You should not use one to the exclusion of the other. You can use twitter to communicate with your followers as often as you want and with short 140 or less character messages. You can announce new things that are happening in your affiliate marketing business.
You can use your blog to make more detailed posts about something related to your business. Then you can use Twitter to let your followers know about the blog post. That way you can provide them with lots of information and still stay within the 140 characters.
So what can you do on Twitter and how often can you do it. After you have joined and setup your profile page, you can start tweeting about your business or anything else you want to. And except for your time there is no constraint on how often or how many tweets you can make. So you can tweet away to your heart's desire. But beware; you don't want to neglect your affiliate business. You will not benefit your affiliates if you spend all of your time on Twitter.
You can converse with you followers and start building relationships. Provide them with useful information that will help them to find success with their online endeavors.
You can help with the relationship building by uploading a picture of yourself to the Twitter site. It will appear with your tweets. Many users make a mistake here and don't use a real image of themselves or at least an image that connects well with their online efforts.
Remember that you want people to trust you and you want to build solid relationships with those that may be your potential customers. If you are using Twitter to build your affiliate internet business online you should use an image of you.
Also don't send an excessive number of impersonal tweets - once in a while is fine and never spam. Stick to the topic of your business. That's what your followers expect. They want you to provide information that will be useful to them.
You should provide a lot of this information yourself. But don't forget that many others in your market area also have useful information; so, use the retweet capability of Twitter often. This will also help you to gain more followers. More followers means more exposure for you business as well.
Micro-blogging on Twitter is great for people who want to write short posts. Just make sure that when you are telling people what you are doing that it relates to your business. Doing so will make Twitter a great tool for making money online.
You will be communicating with your followers on a regular basis and you need to reply to the messages that you receive, especially those in your close circle of business friends. There are ways to isolate those so that you will get a chance to see them and reply.
Twitter is a social marketing or networking site but it is also a business tool and can greatly enhance your affiliate internet marketing efforts online. Any tool that will help your business needs to be a part of your online efforts. So, get Twitter set up and start applying it to your affiliate marketing efforts.
Lonnie Minton writes about Promoting Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Marketing in his newsletter, eCourses, and eBooks. Visit his blog at http://www.affiliateinternetbusinessonline.com/ Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AffiliateBus
Tags: internet marketing, affiliate programs, blogging, affiliate marketing, affiliate internet business online, micro-bloggin