Twitter: Whats the big deal about it in business?

[SweetCountryLily]

I'm a small business owner and have been looking for ways to expand my business and get out there more. Twitter seems to be coming up all over the place. Has anyone been really successful using at it?

[openjar]

Good question! Twitter can be useful for a business, but it takes work because without quality material, no one will follow you or click on links you post. I personally wouldn't say twitter is a "big deal," but if it fits with your other business strategies it can be useful.

The expert on using Twitter and other web marking is Mr. Sales Guru, Craig Elias. Follow him on twitter and watch what he does. He uses twitter to do one thing: Drive Traffic to his Website. He does this by posting headlines and links for articles he's written, which are posted on his site. (He uses bit.ly to shorten the urls, so that they fit better into a tweet). He *never* uses twitter for a sales pitch. Who would want to follow that?

To get followers on twitter is a whole other matter. If you've got hundreds of followers, it looks like you must have interesting posts. If you've got five followers... well it says the opposite. Unless you've got a massive network already (Craig certainly does), how do you build up that many followers?? The easiest way to get started is to pay for them (there's websites dedicated to this purpose). Obviously, you can ask ppl you know to follow you, or you can use other online marketing to find followers. You'll also have to start tweeting with some quality material.

I myself haven't tried these strategies yet, but I intend to. Writing articles to establish my credibility is part of my marketing strategy anyway, so it makes sense for me to do this.