Last week we skipped a newsletter because it was my first Mother's day as a real Mommy. We had a lot of fun, but now back to business. This week we are going to look at tools to help you make the most of Twitter and get traffic to your site from it.

1. Sign up for your account at Twitter.com - Edit your profile and add your URL to the web site field. Brand you profile by using a custom background image with your company logo on it.

2. Sign up for an account at Tweetlater.com - This site will allow you to set up an auto-responder to anyone who follows your Twitter account. In your auto-responder, you should politely ask your followers to visit your web site.

3. Start following people. Most users on Twitter will follow you back, which means almost all the people you follow, will follow you back and get your auto-responder sending them to your site. Use the find people function on Twitter to look for users to follow that are somewhat related to what you do. Follow as many as Twitter will allow. Twitter tends to stop you following when your ratio of following to followers is one-sided. They generally do this once you reach 2001 following. When you have about 1900 followers, Twitter will allow you to follow more people.

4. After you have reached the point where Twitter stops you from following more people, wait about a week and then use Twitter Karma. Enter in your username and password and Twitter Karma will show you your account statistics. You can choose to see the people who follow you but whom you do not follow, or the people you follow but whom do not follow you back and all of your followers/following together. If you choose to look at the people who you are following but are not following you back, you can select all and Bulk Unfollow. Chances are, because you've waited a week, they probably won't follow you back, so if you unfollow them, it will free up some more space for you follow more people yourself. Of course, there are going to be some people who you really want to follow but whom may not ever follow you. Just make sure you unselect them before bulk unfollowing.

5. Set up Twiggit. Twiggit will automatically tweet anything you Digg with your Digg account.

6. Start Tweeting. Nobody likes following an idle account. You can use your account to create more traffic to your site as well by Tweeting about every new blog post and anything else new on your site, sales, new personnel, etc. You also want to actively involve yourself with your followers as well. Try ansering any interesting questions you see being tweeted that you know the answer to, and always answer your direct messages. The more you interact with your followers, the longer they will want to follow you. And the more interesting, valuable stuff you Tweet, the more your followers will recommend you to others. Be a valuable asset to the Twitter community and your followers and the whole thing will just snowball.

If you need any help or have any questions with utilizing any of these tools, or Twitter itself, please do not hesitate to email us. We do manage Twitter accounts for a small fee.

We hope you enjoyed this week's Sunday Sites and hope you'll read again next week!