However, before you jump into the Twitter bandwagon, you should understand that Twitter is one complex beast to tame. If you don’t know what you’re doing, your faulted efforts can easily backfire. But when used by the right and skillful hands, this tool can bring torrents of traffic (and profits) to your website and pocket before you know it! But here’s the question – how should you use Twitter and make it work to your advantage?

There are some Twitter tips and techniques written below that is aimed to help you to drive traffic your website

• Communicate effectively! Think about it – you only have 140 characters at your disposal. You better make sure that each Twitter post you make educates to establish yourself as an authority in your niche and intrigues your followers to know more about your product and service.
• There’s no doubt about it – managing your Twitter accounts can be a BIG pain! But why spend most of your time managing it when you can easily communicate and respond with Twitter with the help of different desktop applications?

  You see, there are different software packages and applications out there that allow you to handle multiple Twitter accounts… every tweet – outgoing or incoming are easily viewed, replied to, and managed with these Twitter desktop applications that are scattered all over the net. See a comprehensive list of Twitter Tools and Applications

• Don’t forget to link back to your website! You see, search engines – especially Google, love the Twitter tweets and they get indexed fast than any website could. True, you cannot post text links that point back to your website… BUT they are links no matter how you look at them! The BIG search engines will follow them and they will result in indexing of your pages.
• People on Twitter love to ask questions about things they’re passionate about. Heck! Some of them even ask for actual product feedback and recommendation. Make sure that you are around to answer their questions and provide quality info.

Without further adieu, let’s get started!

Use Your Profile To Your Advantage!
Make sure that you have included a picture in your Twitter profile. How to pick the right picture? Well, there’s no definite rule but you need to make sure it says something about yourself.  Some are using their children’s picture, others opt for their branded logos… the list could go on.

However, since we’re trying to establish ourselves as an authority within our niche or market, it’s best that we go with pictures that people within the niche could easily relate to. For example, if you have a website promoting chess books and related stuff, why not use a pawn as your avatar?

Aside from that, you can also tweak your Twitter profile’s background. The website has provided some resources for this, but I would recommend finding and downloading the appropriate background from other sites. Or, if that doesn’t cut, you can have someone to do it for you.

140 Characters ONLY!
Yes,  fellas.  You’ve read that right – you only have 140 characters to impress or WOW your audience (commonly known as followers). That’s not a lot. So forget about the long introduction, drop all the hype, and make sure that your post is something that inspires, entertains, educates, and encourages other people to follow you.

Don’t Be Pushy!
Promoting and educating your followers about your product, website, or service is cool. But pushing them into your followers’ faces is NOT! Personally, I have promoted my blog and the blog posts in it. But I do so in a way that intrigues them… makes them want to know more! Forget about selling your service hard through Twitter – that’s a surefire way to lose all your followers and get spanked by Twitter!

There are other tips and techniques about using Twitter in a more effective and productive way. But that’s another story. Nail down these basics and you’ll be ready to advance in the Twitter traffic-sucking industry in no time!

But have you ever thought about the flip side of the coin?

Think about it – nothing in this world is perfect… Not even the best marketing and promotion techniques out there – including article syndication. A closer and critical look at this promotion and marketing method will reveal its flaws that you must understand if you are planning to add this in your arsenal.

But first, let’s have a recap of the good side of article syndication

Be The Expert In Your Field
Once you become the Go-To guy,  so to speak, when it comes to dating, marketing, or whatever niche or market you are serving, whatever you say has more weight and receives more attention and respect from your readers.

And there is no better way to establish yourself as the expert or the authority in your field than to create truckloads of targeted and very informative articles that are spread through article directories, newsletters, etc.

More Visitors
A friend of mine once told me that every article you write serves as a salesman who refers people to your website ‘round the clock, everyday of the week, and they don’t complain or answer back.

I couldn’t have said it better!

Assuming that you have written a byline that’s good enough to pique your reader’s interests and SEO’d it with the right anchor texts and links, you can expect that the more articles you write and syndicate through the internet, the more visitors your website will get.

Truckloads Of Backlinks
In the eyes of the major search engines, offsite optimization weighs more than onsite optimization. And offsite optimization is all about building quality and relevant links pointing back to your website.

I can’t think of a better way to build backlinks than to publish and syndicate high quality and relevant articles all over the net – through relevant forums, article directories, blogs, etc. link them back to your website and have them indexed by the search engines.

Alright, we know those benefits all too well. This time, let’s check out the UGLY side of article syndication -

Your Content Gets Old
This affects you even more if you are serving a niche that changes or updates very fast – say computers, mobile phones, etc. Your content could easily be rendered obsolete. And you have no choice but to replace them with the latest articles focusing on the latest developments on the niche… or else, you run the risk of your website getting sidetracked by other sites that can keep up with the pace.

Unauthorized Changes
Like you, there are people within the market that you’re serving who’re always looking for something to write and syndicate about. However, instead of researching for raw facts and figures to base their articles from, they’ve found an easier but not-so-ethical way to do it.

And that is to take your article, rewrite it, and replace your links with their links. It seems like you’ve written for these guys for FREE!

Spam!

Let’s say you gave someone a license to republish your article provided that everything – the title, content, and links remain intact. That’s great news, that means your article gets more exposure. Nothing could go wrong, right? Wrong, there is a possibility that your article to be used used in spam newsletters, article directories, etc. Your organization and your website will be associated with spam without you knowing it! As well, duplicate content on two different URL’s can easily be penalized by search engines.

Many people are excited about Google Wave because it will recreate how people communication and do business online. Google unarguably will revolutionize collaboration and communication through this platform. Even if the creators have imparted a few vague details about Google Wave, from the looks of it, Google is on a mission to bring communication to a much higher level. Google Wave brings together chat, email, photo editing and live collaborative editing into a single, simple and interactive interface.

Google Wave Defined

First off, what is this Google Wave and why is everyone so excited about its release? Since there are a lot of articles in the web today and you won’t probably have enough time to read them all, here is the summary. Google Wave is a platform for real time communication. Every communication aspect is combined here such as email, social networking, instant messages, chat, wikis and project management. This integration will be used for a sophisticated client for in browser communication. It will now be easy for you to tag along your whole group of friends or even your business partners so that you can discuss anything that has happened on that day and even share files with them without too much trouble. Now, Google, the company itself describes this “wave” as conversations and documents with equivalent parts.

Google Wave Features

Now a lot of people are wondering what is so special about this Google Wave. Obvious enough, it is from Google and you what they say, when it comes from Google it must good. Because of its several features, we are immediately curious about it. Now let us take a look at some of them. First it is real time. This allows you to view what other people are typing on their keyboards, character by character. Another feature is its ability to be embedded on any blog you have created or any website. There are virtually no limitations here. Now, when it comes to the applications and the extensions of Google Wave, they are very much comparable to Facebook or the popular iGoogle gadget. If you are one of those site developers, you can build and create your own applications within these waves. When we speak of applications here, these can be anything starting from bots to those complicated real time games.

Onto the Wiki functionality, this interesting feature emphasizes that Google Wave is shared. In this case, every detail written can be edited by everyone. This being said, you will be able to correct misinformation and even add up to what the others have provided in case they have missed something. As an option, you can insert your own commentaries based on the developing conversations. Developers are also very much appreciative because of the fact that Google Wave is open source. This fosters innovation and implementation. Another aspect that you will find useful is the playback feature, which allows you to review what other people have said earlier.

Natural language, on the other hand, is part of Google Wave, which corrects your spelling automatically. This even goes all the way to knowing the difference between congruent words such as bean and been. Also, this is able to translate words dynamically. Now, with email, you may have observed that you have to attach every single file that you have to send to your recipient. This is quite tiresome especially if you have a lot of files to send. Now with drag and drop file sharing, it is convenient for you to dispatch the files. Simply drag and drop within the Google Wave platform and each and every one will be able to gain access quickly.

These are just some of the features but as you can see, they are extremely remarkable that you may never help yourself in getting excited.

Who Created Google Wave?

Obviously it’s Google. But who did exactly? Originally, the Google team from Sydney, Australia was the one who first thought about this. Special mention goes out to two brothers namely Lars and Jens Rasmussen along with their project manager, Stephanie Hannon. These people were the same persons who were involved in the highly acclaimed Google Maps. Although the Google Wave product will not be released until later this year, there are a lot of people who are expecting that this will be a great program that will reinvent online communication. And for history freaks out there, Google Wave was officially announced during the I/O Developer conference on May 28, 2009.

Terminologies You Will Encounter

A lingo in itself, you will only understand what Google Wave is all about if you are able to take in what the terminologies being used mean. There are a few definitions that you have to learn so that you will grasp what Google Wave is all about and hopefully gain knowledge regarding this new project from Google.

Wave -  This refers to a particular threaded conversation. It does not matter here how many people are involved. You can safely say “I will wave you” soon enough without flagging grammar geeks. Actually, it can include only one person, groups or even robots. To make it simpler, you can take for example your entire instant messaging history with someone. Whatever you have discussed in a single conversation or a chat is considered as a wave.

Wavelet - Like “wave” this is a threaded conversation as well but this is only a part of the wave or a larger conversation. This is like a single instant messaging conversation, which is a small part of a bigger chat and history. Although they are a fraction of the wave, they can be managed and created separately from the main one. With blips, they are smaller than wavelets so this means that they are a single and individual message. They are like a single line of a conversation from your IM. These blips can have others linked to them and these are called children. Additionally, you can choose whether you would go for a published or unpublished a blip. It is sort of like you will type a message and then change your mind so you did not send it. In line with this, the content inside the blip is known as a document. Seemingly they refer to the words or characters or the files that have something to do with the blip.

Wave Extensions -  These are small applications that functions inside the wave. Thus, they are what you can play with while you are engaged in a wave. There are two types of these. The first one is a gadget wherein you will be able to participate in. Many of such are created based on the OpenSocial platform from Google. For those who still find this quite unclear, you can compare them to the applications on Facebook and the iGoogle gadgets. Meanwhile, robots are the automated participants in a wave. They are able to chat with other people and interrelate with waves. They also have the ability to provide outside information from a wide variety of sources such as Twitter. Besides that, they check the contents that are included in the wave and based on those examinations they will be able to perform some actions. For example, there is a mention of stock name these robots will provide a stock quote for you.

Embedded Wave - This is the method that you will do so that you can take the Google Wave along with the conversation and then put them in a blog or a website. Once done, other users will be able to utilize this like a chatroom. This is now their way to contact you or communicate with you.

An Overview on Google Wave Gadgets

As previously mentioned, a gadget is half of the types of wave extensions. One thing that you will like about these is that they are applications that are fully functional. According to Google, they are responsible for changing the appearance and feel of these waves though this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, with Google Wave, absolutely any OpenSocial or iGoogle gadget will be able to run here. So when you think about it, this means that Google Wave has been successfully created since it is able to support a lot of applications already. Another fact about gadgets is that when they are built within the wave, they can fully take advantage of interactions in real time with multiple users. For you to understand clearly, you can think of this s an online game with users that are participating actively. Hence, it is similar to your Myspace and Facebook applications which take a chance on your growing friend network to build games, make quizzes and create applications as well so that you will generate a more meaningful and more valuable application.

Gadgets are exclusive to individual waves and not on the users and this is what makes them different to your social network applications on your profile. A gadget then belongs to everyone who is included in the wave. Also, they do not possess titles so that they can easily associate to the whole conversation. Examples of gadgets that are already built within the Google Wave are Sudoku, Bidder, which converts the wave into some kind of an auction and then the Maps gadget. The latter allows you to collaborate with Google Maps.

Understanding Google Wave Robots

As you have reads, this is the other form of extensions in Google Wave. Here, you can compare them to the sense of having another person in the conversation. The significant point here is that they are automated. They are pretty much like the instant messaging robots in the early stages of technology but of course they are far more forceful. These robots have the ability to modify the information in conversations. In addition to that, they can interact with the users, pull information from other sources and correspond with other waves.

Because these robots behave like they are ordinary users, you can definitely define their acts based on what is happening in the chat. You can create one that goes like “modify the word cat to rat.” It can be as simple as that or you may choose to build one that is as complex as a debugger. With these abilities, it is no wonder that we will be able to see some really advanced robots in the near future.

Robots that are available include Stocky, which brings out stock prices whenever there is a mention of a stock quote, Debuggy and Tweety, which is designed to display the tweets within the wave.

Google Wave Embed

If you have a Youtube account, you are well informed about embedding a video into your blog. However, Doogle Wave embed, it is a little more complex than that. Still, this is what Google Wave Embedding is all about: to bring forth waves or conversations into a third party website. Embedded Waves are excellent because they support several functions that are included in the definite Google Wave client. This includes the dropping and dragging of files feature.

Even though the Wave Embeds is still young, Google has already produced two that is to say the Multiple Extensions Embed and the Youtube Playlist Discuss, which lets you converse about a video through a wave. In the meantime, the former tolerates interaction with numerous waves on one page alone.

Evidently, Google has once again showcased how apt their team is. With this new brainchild, they will continue to outdo their competitions. Some believe that Google Wave is the next trend for social media while others doubt the security and the confidentiality of the information they have provided. Given that this is plugged into your Twitter, Myspace accounts or blogs, it seems like Google owns everything that is published on the Internet via this new communication platform. No matter what other people may believe in, there are still countless individuals and groups who are waiting for the release of Google Wave, that includes us. Let us stay positive about this progression, until then, just be ready to Wave.

• A navigation bar
• A couple of pages of content
• A nice set of relevant ads and links

…are all you need to create a cash-sucking website, then you’re on the wrong track! It doesn’t matter if your website is for a small or multi-million dollar company, your website needs a news section that’s updated regularly.

You Want To Keep Your Clients And Potential Customers Informed
Let’s admit it, we all love news. We love it hot off the press especially if it’s about something that we are passionate about. And there is no better way for your clients and possible customers to know more about your latest achievements, products, updates, etc. than having a news section where you could post new stuff right away.

Shows Growth And Development
Let’s say you’re the type who changes his mobile phone as if he’s changing clothes. Here are 2 options – website

• that consistently updates you with the latest innovations in the mobile phone industry and informs you of the latest cellular phones they have in stock,
• and website that…well, looks very stagnant.

No updates, news…none whatsoever.

From which website would you buy? First one of course! It doesn’t matter what niche or market your website is focusing on, you need to show your clients that you guys are proud about your website’s achievements and that you’re always striving to grow and develop.

Your website visitors will definitely be more interested about transacting with a website and company like that.

Another Marketing Tool In Your Arsenal
Why did you build your website in the first place? I’d bet that “I built it because I felt doing so.” isn’t the answer. We are here in this online business to promote, market, and profit from the products and services that we offer through our websites.

And a news section adds another excellent marketing tool in your arsenal! Aside from the fact that you can easily link the news and updates in your website to your products and services, let’s not forget that search engines – Google, MSN, Yahoo, and the rest of the pack love websites with updated and relevant content.

Make them fall in love with your website and your website will climb the ranking pedestal. The higher you get, the more targeted traffic you amass…which, as we all know, means more profit!

Google is a company that enjoys playing around with ideas and allowing their fan base to test those ideas out before they actually implement them. Google Labs is an overall concept that allows them to get general ideas out for people to test and comment on and Gmail Labs is the same concept with the Google Mail service that people have been switching over to in a wholesale method across the entire way. The Google Toolbar has become a large enough part of the Google experience now that people working on the Google Toolbar software package feel that it is time to start taking that idea and applying it directly to Google Toolbar. The result has been the Google Toolbar Lab, which has already turned out the first two ideas for users to take a look at.

The first of these lab releases is a version of the Google Toolbar known as Google Toolbar with My Location. The basic premise of this is that it brings together the convenience that you get from the Google Toolbar and the excellent functionality that the My Location function has been displaying with people that know how to use it. The end result was that the Google Toolbar was available with My Location built right into it so that all you have to do in order to access the benefits of the My Location function is simply use the Google Toolbar that is always available right near the top of your browser window.

You can program the location in and then whenever you feel like using the My Location function, all you need to do is type in what you want to search for and My Location will function in the same way it would before. You can type in pizza and get a listing of all the pizza places close to you and of course you can do that with anything else that you might want to search for close to the actual location in question. The full functionality of My Location is there, but now it is also ultra-fast and ultra-convenient, thanks to the people that came up with the Google Toolbar Labs.

The simplified Chinese Toolbar is another example of a Google Toolbar Lab invention. The name is self-explanatory, as this toolbar represents the Google Toolbar in all its glory, with Simplified Chinese characters being used instead of English. It serves to make the web more international and that can only be a good thing for everyone involved in the long term.

THEME FEATURES

• Translation template which makes it possible to translate into any language easily.
• Automatic image resizer, which is used to dynamically resize photos for main page thumbnailing.
• Integrated theme settings page to tweak the layout through WordPress admin dashboard.
• Unique newspaper layout
• 2 different available header layout
• A nice ajax support for featured entries
• Built in Banner Management
• Built in Photo Gallery
• Built in Video Gallery
• Archives Tab
• Ajax tabs
• Search engine optimized
• Fully widgetized mainpage, sidebar and footer (29 widgetized sections)
• Ad Optimized

Release, live demo and purchase page

“We are excited to announce the launch of a mobile version of Google Book Search, opening up over 1.5 million mobile public domain books in the US (and over half a million outside the US) for you to browse”, the company said.

The Internet search giant, in a post on Thursday on the Google Book Search blog, said mobile versions of the books could be read on devices such as the Apple iPhone or T-Mobile G1, which is powered by Google’s Android software.

“These new mobile editions are optimized to be read on a small screen,” Google said. “With this launch, we believe that we’ve taken an important step toward more universal access to books.”

To access the mobile version of Google Book Search a user needs to type http://books.google.com/m into the Web browser of their iPhone or Android phone.

Google’s announcement comes just days ahead of the expected unveiling by Amazon of a new generation version of its popular electronic book reader, the Kindle, at a New York press conference on Monday.

Amazon is also planning to make its online store of e-books for the Kindle available on mobile phones, the New York Times reported on Friday.

“We are excited to make Kindle books available on a range of mobile phones,” Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, told the Times. “We are working on that now.”

The Amazon spokesman did not provide any further details. Google will initially only be offering books in the public domain — those which are not under copyright — for mobile phones.

Amazon, on the other hand, offers the latest releases and 230,000 titles in all, including 103 of the 112 current New York Times bestsellers.

Permanent Internet Connection
This would be the point to argue with passion about the most important thing you need in order to start a freelancing business. A permanent internet connection is important because freelancers that become successful are at their computer several hours a day. This does not mean you have to chain yourself to a computer, but you do need to treat a freelancing business like a job and for that reason pick a significant chunk out of your day and use that chunk at your computer freelancing. In order to secure contracts, do work and send finished projects to clients however, you do really need to have a permanent internet connection. It facilitates easy communication in a way that would not be possible otherwise.

An Online Payment Account
This is really more important in online freelancing (i.e. writing, or photography) than it would be in offline freelancing (i.e. consultancy work), but in general it is a good idea. Many people don’t like online payment services because of the high fees that they charge on every single transaction and while there is certainly some truth to this argument, at the same time online account will help you out a great deal in getting payments completed both through sending and receiving them within a reasonably quick amount of time.

Time
Another thing that you need in order to start a freelancing business is time. Just like any other business, a freelancing business will be slow at first. You have no reputation and can not really expect most people to give you a chance right off the bat. Typical freelancers enter with little work and lower wages and over time are able to command more demand and higher wages for the work that they do. At the start however, your time spent finding new work will be much larger than it will be later on and that is why you need some extra time to devote to the operation when you first start your freelancing business. Without it, chances are pretty good that your business will not go anywhere except into the ground.

2. Always be working
One of the biggest mistakes that most people make in regards to freelancing is that they do not take it seriously enough. Freelancing is a legitimate career opportunity that has been made all the hotter by the internet creating opportunities on every single day of the week. Those opportunities are quite literally out there waiting for you to grab them, but you need to work hard in order to make your way to a point where the freelancing career can be the career for you. If you do not work hard, you will find that you are unable to get the good portfolio documents, you will find that you are not able to get enough jobs to subsist on and you will also find that you are unable to rise up through the ranks of the freelancing community as your freelancing gets better and you feel you should start commanding more money. You get out of your freelancing career exactly what you put into it, so keep that fact in mind when you are wondering whether you should go watch television or spend that half hour working instead.

3. Maintain good relations with as many clients as possible
It can easily be argued that this is the most important tip for the average freelancer. If you do just one thing with your life, you should make sure that in freelancing terms you maintain as many clients as possible. This is because with more clients, there will be more work available and for that reason you will always have something to do. If you have too few clients and you end up with a lull in the work being given to you by those various clients, the end result will be that you might be out of luck in terms of doing work for awhile and that can severely affect the earnings that you bring in at the end of the month. It is always better to be in a position of having too much work and turning a few clients down or delaying them slightly rather than being in a position where you’ve completed everything and have nothing else to do. Freelancing is all about balance however, so with experience you will come to understand how many clients you should maintain to have just the right amount of work to do.