If you run an Internet business, blog, or e-commerce store, then you know that one of the main ingredients to success in the online environment is traffic. The more people who visit your site, the more sales, leads, or ad impressions you are likely to receive.
Many people talk about social bookmarking and web 2.0 sites as the tools that will get them tons of traffic and make their online efforts a success, but it is not always so simple.

One of the social media sites that every online personality and Internet marketer loves to talk about is Twitter. Twitter, like many other sites that allow you to reach hundreds or even thousands of people with your message, is just a tool. Like any tool, it is only effective if you know how to use it. And if you learn how to use it properly, it can help propel your business into the upper echelons of Internet traffic.

This article covers few ways you can use Twitter to promote and drive traffic to your website.

First and foremost, you want to attract some followers. The real key to getting followers on Twitter is by being interesting, helpful, entertaining, or useful. If you are any of these things, then what you are bringing to the “conversation” is valuable and you will be rewarded with followers.

The way to get followers is not by constantly “Tweeting” links to your site, blog posts, or sales pages. In fact, this is the way to lose followers. Other people on Twitter want to follow people who have personalities, not people who are just trying to sell them something. It is definitely a smart thing to link your sales pages, announcements, or whatever else it is you build online—just don’t do it every time.
In between inserting your links you may want to write about things in your industry or niche.

Link to other articles of interest to people who may be involved in the same work you are doing. You can even link to shows you are watching on Hulu or to your favorite band’s MySpace page just to show that you are a human being with interests beyond your industry. The key is really to find a balance between pulling traffic and earning “followers.”

Use websites like HootSuite.com or TweetDeck.com, both free, to automatically update your Twitter status. Hootsuite.com is a particularly helpful website, from which you can manage your Twitter account. If you follow a blog and you want to add that blog’s RSS feed to update on your Twitter account so your followers can see the latest posts, you can do that. Of course, you can also do this for your own blog posts if you have a blog.

One of the reasons it may be in your interest to add the RSS feed to another site is that you will automatically send “tweets” out without doing anything, and if these tweets are related to you and your business, you may gain more followers. Look at is as gaining exposure for free.