You must have heard about Twitter by now, or you have lived under a rock 
Twitter is a micro-blog that allows you to write short “tweets”, 140 character messages that are instantly delivered to your followers/community.
Twitter started out small, but has grown into a massive operation world wide.Large company´s like Intel and Apple are all using Twitter, and so is the new President of The United States.
Lets look at the best ways you can use Twitter to grow your business.
1.Sign up for Twitter.
The first step is to sign up for Twitter and then import all your contacts from your address book including those from Gmail, Hotmail, Facebook and other sites.
2.Make a professional looking Twitter profile.
Make it easy for people to find you.Watch this short video about setting up a professional Twitter profile.
3.Understand how Twitter works.
Twitter is NOT for marketing, it is a tool for sharing information with others.So, don´t actively promote your business. By actively replying to others Tweets you become a part of a strong community.Share cool stuff with others, have fun.Most of all, you need to build trust and only then you can refer people to a information rich blog post you have written.
4.Build your audience.
It is important to build an audience beyond your contact list and to do this you must look both inside and outside of Twitter.
Outside Twitter: Put a link on your blog saying “Follow me on Twitter”, in your email signature and so on.
Inside Twitter: Inside Twitter it is all about following people.Use the search feature to find people you “admire” and want to follow.They will in turn follow you, if they find you interesting enough.
5.Be careful how much you follow.
You need a balance between how much or how little you follow people.Follow to little and you look “elitistic” and follow too much you will look like a spammer. So, don´t follow 1,000 people in one day.Instead, add 30 people in one day and give them time to follow you.This way you keep a nice balance.
6.Are you worth following?
No one will follow you if you don´t post useful information.If you have news you think others are interested in send a “Tweet”.People are not interested about what you had for breakfast, instead tweet helpful and useful links.I bet marketing people are interested to know where to get the best deal for their next ezine advertising campaign, or when you do a blog comment on a really interesting post, tweet it and let others know about it as well.
You can also use a tool that automatically Twitters your newest blog post.A good (and free) tool is called Tweet My Blog.
Click here to follow me on Twitter!
How do you use Twitter? – Leave a comment!
