Ways to grow your business using Twitter

Twitter, which is a social networking website, is a great tool that you can use to grow your business. Many younger consumers use social networking websites on a daily basis, so to reach the group one of the best things that you can do is use Twitter for your business. The problem with using Twitter as a marketing tool is that many small business owners do not know how to properly use it as a marketing tool, so they are failing in their goal of trying to grow their business.

Here are some things that you can do to help grow your business by using Twitter.

Number one: Be interesting
In order to gain followers on Twitter you are going to have to talk about more than just your business. When using Twitter you are going to need to be interesting, which is going to mean including details about your life. With tools like Facebook and YouTube, people have started becoming voyeurs, which means hardly anything is kept private anymore. To attract a following you will need to be fun and interesting compared to dry and boring.

Number two: Use Twitter to build relationships
Do not use Twitter to push your products or services because Twitter was originally designed for social interaction. As a result, the business world has inundated the website with advertising, push marketing, and spam. If you were to push your products and services instead of building relationships, you would run the risk of scaring off potential customers. Building relationships with people enhances your chances of getting new customers because people do business with people they know, like, and trust.

Number three: Connect your blog
If you have a blog, you can take your blog permalink, turn it into a tinyurl, and post it directly on Twitter. If you have a Wordpress blog, you can use the Twitpress plug-in to get people from Twitter to jump over to your blog. To get people to keep coming back to your blog you are going to need to post interesting opinions, articles, podcasts and breaking news. By living on the edge of information and news, you will always be able to add value back to your Twitter network, which is a great way to build your credibility.

Number four: Build a Twitter network based on common interests
Twitter provides you with a tool called Twellow. This tool is designed to help you search for people by profession, industry, or company. If you build your Twitter network based on things you have in common with people, you will always have something interesting to talk about and read about.

Number five: Use your Twitter network for your research and development
If you have questions on your mind about something new that you are thinking about offering your customers, you can use your Twitter community to answer those questions. All that you will need to do is post a question on Twitter and wait for people to respond.

Number six: Move your Twitter dialogue to the phone
You can meet many amazing people on Twitter, but what usually seals the deal is when you move the conversations over to the telephone. When you have found somebody that interests you on Twitter, you can contact them privately through Twitter and request a phone meeting. This can allow you to discuss a JV partnership or just an in depth discussion about how you can help each other out. Remember that this is not an opportunity for you to pitch yourself; it is a way to work on building a partnership that can serve each of you.