I hear so many people, so often, talking about how much they hate Twitter when I first ask them if they’re using it.

Then I introduce them to a couple of neat people or ideas, and when I hear from them a few months later, all of them rave about it, and laugh at how they were using it wrong.

And I laugh with them, because I made the same mistake they did. My story is just like theirs: A friend (@Rumford) told me about Twitter.

I went there, I didn’t get it, I began to hate hearing about it all the time.

Another friend enlightened me and  I love Twitter now.

But loving it or hating it really isn’t the point when it comes to your business, is it?

The bottom line is, can Twitter help enhance the bottom line of your business? The answer is yes.

You can hate Twitter, you can love Twitter, but that’s not the issue. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- Stop tryng to fall in love with the various technological wonders and start learning how to leverage them for your business, or have someone else in your organization get on it.

Now.

It doesn’t have to take up a lot of your time, either, if you opt to do it yourself, which in my opinion is the best option.

As an entrepreneur, you can get away with being on Twitter for an hour or less a week, and still get pretty impressive results in terms of traffic, sales increases, customer service, and pre-sales connection building.

Here are seven reasons you should take a look at developing a Twiter strategy immediately.

1. Tweetchats.

Industry leaders get together and put on free text seminars. It’s basically free training.

2. Hashtags.

Twitter is organized in a way Facebook isn’t.

You can get news and updates about a topic by following a unique identifier called a hashtag. If you blog or are in a time sensitive industry, it’s critical to get news and developments first. Even if you just want a leg up on your competitors for marketing, it’s so important.

3. Pre-introductions

One of the best ways to connect to someone at a conference, meet up, expo, or networking event, especially if they’re well-known, is to be able to say “I follow you on Twitter” and reference an interaction you had.

When people came up to me at BlogWorld 2010, this was the thing that turned acquaintances into mutually profitable relationships the most.

Lots of people know me on Facebook or through Facebook – but the people who I met, who became customers, clients, friends, helpful peers, or peers I helped, were the people who knew me through Twitter.

4. Follow bloggers, not just blogs.

Want fellow bloggers to link to you?

Want them to write about you?

Thinking about starting a blogger campaign?

Use Twitter to make initial contact. It’s a non-intrusive way to begin the types of bonds that result in that last-minute favor at crunch time. Don’t know what to say? Retweet a link to one of their blog posts.

5. Exposure

Speaking of retweeting, Twitter is one of the easiest and fastest ways to spread a link. Get retweeted and you can get massive, immediate exposure.

I’d say with Tweetmeme, it’s the biggest reason why Digg.com is dying- you get more top stories with the option to ignore the surrounding chatter on Any topic, not just technology. Tweetmeme embraced the very people Digg was rejecting, and Twitter only filters for spam. Even light-handed commercial messages are okay, and get passed around.

The folks who couldn’t figure out newsreaders and RSS feeds are there, receiving the benefits of this technology without knowing how to use it.

6. Your competitors.

If they’re on the social media sites, they’re getting access to your customers who are on it as well. Some people think having your audience visible and accessible on sites like Twitter and Facebook threatens the well being of your business.

But that’s only true if you aren’t in there building the relationship, providing resources and being of value to them. The kinds of customers that aren’t loyal, or are primarily price-conscious aren’t the ones you want anyway. They’re often the hardest to please.

Your competition is going to have access to your audience whether or not you’re on the social media sites, whether or not you advertise or market yourself. The key is that this access not be exclusive to them, and your presence ensures that they know there is a better option: you.

7. Your customers.

Twitter has a small audience in comparison to Facebook.

But the part of your audience on either doesn’t necessarily overlap. And the audiences that are using Twitter and Facebook are getting the same benefits of you – fast news, free resources and training, and the other items I’ve listed here.

Using Twitter, you can provide maximum customer experience is minimum time through sending out resource links in a readable style, providing customer service, or taking hashtags to the next level with a sense of community.

At some point, having a presence on the top social media sites is not going to be optional for successful companies, just as having a website and a blog is considered the rule rather than the excepiton. Nowadays, people are putting their Twitter handle on their business cards.

If you use web technology in your business in any way, including simply for publicity or having a website, having a Twitter handle isn’t just a good idea anymore. It provides a competitive edge.

It is with my most why-isn’t-this-on-TechCrunch-already enthusiasm that I present a behind the scenes look at the Customer Service via Twitter Toolkit that I’ve been raving about, most commonly known as Hy.Ly.

(That’s pronouced Highly, I was corrected, by none other than the CEO. Not HEE-lee, which is what I called it about half the time during the video.)

I actually use it as my main Twitter client now – it’s an incredible bundle of Twitter tools for the small business or solopreneur set.

More notes after the video, which you can view on Screencast if you’re getting this via syndication. The video is also embeddable if you want to share it with your audience.

A YouTube version is forthcoming- at 19 minutes, I’d have to cut off the introduction to make it short enough.

Important Notes;

• Intended use is for Customer Service via Twitter.

And works very well for that – I especially love that you can backchannel and plug it into your CRM software.

Works quite nicely as a Twitter Client, too.

• Eliminates the use for about five other sites I use for Twitter research

I’d name them but I don’t want to be a meanie.

• Has a database, and keeps a history of the things you want to save from Twitter going back to the time you registered.

(I think a neat paid feature would be to have it grab all the data from the time you registered for Twitter.

I imagine it would take some time to grab your timeline back that far but if it was possible, even through Google to organize and store all that information? Man.)

• Here’s the link to the Follow Friday Tweetshow I made

I’m making another that better showcases the people I want to suggest be followed.

• Here’s a link to the Free Traffic Chat Tweetshow @shashib of Network Solutions made

< brag > Yes, I was the featured guest. < /brag >

• Invite code to sign up: Tinu

Sign up now. I don’t know when it expires, or when it does, how much it will cost for you to sign up when that happens.

This morning I decided to scan some headlines in my RSS Reader, because that thing is Sorely Neglected since I’ve started using Twitter.

And I came across an article contributed by Rich Brooks, who you can find on Twitter.

He wrote an article called Why Guy Kawasaki Is Wrong About Twitter | Social Media Strategies for Small Business | Fast Company – here’s a clip:

I was recently reading a post from Guy entitled How to Use Twitter as a Twool. There’s a bunch of great advice in the post, but I found one piece of advice that I just couldn’t swallow:

“Get as many followers as you can. I recently explained what I do to get more followers. Ignore people who tell you that it’s the quality of your followers not the quantity. They’re trying to make friends, not use Twitter as a tool. And, truth be told, there are only two kinds of Twitter users: those that want more followers and those that lie. You can follow me here.”

Mr. Kawasaki, for the record, my pants are not on fire. Twitter is the Swiss Army knife of communication tools; not everyone needs that big ol’ knife to get the job done.

I’ll take a little bit of a departure of the conventional wisdom – Guy is partly right. I want more followers. I’d love to have a million followers one day, that might be cool.

I also know that it’s STILL about the quality of followers. Still, as the writer notes, in some industries, quantity isn’t totally bogus either. Aside from people who don’t use Twitter for business, I don’t recall anyone in any article I’ve ever read say that quantity doens’t matter at all.

And I’d love if everyone would stop painting the detractors that way.

What we’re saying, if I may speak for those who share this philosophy, is this: just like with targeted traffic, you need a good balance of quality and quantity. IE – if I sell furniture, having 10,000 teenage followers is a crappy strategy.

I’d do better with 1000 home owners.

Now if I can GET 10,000 or even 100,000 home owners? All the better. The point is not to SACRIFICE quantity IN FAVOR of quantity.

Everyone clear?

Can we stop talking about Twitter for 20 minutes now?

Or at least, if we’re going to have a discussion about Twitter, can you tell me what YOU think? Leave a comment or hit the retweet button, and I’ll follow the discussion back to Twitter.

Don’t forget to tweet Rich about how cool his article is.

Yay business accounts and all that, this article isn’t a dig at them.

Heck, I’ll probably get one if Twitter will let me pay for real estate on prominent parts of the site in order to increase my visibility.

I wouldn’t want to be cluttering up Twitter, but if you ask me that new definitions spot is the perfect place for a suggested “suggest people to follow” spot, if it was based on whatever interests I chose to share.

But I don’t think that’s going to be Twitter’s most successful business model. Why not?

I just said it. Companies aren’t just interested in 20 more characters or other power features.

We business owners want what we always want: targeted exposure to our key demographics, but in a way that engages them, because we know that if we engage them, they’ll come back.

And if they come back, they may begin to trust us. If they trust us, they’ll subscribe, which may lead to sales. Engagement is important to us, not just ad space. And Twitter should be selling some version of that to us.

I was just reading an article that asks a superb question: Is Twitter Killing RSS?”

The author Jeff Nolan says:

Something interesting happened along the way, Twitter achieved critical mass and bloggers and mainstream media alike adopted it to promote content. Every post I write is automatically tweeted out with the post title and link to source, not unlike what other sites do, and over the last year I have noticed a steady increase in referral traffic from Twitter as my followers grew and links to my posts were clicked on… in essence people are following me much like they subscribe to my RSS feed.

Of course, I don’t think Twitter is killing RSS… yet. I will agree that I get much more of my RSS headlines from Twitter – if you’re not on Twitter, I don’t read your headlines until I get to my RSS feed. My day starts Gmail, Facebook, Twitter. I keep all three open all day.

I do NOT keep my Google reader open for more than half an hour if I get to it each day.

That’s not to say that I think RSS should die as a technology. I just think that, like HTML, we should never, ever, have to touch it, see it, tweak it, explain it, as publishers.

The book I wrote on RSS in 2005 years ago should not still be relevant today. We’re too “close” to RSS. It should be two degrees from us, just like web pages are two degrees from us, via things like search, visual editors, and the web browser. Email is two degrees from us, via the online or offline mail client, filtering, spam-catching technology, and whatever the compose email button does that makes me able to write an email without knowing anything about mail headers.

RSS is still one degree from us. And that’s too close. There’s no just add water element to the use of RSS in our daily lives as publishers, or as consumers. If I want the headlines of another site, I have to know what an RSS feed is, so I can find it and add it to my reader, even if I use Google Reader. If I’m a publisher and I want people to know about my RSS feed, I have to know all the steps of implementation.

And yet if I want people to know I have a website, all I need to say is “www blahblahblah dot com”. If that.

Here’s part of the comment I left at Jeff’s site, which further explains my point:

The problem with RSS is that it’s not the *point*. RSS is the enabling technology for tweeting our links, it shouldn’t be something we have to interact with directly to receive information. It’s the same thing with HTML… can you imagine if we had to scan through HTML in order to read sites? Or if we had to have a tool between us and the browser just to read the browser?

There’s the problem with RSS readers, right there.

In the early adopter days, yes, it’s to be expected that we’d need to know what that little orange button was. And okay, we had to educate our userbase on RSS until we could tell them to subscribe via Google, Yahoo, myAOL, etc. Then when RSS to email came along, lots of us sang hallelujah and put the subscribe via email box up for the people who preferred to digest that way.

But now, today? Why is there still the middle layer? Why do I still need to put the button up and tell people what RSS is?

Okay, enough venting. Let me get to my idea for Twitter’s business model.

The problem for both publishers and users of RSS is : we don’t want that middle layer of the RSS subscription vehicle. We want to receive news where we already are without having to do the techie bit like finding the feed, deciding on RSS or Atom, full feed or short. Not when we have things like Twitter. We want to see a headline and click a link, and know that tomorrow’s headlines will come through while we browsing tools we already use.

The solution:  Add a tool to Twitter between us and the enabling technology by which we receive the information we want even if that site isn’t using Twitter.

The business model: Paid listings as well as natural ones. It worked for Google, didn’t it?

And I know what you’re thinking, it will clutter up Twitter.

Not necessarily. There’s real estate on the home page where the testimonials are, at the bottom.

The new Twitter design has created that space that everyone already believes is for ads.

I say take it one step beyond that. Either as a slide-in panel or using some of that blank space on the right under the Trending Topics, give me the scrolling headlines of the sites I choose to subscribe to – let them scroll in by time. Pay for listings there too, make it find me more stuff I’d be interested in.

Make it really sophisticated and sensitive to spam-attempts by putting me in complete control of the rankings. The default would be that they come in by time. But I can prioritize or de-prioritize a site’s headlines based on my preferences. That way, it’s not a model that can be cheated. The publisher still has to work hard to engage me past the headline, paid listing or not.

In tools that use the Twitter API, you coulc integrate these extra listings into the timeline so they show up for everyone who wants the option on – perhaps even make it a timeline you can toggle on and off. Anyone who didn’t want their headlines mixed in with their timeline updates could opt out. But would they really want to?

If you could get your friends updates and your RSS updates in one streaming flow of information, so that if you wanted to, you could see just your friends, or just the news, or both, wouldn’t that be cool – even useful?

Add a more organized way to sort favorites so you could save stuff to reference later and man…

Why would I need Google Reader?

Sites get traffic, people get access to their favorite sites, Twitter makes money – win, win-win. Anyone who doesn’t like it, opts out.  For a fee new sites can get listed under suggested resources that could dig through what we like IF we opted into it, and offer us more choices.

Why not give us more of what we love about Twitter, and cash in on that?

That’s my challenge to ALL of social media – why do all of you keep trying to add the layer of traditional marketing back on top of this new breed of thing that you are, instead of enhancing what we like best and asking businesses if you can then help them find us? Why Facebook Ads instead of… Facebook Social News?

Why are you guys selling ads instead of selling enhanced engagement?

So, talk to me or click the retweet button.

Am I out of my mind or on to something? Comment moderation is off.

Update: TechCrunch is reporting that there’s a Google-Twitter  acquisition or partnership deal in the works. It’s completely by accident that I happened to write a blog post earlier today that lightly insinuated, in a round about fashion that Google Reader could become obsolete if someone doesn’t find a way to integrate the blog conversation stream with Twitter.

No, really. I swear I don’t know anything.

I mean, just because I said in 2007 that Google should have bought Twitter instead of Jaiku doesn’t mean anything.

About six weeks ago ago, I was over at Scoble’s blog, reading some of the things Guy said about Twitter in s recent interview. As usual, I was struck by some of the comments made.

A few of the commenters in that and a related post seemed fixated on two areas.

1- I don’t get Twitter/ Using Twitter for Business Is a Mistake,

and

2- Guy’s comments were outrageous.

Here’s what I said. Go read the post for more, but come back because I’m not done yet. Next we’re going to talk about *exactly* how Twitter and Social Media leads to more clients or customers. Once and for all, you’ll see how it’s possible, and more importantly how it’s possible to do without doing anything scummy, nor anything that would make you more uncomfortable than meeting people at a business conference in person.

There’s a hint in the paragraph below.

The comments are outrageous because Twitter isn’t mainstream. Who would have said these things about the phone, the computer, Digg, before the mainstream phase?

And I got 2 clients from Twitter just in this month, December – waiting on a potential third now. Not indirectly, Directly. That’s like saying you can’t drum up business by using the phone. It’s all in *how* you use the phone. If you call everyone you know via the phone up and bang them in the head with your marketing message, they’ll probably hang up and block your number.

But if you use Twitter to build relationships, for the sake of relationships, and not solely to get cash out of someone’s pocket? Odds are you’ll make a lot more money.

As in all social media and communication devices, not being able to get it to work for you is a case of not knowing how to use the tool, not the fact that the tool is broken. I’ve been extremely guilty of this myself, so I’m putting it bluntly to you because that’s what made me see, and what helped my business so much.

Social Media ROI is spectacular if a- you’re not desperate for cash right now (in which case you should start with advertising anyway), and b- you want to build a business, rather than a series of one-time customers.

Is Twitter a place you should go to talk about what your business does, the features of your products, the details of your services? My opinion is No, not unless someone asks you specifically. It should be clear by now, if you’ve read my past posts on Twitter, that I’m not going to tell you there’s only one way to use Twitter, just what I know gets results, and exposure of the techniques I know are full of shit.

If you’re interested in the results I have above, and wonder how I got them even though I only talk business on Twitter about one percent of the time, stay tuned.

If you haven’t read the first part, you may view this post in a different tone than it is intended. Please read Part 1 of the Marketing Tweetroveries first.

While we’re on the topic of social media, no, I’m not part of the team upset at Guy’s Twitter Twool post or the one on How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter. I’ve been asked about this several times, and not answered. Well, here’s my answer:

Guy and I have had a few conversations and I believe he’s a good guy who was just answering questions people asked him, honestly. Not that he needs me to defend him. He’s probably too busy to even realize there was a controversy over it. Again, people are asking my opinion, and I’m tired of answering the same question individually.

So here’s more of my opinion.

The articles he wrote are for people who are marketing to other people like them, who judge other people based on stuff like follower numbers and who they know. And the truth is, to the crowd he was talking about attracting, perception of those things matter. If you’re marketing to marketers, that’s what they look at.

I was a bit dismayed with the way the situation was handled by most folks on either side of the resulting feud on Twitter last week, especially since there was a much more important issue regarding truth and social media in the news that week that most people laughed about, then forgot about.

When this one came up, I kept largely silent on the matter for two reasons.

First, I was watching the prevailing perception that it’s somehow wrong to make money or to be interested in making money.

Now, as someone on the fringes of this crowd I don’t know if they were being tongue-in-cheek, or if they aren’t aware of how they come across and don’t mean it that way.

I can only say what it looked like to me from the outside looking in.

How I view it as someone who has been actively looking to link people who need freelance work to people who are hiring freelancers.

How I view it as someone who hires people who do what some of them do.

In either case, I appreciate them being authentic, but I’ll admit to being… saddened by what I see as a negative attitude towards wealth, or even financial stability. I just plain don’t think it’s wrong to have money, pursue wealth, or be in business for yourself.

Are there ethical ways to do it? Yes. Should those be the way we follow? Of course.

But the spirit of much of the ribbing, jesting and sometimes, flat-out meanness that I witnessed, wasn’t tinged with discussion of ethics. It read, intentionally or not, as an objection to capitalism, period.

In talking one on one to some people, I found that there was an anti-business attitude, even among freelancers. Not anti-bad-marketing. Anti-business.

Among a crowd made partially of freelancers and entrepreneurs.

No wonder so many folks are broke and the economy is a mess if we think the companies that serve us, hire us, or that we create, are evil just by virtue of wanting to make a profit.

That’s what business is, people. The world doesn’t run on cheese.

The other reason I hadn’t said anything while this was hot was that the timing coincided with the death of a really close friend. I’ll get into that more later in a post where I hope we’ll discuss how I’m doing and how you’re doing.

From what I saw, the fighting got a little vicious and there were some mean exchanges, as well as some unfortunate things said, and actions taken that have permanent consequences some may be deeply ashamed of later.

But I know how I react when I feel I’m being attacked, so I’m not judging anyone on either side. Not that anyone in the situation needs or desires my (dis)approval. This post isn’t for them, it’s for you.

Having said that, I also don’t think @ABigVictory, or her opinions about what Guy said regarding Twitter, should be “muzzled”, particularly after her update. I don’t even think that kind of thing is possible.

At the end of the day, whatever happened between her and Guy as a result is really between them.

Of course, I don’t think people who share her opinions should be called names either, the nicest of which would be “a social media elitist”, the worst I’ll tell you in a minute.

What I want to know first is; when did it become okay to call people names and accuse them of things we wouldn’t say if we weren’t eye to eye?

No matter how big or small a person’s business is, it’s wrong to try and disparage them over a difference of opinion, no matter how passionate you are about it. Even if they did something immoral or illegal there are avenues for that. I’m not against using your site as a platform to protest someone else’s actions.

Just let it be known that bickering is an immediate unsubscribe for me. I’ve been guilty of it myself, and I’ve learned from that, to the point that I won’t stay around to witness it amongst others.

The takeaway point of that is that I’m not alone.

As more people come to the realization that they control what they consume, how they spend their day, and the mood it puts them in, they’ll continue to refrain from participating in bickering – or witnessing it.

There are better ways to deal with a situation than calling people who have helped more people than either claims in public, a “douche” or a “bitch”.

Again, I’m in no position to judge, and I’m not specifically condemning anyone. But since you’re asking, yes, that’s my opinion. And yes, I’ve defended myself with name-calling before, yes in business settings.

And I’ve always regretted it. The best thing I’ve ever done for my business, my life even, is learn how to keep my temper under control.

As far as Twitter goes, and using it for business, I fall somewhere between the two of them. I think it’s fine to talk business on Twitter to people who have indicated that they want to talk business.

I believe that as long as I treat other people the way I would hope they’d treat me on Twitter, everything will be fine.

That includes letting me know that they’re someone I can outsource work to – I personally feel I shouldn’t have to hunt further than your profile to find out what you do and where to hire you. Or how to refer you to people.

Because you know what? I won’t. Most people won’t even go that far.

And since none of us owns Twitter, seems to me that everyone gets to have their opinion about what Twitter is about.

As long as we keep the realization that these are just Opinions – they are only rules to the people who agree with them, who group themselves into sub-communities within Twitter.

Next Twitter posts will be about how I help people’s businesses using Twitter, how Twitter helps me, and how Twitter can help your business Without doing traditional marketing.

Before I get into the discussion of the actual Twitter controversies that happened recently, and answer all the questions about my opinion of something I have nothing to do with, I wanted you to know my stance on Twitter.

As far as I’m concerned, here’s the only rule of Twitter.

Don’t tell me how to Tweet. You can tell me what’s best, or what your experience has been, but there isn’t just one way to use it. So. Shut up.

kthxbaikittens.

In other, less LOLcat words:

If you’re not a part of that group, don’t dictate to those groups that they should Twitter your way.

Tell how YOU want to be Twittered to, and how you Tweet? Yes.

Inform? Yes.

But last I checked, you’re not the God of Twitter.

So don’t dictate to people (outside of your group) what will mean success or failure on Twitter. Just let me know what worked for you, or what you observed, and what your results were. That’s plenty to convince me.

Yes, that includes spammers.

Much as it pains me to say.

I don’t like them. So I don’t follow them. I block them. It’s so easy.

I hate them but I’ll defend their right to exist. Here’s my logic.

Even though I believe, wholeheartedly, that spammers are scum, so far, it’s not ILLEGAL or against the TOS *cough*should be*cough* for them to use Twitter in a way that I think sucks.

Until it is, I find it more efficient to focus on what I want to accomplish rather than on things I can’t control. In this case that means I use Twitter to attract people like me to me, to befriend people who are like me, or who have said they want to connect to me.

Some of those people happen to be customers, clients or potential clients/customers. Not all of them, or even most of them, have to be for Twitter to be an efficient use of my time.

Oh well. If that makes me a marketer in your mind, slap on your label. I care not. And the only way it gets me to care? Is if you put money in my pocket.

Sidebar: Notice I didn’t say if you’re withholding money from me, solely because you think I’m a marketer. That attitude that is exactly why I don’t want you as a customer, client, prospect, dare I say, friend. I want people around me who want my help, share my interests, who I admire, or who admire me.

Because, at the end of the day, Twitter is a communications device/service/thingee.

That’s all it is.

Like a phone.

Are there some ways to to use the phone that are MUCH more effective than others? Hell yes.

If you don’t believe me, try to talk into the wall the cord comes out of next time you get a landline call. Or see if you can hear the conversation by putting the receiver up your butt.

Vividly unnecessary, I know. But I bet you got my point. ;-D

Most of us hate telemarketers, but some people make good money being or hiring telemarketers.

I think for my type of marketing it’s ineffectual, so I wouldn’t use them for my business. I’m not the New York Times or the Washington Post, though.

But when I was broke and couldn’t afford rent, before this business?

The telephone survey company that hired me on the spot kept me indoors for a month until I could get a real job. Not quite telemarketing, but people will slam the phone down in your ear just the same. Or call you names. Or scream into the phone.

Or find really creative ways to try and make you deaf.

My point is that just because I don’t agree with HOW they use the phone doesn’t mean I feel people who don’t agree with me should be attacked for it.

They aren’t doing anything illegal. Telemarketing isn’t even immoral. It’s often smarmy, used-car-salesman-y, yeah, but flat-out wrong?

In and of itself, no. Some people will even talk to telemarketers and try to keep them on the line all day. And they’ll buy something.

I know because I did in-bound telemarketing for a few weeks too. Which leads me to the difference…

The problem with in-bound telemarketing is the same problem with traditional marketing in social media.

Traditionally people have learned that the majority of companies who use telemarketing are scams. That unfortunate fact taints all telemarketers. People realize the best way to protect themselves is to decline them all.

So if you’re using social media to market to people who can tell you’re marketing to them – ow. Social media marketing to marketers? If you both like to smell each others farts, have at it.

Otherwise? Big mistake.

Should you tweet your links? Yeah, sure. But to paraphrase Perry in that video, social media is a big party. And if you’re running around the party only talking about what you do, you’re a huge dick and only a few random bottom feeders are going to pay any attention anyway.

Take a look at Mark Joyner‘s Twitter account. He’s arguably the Father of internet marketing (at least it’s between him, the late Cory Rudl and maybe one other guy.)

And yet, you don’t see Mr. Joyner using every other tweet to link to his blog or to Simpleology or Integrated Marketing, or any other active project.

Ain’t. Happening.

He’s got hundreds of thousands of subscribers and site members.

(Don’t ask me how, but let’s just say, I know this for sure. Quick example, look at the top of Simpleology.com – those are just the stats for THAT site). He could send a blast to his list and have 50k followers overnight, I bet.

I mean that literally.

But does he? No. Why not? Think about it.

Then ask him. He tweets back if you try and have a real conversation with him.

( Just remember that he’s in New Zealand. Tell him it’s my fault you’re bugging him if it makes you feel better. )

Am I saying he doesn’t use Twitter to market? Not at all.

In a Really subtle way he does. But I’ve never seen him promote his actual twitter link.

And yes, he tweets the occasional link, though usually not to his own sites. Who knows how well that works for him as far as whether he pushes more product just by being there. I just know how I feel about him having an account, and talking to me.

I know I’ve been way more into his products since he’s been on Twitter and Facebook than when he wasn’t. I know it’s through social media that I first made a direct connection to him.

I know I get a thrill out of being able to reach out to him, and him answering. In public! People know I know him and that he knows me. Makes me feel special.

I know I bought a product of his as a direct result of a conversation we had on Twitter.

Which one of your customers wants that relationship with you? You are somebody’s Mark Joyner.

What is it really costing you to connect to people, and care about people beyond how much money they can make for you?

Compare half an hour a day of Twittering while you’re doing other things, to 30 minutes of all the other non-work you’re doing, and you’ll see it’s worth it.

As long as you don’t have the phone up your butt during the conversation.

*Editing to say this: @ScottAllen correctly pointed out that Mark has been talking about a new thing he’s doing. That’s what I was talking about when I said he was being “subtle”. I neglected to add that I meant that comparatively.

Compared to people who feel the need to make one out of seven tweets a link, I feel like he’s being under-stated, by being conversational with his marketing, with teases and the occasional link, rather than bashing me in the head every time I pull up his page.

I’m in Austin, and with the house empty today, I was just about to put my chicken scratch into readable format for a VIP client project.

I always like to scan the news (read: my blogging neighbors) before I settle down, to see if there’s anything that merits a comment, or your attention. And today I came across a post by my pal Paul Chaney, who is organizing a formal boycott of Twitter on the 4th of July. Kind of a declare your independence thing, very jazzy.

You can read more about what he’s calling the twitcott here, but be sure and read his more recent post about his rationale for boycotting Twitter – he’s saying hands off for a day, not for life.

I’ve made my share of comments on the issue, as you can see above. And I’ve had to resort to basically the same solution to resolve it.

Still, I haven’t decided whether to formally participate with boycott yet, as 1- I will probably be offline that whole day anyway, and 2- I’ve got questions about what happens if it’s successful.

1- Should the twitcott be successful, and Biz/Evan approach the Twitter community – what are our demands? Are we generally just looking to get better service?

2- Since so many of us are using it for business, are those of us who could afford a monthly/yearly donation or fee be willing to put our money where our mouths are in some organized fashion? Maybe for a dofollow link on a donor page?

I ask these questions because I’ve always thought the Twitter issue is a resource issue – not enough hardware to handle the bandwidth, or maybe the original code doesn’t scale well to this many simultaneous users.

In other words, maybe its popularity is its peril. If so, and we love Twitter so much, and our peeps are there, why shouldn’t we kick in a little bit? (Besides, of course, the two obvious reasons. 1- They haven’t asked us to and probably won’t, and 2- we probably wouldn’t get any kind of premium service out of it.)

There’s my two cents. I have to admire Paul’s resolve to do something, rather than just mope and scream like I’ve been doing. If you decide to twitcott tomorrow, but still blog, don’t forget to de-activate Twitterfeed or whatever you’re using to send your blog posts too.