Funny as it is, the idea from this blog was spawned by a question asked to me by my mother.  She is a real-estate agent in Los Angeles, and asked me if she should use Twitter to help grow her business.  Without hesitation I said, “Of Course!”  There are many ways that business owners and those who are self-employed can use the power of Twitter to their advantage.  Twitter provides us with a near limitless platform to reach people in real time; it is really unlike anything out there.  From real estate agents, food vendors, book stores, to any business that provides products or services; Twitter can grant you access to a large number of potential customers who already have the intent to spend.

I have outlined a few steps that might help your business utilize Twitter effectively

1)      If you do not already have a Twitter account, create one, and make sure that you brand your account properly.  If you are in business for yourself, it would be smart to use your full name, that way when someone types in your name on Google, you are highly visible.  In the case where you have a common name, or do not wish to use your full name, a username with industry relevant keywords can be just as good or better.  If you are a small business, make sure to use the name of your small business as your username.  If this too is taken, come up with a variation of your business name, with an industry relevant keyword.

2)      Follow Follow Follow – In the start, follow as many people as you can.  Start out with your immediate network, and then see who they are following and who follows them…  Repeat this process regularly.  Within a few days, if done right, you should have a good amount of followers.  There are also some great Twitter Tools that can help you add followers as well.  Follow both random people, and people within your industry.

3)      Use TweetDeck – In my opinion TweetDeck is the best Twitter tool that one can use.  It allows you set up a maximum of 10 keyword searches.  These keywords can be anything; determine what the 10 best search keywords for your industry/business are and set up searches for these terms.  Then, as you see these searches come up live in real-time; you can target your demographics.  Let’s say you own a cupcake store in Miami, and you set up a search “cupcakes in Miami.”  You then see a tweet that was tweeted just moments ago asking “does anyone know where to get cupcakes in Miami?”  Bingo!  You have a potential customer wanting to buy something you provide.  At this time all you have to do is tweet them back giving your business location and information.  If you do this on a regular basis, imagine all of the potential new clients you can get just from the functionalities that TweetDeck offers.

4)      Tweets- The previous three steps are easy, and anyone can do them.  You just need to stay consistent.  Not only should you keep your eyes peeled on tweet searches, but also tweet valuable information about your business.  Whether it is new locations, new things in stock, updates to your merchandise, maps, pictures, and links to your website.  Make sure that your tweet account doesn’t seem like it is a robot.  Add a personal touch to it to give your business a voice.

There are many ways to use Twitter to enhance your business endeavors.  The preceding was a basic strategy on how to market yourself on Twitter.  You can find many more marketing ideas and strategies on your blog and articles page.  If you have any other questions, feel free to leave a comment or contact us.

References: http://mashable.com/2009/07/17/Twitter-street-vendors/

http://www.Twitterpowersystem.com/blog/creative-ways-to-promote-your-local-business-using-Twitter/

However the facts speak a different truth. The unemployment rate is about 5%. This used to be a dreamed about goal. The GDP didn’t fall in the first quarter; instead it rose by 0.6%. While this is an admittedly anemic number, it doesn’t forecast anything more than a slowdown in the economy and not the first quarter of actual recession. This is despite a poor housing market and a falling dollar, which has a great deal to do with increase in the oil price. Does anyone speak about the fact that oil and gasoline prices are actually cheap in other countries that currently enjoy a stronger currency? The decline in the dollar is the worst part of the economy; yet it has recently turned and the price of oil drops sharply every time the dollar rallies. This is an indication that we are near the bottom of the dollar decline and near the top of the oil bull market. In any case, the American economy has so much underlying strength that even a $120 price per barrel and a decline of almost 30% in the dollar have not yielded a recession.

The fact is that the largest contributor to doom and gloom is the frantic and sensationalist media. CNBC has everything under a super electronic microscope providing great significance to the clearly insignificant. All you have to do is look and see that they measure time by hundredths of seconds and measure stock prices on charts in tiny ranges to accentuate stock price changes to make them look more significant than they really are. They do this microsecond by microsecond, hour by hour, day by day … and they follow the exact same script asking the same questions with no real guidance or proportion to the meaning of the information they provide. CNN, Fox and the rest are no better I assure you … it’s the same information with a different emphasis, but equally out of proportion. It’s the information age or so they say … however we have never seen so much disinformation in the history of the world.

So, what does this have to do with you? Everything! Don’t let all of this noise throw you off your game. Let me tell you what I see. Our clients are enjoying record traffic to their websites. As internet marketers we rely on statistics, not what the pundits in the media tell us what they want us to think. The stats tell a far different story. If the media was accurate, there would be less people searching for things to buy or transact business with. The stats show that record numbers continue to dominate. Record numbers of searchers … and if you are an effective internet marketing company, record numbers of impressions, visits, and conversions. This is precisely what we are seeing and, I might add, without exception.