In my opinion, Twitter can be a huge 'time-suck' without much results but if you use it with intelligence and automation, it can virtually be a gold mine. The three building blocks for Twitter success are summarized below:

1. Stand out from the masses. 99.9% of tweeple (or Twitter users) have a bland profile using the default Twitter backgrounds and images. Instead customize your twitter background with services like Twitter Backgrounds Gallery.
2. Automatic tweets. The main thing that keeps people from joining Twitter is they don't know what to write about or tweet about. There's a very easy way to automate your tweets which I'll show you below.
3. Finding and interacting people with similar interests. It is a pain to search for and engage people with similar interests. I'll show you a way of automatically finding people with similar interests but engagement needs to be personal to develop rapport.

Stand out and be noticed. Do not use the default Twitter backgrounds instead use customized ones from sites like:

1. Twitter Backgrounds Gallery
2. TwitBacks
3. TwitterBack.Com
4. Here's an interesting post on how to create Twitter backgrounds using PowerPoint.
5. Just go a Google search and you'll find thousands of websites with free Twitter backgrounds.

I used a background from one of the services above and customized it using Paint.Net. You can view my Twitter page here.

Lost for words even though it is 140 characters? You are not alone. Thinking of topics to tweet and actually tweeting about it takes up considerable amount of time. But there's a solution.

1. RSS feeds: Use any site that provides an RSS feed like a blog, website or service like Google Alerts. Copy the RSS feed. For example, I have created an alert for "social media" in Google Alerts and I use this feed into my TwitterFeed account.
2. TwitterFeed: This service takes the RSS feed and then creates a Twitter update periodically as specified by you and posts it into a designated Twitter account.

That's it! See the videos below on RSS feeds and TwitterFeed.

Another time consuming activity on Twitter can be finding and following people with similar interests. However, this has been simplified by a service called Twollo. This service automatically finds and follows people with similar interests to you. If you engage your audience well and provide value then chances are they'll follow you as well.

The video below shows how Twollo works.

You can be successful on Twitter using automation as well as your own expertise.  Remember to stand out from the masses, create an automatic tweet repository as well as engage people with similar interests. Bill Crosby has systemized all of this and created what he calls the Twitter Traffic Machine. Do check it out. I trust this page has been useful and do leave comments.