Twitter

Part of having a successful online business is to stay on top of all the newest online trends. There are so many ways to promote your business online to the right target audience WITHOUT spending money! I've recently jumped on to the Twitter bandwagon. At first I wasn't sure what it was all about but now that I've had a few weeks to see I've realized what a valuable promotional tool it can be! I've already made some great business connections and found other businesses related to mine that I had no idea existed! I've also had a lot of website views from Twitter!

What is Twitter? Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? On Twitter you simply update your status as often and as regular as you like. The catch is you need people to follow you. And you need to follow people! If no one is following you - no one is reading your updates!

So how do you GET people to follow you? There are a couple of ways. Put a link on your website, blog or shop that tells people to follow you on Twitter. Twitter offers various codes you can copy and paste right onto your site if you like. Find out who you already know that's already on there and follow them. However, to promote your business you obviously need to reach people other than those in your life who already know what you do! So...get nosy! See who your friends are following. Do searches. Try and find people or business that sound like they'd be a great fit and follow them. Chances are they'll follow you back. Find people of businesses that you admire or would look up to as a mentor. But don't forget - if someone follows you it's polite to follow them back! Your follower to follow ratio should be close. Follow?

Now, there are some do's and don'ts of Twitter. You don't want to sign up and ONLY talk about your business or you'll come across as spam and people will unfollow you as fast as they can click the unfollow button! This is a great place for people to see the personal side of you as well and it plays into your customer service and how people see you.

Here's a great article by Amber - Watson Tardiff from Sparkplugging a work at home resource blog and community for web entrepreneurs.

Do's and Don'ts of Promoting Your Business On Twitter

Great article that makes some great points. So Twitter away! And if you sign up - don't forget to follow me and I'll follow you back!

@bncngoffthwlls