Putting Twitter to Work for Your Small Business

By now, everyone knows that Twitter is a very popular social networking and micro-blogging service that allows you to connect with family, friends, co-workers and customers. However, many small business owners who have signed up for Twitter still don’t have a clue as to how to put it to good use. If you are a small business owner who has yet to tap into Twitter to use it to strengthen your business and to build awareness, here are a few tips you may find helpful.

Tweet What Your Customers want to Hear

Your customers don’t really care about what you ate for breakfast. Rather they want to hear about your new products, sales, promotions and upcoming events. You should focus on offering your customers coupon codes by using link-shorteners such as bit.ly so that you can keep track of the clicks you get to your products on your website.

Tweet FAQs, Q & A, Blog posts and Product Tips

Assuming that you are always seeking out new followers on Twitter who have interest in what you sell, all of your followers are probably not yet customers of yours. This is why you should tweet your blog posts, share your FAQs and product tips and link to your Questions and Answers pages. This will help to build awareness and credibility and will go far in helping you retain those customers you have and to gain new customers along the way.


Use Twitter’s Advanced Search Feature to Tweet Interesting Info

Using Twitter’s advanced search function, look for tweets about your business or products. You can then respond to those tweets by posting interesting info that will engage your followers and expand your horizons. Focus on tweeting photos and videos as these tend to prompt your followers to re-tweet. You also can keep an eye on what your direct competitors are doing on Twitter so that you can start similar conversations of your own.

Find More Relevant Followers

In order to truly succeed in your small business marketing efforts on Twitter, it’s essential that you get more followers. You can do this by posting incredible tweets and getting re-tweeted and by adding your Twitter url and links to your website everywhere – both online and off. Be sure to put a ‘Follow us on Twitter’ button on your website. Remember that Twitter is a two-way street which means that you have to find like-minded people to follow. Make use of the search feature on Twitter so you can find people who are interested in what you sell. Keep an eye on the ‘Who to Follow’ box on your home page and be sure to browse the categories section regularly to find people you want to connect to.

It really is not difficult to put Twitter to work for your small business and in fact, it’s actually fun! Follow the above tips and stay active on Twitter. Before you know it your customer base will widen and hopefully your wallet will fatten!

This article is written by Cynthia Rupp.What does rt mean

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