullivan discusses the highlights from this year’s SMX Advanced conference and comes to the conclusion that there is a lot of misinformation about which advanced SEO techniques are legitimate while covering those Blackhat methods that can land the site owner in trouble.

Link Building Secrets Revealed — Dazzlin’ Donna found Stoney G. DeGeyter’s article about link building and sphinned it for all of the SEO world to read. What Stoney did was to interview some of the top minds in the SEO world asking them to share one of their top link building secrets. Contributors included Hamlet Batista, Peter da Vanzo, Jim Boykin, Deborah Mastaler, and Bob Gladstein. 11 highly respected people sharing valuable tips you’ll want to study!

Regular Sphinn Visits, Recommended

To get the most out of Sphinn, I recommend the following:

Visit the site on a regular basis. Even if you don’t have anything relevant to contribute article wise, you’ll want to get a feel for how the community operates.

Read, review, and bookmark. Sometimes the information on Sphinn can get overwhelming. Other times it seems that everyone is talking about the same topic. While discussing link building practices can be beneficial, I like to look for something original and I don’t always depend on the most notable names to provide that information for me. If you like an article, make sure you Sphinn It! — you have to register in order to do that. Lastly, bookmark your favorite reads and why not reward the author by stumbling or digging the page too?

Snag a Feed — If you don’t have time to visit Sphinn regularly, why not add one or more feeds to your feed reader? I subscribe to their “Hot Topics” and “New Topics” feeds and there is also a comment feed you can choose. Additional feeds are in the works including a nifty All In One Super Feedmaker which might be worth using when it becomes available.

That’s it! My primer on Sphinn and why you should use it. Spend a few hours a week gleaning information from the articles submitted and you’ll be the wiser for it. I’ve cross paths with many wonderful folks on Sphinn, professionals in every sense of the word, people who willingly impart their knowledge and can point you in the right direction.

I spend one day away from this blog and I wax sentimental. What on earth is wrong with me?!

In the interest of sharing the wealth, I am presenting to you my most recent rendition of linky love, circa November 2007. This time I’ll only list a name — you’ll have to check through the list to uncover my finds:

Rob Watts

Jennifer Williamson

Douglas Mitchell

Steli Efti

Chip Camden

Steven Wong

Marloes Lammers

Kevin Dixie

Gunjan Pandya

Elizabeth Edwards

Jody DeVere

Sylvia Hubbard

Ryan Barrett

Mani Karthik

Gavin Heaton

And that’s that — weekend linky love, 15 samples to be exact.