Twitter Tips for Small Business Owners

Twitter is a free site for social networking and micro-blogging. While most of us are familiar with traditional blogging, Twitter offers you a micro blogging platform. This allows you to make short, to-the-point post as compare with longer, more detailed blog posts.

Twitter restricts you to posting 140 characters at a time. So you have to get creative and use your mind to get your message across in as few words as possible. This restriction on characters has a huge advantage. The message size limit allows people to post more frequently. Some users post every 5-10 minutes for example!

If you make longer posts, it is difficult to find the time or energy to keep posting every few minutes. Twitter enables you to send updates to other users in the form of these short posts on what you are currently doing. These short posts are called ‘tweets’.

Other people can subscribe to your tweets and you can subscribe to theirs if you choose. Whenever you make a post it will be delivered to those who subscribed to it. This allows people to keep in touch with each other and know what activities each is currently involved in.

The popularity of twitter is increasing almost every day. Professionals and even big businesses such as Apple, Disney, and Starbucks are using twitter as a communication and customer service tool. You too can leverage this popular website to promote your business and gain mass followers in your niche.

Twitter can be a very powerful tool to gain subscribers, clients and business partners if used properly. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of it:

  1. Make interesting posts – No one likes to read boring stuff about you. Make sure your posts are funny or interesting in some way
  2. Don’t just talk about business – You have a human side too and occasionally post about interesting personal stories to keep people interested.
  3. Have a detailed profile – Your profile describes who you are and what business you have. Make sure it is professional and detailed and has a link to your website.
  4. Post often – Posting here is very simple and fast. Do it often but not too often. Avoid posting every 10 or 15 minutes otherwise people may get bored.
  5. Follow others too – Don’t just try to get as many followers for yourself as you can. Follow other users too who are in your niche.
  6. Have conversations – Engage in pleasant conversations with people and try to make a lot of friends here.
  7. Promote Twitter – Put your twitter link in your blog posts, email signatures, forum signatures etc to promote twitter on other sites and make more people become your followers
  8. Learn how to tweet – Learn from the experts who have thousands of followers and see what they are doing differently.
  9. Answer questions – When people ask something related to your niche then try to answer them. This way you can build your credibility.
  10. Tag your posts to enhance their visibility – Tag your twitter posts in order to categorize them properly. This way it can be easier for others who are searching for some specific thing to find your post.