I signed up for Twitter months ago and used it for a bit, but I never really got into it. It seemed like another big distraction if I left it running all the time, and I missed most of the interesting "Tweets" if I didn't have it open.

So my account has been languishing without an update since November.

Strangely though, every once in a while I get an email that someone has started following me on Twitter. I have no idea why, since I haven't updated in so long, but they're still following me for some reason.

So I've been thinking about getting back on it and becoming a bit more active.

Funny enough, in the latest IMS newsletter from Michael Campbell, he's got an article about how he's using Twitter to drive traffic to his website.

The link for the latest issue isn't up on the Internet Marketing Secrets site yet so I can't link to it (keep an eye out for issue #138) but the basic point he made was by following the leading bloggers in your market you can get "early warnings" from Twitter when they post a new blog entry.

With that early warning, you can be one of the first to leave a comment, which can send you quite a bit of traffic, especially if that post goes viral on a site like Digg.

I'd never really considered using it that way - almost like a streaming RSS aggregator for your favorite blogs.

I'm going to start using it this way and see how much traffic it can generate. I'll post a follow up in a couple of weeks to see if it's had any real effect.

And two promotional notes…

First for someone else… If you're not already subscribed to Michael Campbell's IMS Newsletter, I'd recommend it. It's one of the only ones that I haven't unsubscribed from. He promotes stuff in it, but unlike most there's a lot of good content wrapped around the promos.

Second, for myself… If you want to start following me on Twitter, my username is "netchaos".