Twitter – How To Make Your "Tweets" Work To Your Advantage

Twitter is an innovation in both social networking and microblogging. It works like MySpace or Facebook, as it allows you to receive your friends' updates and vice versa, but with a twist. Basically, it allows you to keep your friends updated of what you are doing, what you are into, or what you are up to by making text-based posts, called "tweets", up to 140 characters long. What's so cool about the site is that it allows you to update your posts through instant and SMS messaging so you get to update your network of friends about your activities even though you are not online.

Making tweets and reading your friends' tweets can really be fun. But, you can also make use of Twitter as a tool for marketing your online business.

How?

First, set up your profile page in a manner that would emphasize the industry that you are in, your skills, or fields of expertise. Do not forget to make it rich in keywords. This would make users looking for products and services that relate to your business find you easily. Also, post a picture to assure users that you are real and that you really exist.

You can write tweets about:

%uF06C the discounts and special offers that you offer;
%uF06C the product or service that you are about to launch;
%uF06C testimonials from your customers; and
%uF06C your intention to create a network of business partners, among other things.

Make your messages rich in keywords - this would direct people who are using alerts and searches to your tweets. Do not make excessive tweets, though, for they may annoy your potential customers.

You can also inform your customers to follow you through the social networking site, and encourage them to join in its community if they are not members yet. This is another way of updating your customers about the latest happenings in your website or online business.

Furthermore, promote your Twitter account wherever possible: your other social networks, your blog, your websites. Tell your friends and family about the account, and you can ask them the favor of making product reviews for you, which their network of friends or "followers" get to see and read. If these people get interested in your products and services, they may follow you and recommend you to their network of friends as well. In effect, you get more potential customers, more targeted traffic for your website, which can later be converted into profit.