One of the reasons you may not have tried Twitter yet, or been successful with it is because you just don’t have time to sit and tweet all day. As a business owner, your day is filled with running a business, so the last thing you have time for is keeping up with the latest conversations on Twitter. Fortunately, smart programmers have developed tools that you can use to automate some processes and maximize your time with others.

Here are 10 favorite tools for businesses to get the most from their Twitter usage:

SocialOomph – This one’s a doozy. Not only can you schedule tweets for the future, must like you can schedule blog posts in WordPress, but you can also track keywords, get potential followers and more.

TweetBeet - This tool will help you keep track of your @replies and @mentions so you don’t miss out on a conversation. Even better, it will email you the conversations that mention you, your product or your company.

Twibs – Add your business to this site so people searching for your products or services can easily find you. Naturally, you can find relevant Twitter users as well. You can even tweet from this site directly.

TwitterCounter – Are you more comfortable using email than any of this new-fangled social media stuff? With this service, you can send tweets by sending an email to an address the service sets up for you. They’ll forward the email to Twitter. Now, that’s just nifty.

TwitPic – This service enables you to upload photographs from your computer or your phone and share them on Twitter. This is perfect for a physical product seller who might want to show images of new inventory, a customer making use of a product or a demonstration of a product feature.

Mr. Tweet - This is a must-have if you’re trying to build your following. Mr. Tweet helps you find relevant followers, recommends you to others, computes your Twitter usages statistics and cleans your kitchen sink. (Just kidding on the last part)

TwitterKarma – (aka as TweetKarma) Started at the suggestion of a friend, this service enables you to get an overview of your friends, followers and those who you just follow.

MarketMeTweet - Ever notice the little gray link under each Tweet that shows where that tweet came from? This service lets your website be that brand. Plus it has lots of other account management tools. 

Remember The Milk – If you live on Twitter and are having trouble remembering to go run your business, this service can be a great task reminder.

StrawPoll - There’s nothing like a good poll to help you understand your customers, the state of your industry or just have a little fun with your followers.

twtQpon - If you’d like to offer a discount code to Twitter users, this is a perfect solution. Not only can you fill out a simple form to create your coupon to send to Twitter (naturally, you have to have it setup in your shopping cart…) you can also use the site to search for coupons from other companies.

Twittertise - This service blends scheduled tweets with tracking so that you can measure your return on investment with each promotional tweet.

So, there’s a couple of extra ones to grow on. This list of tools will help you connect with the right people, manage your network of colleagues and customers and track the effectiveness of your messages.

When you’re tweeting for fun, you can follow anyone who sounds or looks interesting and it’s no big deal. But when you’re tweeting for business, you need to make sure you’re following the right people.

Imagine if you follow just anybody: You log into your Twitter client to see if anything important is being tweeted and all you can find are the latest escapades of some random celebrity. Not good for business.

On the other hand, by following the right people, you get yourself in front of those who can have a positive impact on your business and those who you can positively impact.

When you log into your Twitter account, you’ll see great posts by people whose tweets you area about, whether they’re the industry leader across the country or the potential customer on the other side of the world.

So, the question is: How do you find the right people?

Follow the people who are following you. Chances are, if someone is following you, they’re interested in what you have to offer. So, you should be interested in finding out why and getting to know that person.

 Find people by keywords in their profiles. If you’re a virtual assistant, you may want to find people who run small or home-based businesses to follow. You can use a service like Twellow to find these people.

 Include your profile in directories like Twellow and Mr. Tweet. This will make it easier for people who are searching for your product or service to find you. And then you can follow them.

 Read popular blogs in your industry. They often contain lists of leaders that they recommend you follow. Follow those people. While you’re at it, follow the blog writer.

 Follow the people your industry leaders follow. People who are successful in your industry and in tweeting are probably going to be pretty selective with who they follow. Check out their profiles to see who they feel is important enough to keep up with.

 Use lists to sort the people you follow. Once you get a few hundred people on your follow list, it’s going to be next to impossible to keep up with everyone. So create lists of people, by category, who you’d like to keep a closer eye on. This is especially easy to do if you use TweetDeck or the list feature on Twitter.com.

Once you’ve created a following, getting more people on board will be easier. You’ll have a ton of people that you follow who are providing value to you, your business and the people you follow.

How does that work?

 As you read through your timeline, or your list, you’ll see comments and links by people you follow that you know will be of interest or value to those who are following you. So you retweet (RT) that comment. It’s actually a pretty simple process. You’ve now given your followers something to retweet for you or just brought yourself to the top of their minds when they read the great post your retweeted. See how that works?

Keeping in touch with your colleagues and other industry professionals is important to your business, especially of you’re running a home-based business and are too busy to get out and network in person.

Keeping in touch with others who share your interests can lead to partnerships, more work, professional friendships, referrals and even jobs. Just like people prefer to buy from those they know, like and trust, people in your industry would rather work with you than with a total stranger.

While your blog can establish your level of knowledge and expertise, Twitter can enable you to converse directly with that industry leader you’d love to meet or that successful business owner who periodically looks for subcontractors via Twitter.

So, how do you get in front of the people in your network?

Post interesting content. Not the same old stuff everyone else is posting. Talk about your own experiences, your own opinions. Your content needs to be relevant but unique to you. For example, if you have a marketing epiphany from something your kid says, and you post about it, you’ll capture attention better than just posting a link to the same boring article everyone else is tweeting.

Respond to tweets. When someone you want to network with tweets, respond. If they tweet about winning an award or landing a new client, congratulate them. Commiserate if something bad happens, share your own stories that are related to theirs.

Tell them what you think about them. OK, make sure this is good first. So, let’s say you’ve known another virtual assistant online for 10 years. You know she’s awesome at what she does and she has been an inspiration to you. Tell her. Now, don’t make it creepy or stalkerish, but you can say, “Hey, you’ve inspired me to be a better VA” in a fairly sane manner.

Retweet their tweets. If the people you want to network with post an interesting tweet, retweet it. Not only will you be doing your followers a favor (who may not be following the people you’re networking with), but you’re helping the original tweet. Oftentimes, when you retweet someone, they will publically thank you and sometimes even go ahead and follow you.

Ask questions. What better way to engage someone in a conversation than to directly ask them a question. They’ll find your question if you use @theirname and most Twitter-savvy people will respond. Just make sure you pick a good question to ask that highlights their expertise. In other words, don’t ask the SEO expert if he wears boxers or briefs.

Tweet their content. There is probably a really good reason that you want to network with people, and one of those reasons is probably that they have some great content. So tweet it for them. They’ll appreciate it and they’ll notice you. That said, don’t spam their stuff. And make sure you read it first.

Most importantly, you’ll want to make sure that your efforts are friendly and open-minded. Nothing will kill your efforts worse than spammy, unfriendly, annoying twittering.

The last thing your business needs is an empty Twitter account taking up space in the twittersphere. You’ll have wasted your time in setting it up and when people find it (a simple Google search will suffice), an empty account will make it look like your company doesn’t know what it’s doing. While this is worse than not having a Twitter account, you’ll be squandering an excellent opportunity in either case.

So, before you jump on the bandwagon and setup your business’ Twitter account, or write off that whole social media thing as a bunch of snake oil, take a few minutes to learn why you need a Twitter account.

Find More Customers

Twitter can help you find more customers. Not only can you search Twitter for people who are interested in what your company has to offer, potential customers can find you. For example, if you are a life coach who works with people struggling with shyness, you can find people online who are talking about their struggle. Likewise, people who are shy can search twitter and find your services.

Enlarge Your Network

Twitter works much the same way when it comes to networking within your industry. Not only does this help you keep an eyeball on the competition, but also allows you to get to know, like and trust others in the same on complementary fields. For example, if you’re a web designer, you can follow other designers and keep up with what is new in your industry. Some freelancers have even been known to ditch their RSS feeds because industry Twitter leaders have been so good about tweeting the latest and most relevant news and issues.

Likewise, you can also get to know other people in your industry via Twitter. So, when you arrive at that point where you need to outsource some of your work, or hire contractors or employees, you can just send out a tweet for prospects.

Build Your Community Status 

Getting known as an expert in your industry is a fast way to get people knocking on your door to hire your company. Social proof exists to confirm that you know what you’re talking about and it can be clearly seen in all the brilliant and insightful things you say in your feed.

When you achieve this status, you can just post that you have a new product or service and people will respond. For example, a jewelry and bead store owner that gets a new shipment of beads in can tweet this update to their followers and have a flood of traffic to check out the new merchandise. If she has an online store, this is even better because people can get to her virtual shop instantly. Now, if that store owner had never tweeted before, she won’t have much of a response. But if she’s been tweeting useful information, providing links to tutorials and answering customer questions, she’ll have built up a very responsive following.

As you can see, Twitter is not just about teens socializing when they should be studying their math lessons. When used effectively, Twitter can be an excellent tool for building customer relationships, getting to know your colleagues and promoting your business.

Achieving success with Twitter is like getting ready to take a trip. You have to decide where you’re going to go and how you’re going to get there, before you leave. Likewise, with Twitter, you need to sit down and decide what your goals are and how you’re going to achieve them before you start the journey.

Some goals that you may want to achieve include:

• Connecting with your customers
• Networking with people in your industry
• Driving traffic to your website

 Before we go further, let’s take a minute to look at that last goal: Driving traffic to your website.

 This goal should never be your primary goal on Twitter. It’s great for SEO, but not for a social networking site. On Twitter, you’re primary goals should be networking and connecting. The traffic will follow if you’re successful with the first two goals.

Now, let’s take a look at these goals more in depth:

1. Connecting with Customers 

Before you started your business, you should have done a ton of market research. At this point, you should know who your target market is, what their needs are related to what you offer and how you can meet those needs.

For example, if you are a baby sling seller, your research may indicate that really short, petite women need a sling that will fit them without hurting their backs. So your business has created a solution to this problem.

When you’re on Twitter, you want to find those women who are having issues with slings that don’t fit right because of their size. Once you find them, you’ll want to offer advice that might help with their existing slings, or suggest tips for making sure they buy the right size in the future. Notice, I didn’t say “send them a link to your website.”

Twitter is not the place for a hard sell. Once your potential customer sees that you care about her problem, she’s going to want to know who you are and what you can do for her.

2.   Networking with Industry Leaders

 Twitter is a unique place where you can follow, and be followed by, people who are leaders in your industry around the globe. You can keep up with what they’re tweeting about and interact with them. For example, if you’re a virtual assistant, and you see a colleague has won an award, you can publicly congratulate her by using @herTwitterName in your tweet. She’ll see this – and you.

 You can also offer advice to your colleagues, share information and discuss issues in your industry. By doing so, you will be seen as someone who is an expert in your field. In some cases, this has lead potential clients to hire you over others without the social proof, or may lead to your colleagues outsourcing work to you. In some situations, this could lead to you getting hired as a subcontractor for a project, because of your Twitter connection.

3.   Driving Traffic to Your Website

 Now, as I mentioned before, this should never be your primary goal on Twitter. Tweeting nothing but links to your website, or simply way too many tweets will make you look like a spammer.

So, put this goal in the backseat and focus your efforts on your first two goals, as we discussed above. Once you’ve taken care of those two goals and are consistently providing value to your customers and colleagues, the traffic will take care of itself.

 Once you have your roadmap and you know where you’re going, getting there will be much easier, cost effective and measurable.

The surest sign of a Twitter newbie is a default background, empty website and bio fields and little content. And the surest sign of someone who doesn’t know how to use Twitter for business is a vague or inappropriate bio field. That said there are specific things you need to do on your Twitter profile before you hit the road with it.

First and foremost, choose your Twitter username wisely.

Like your domain name, it should be easy to spell and remember. After all, you want people to find your business using the search feature, or even Google. The username should reflect positively on your business as well.

While it might seem like fun to make your username “ilovechocolate,” if you’re a virtual assistant whose work has nothing to do with chocolate, this is probably not a good idea.

For branding purposes, it’s best to choose either your business name or your name (depending on what you’re trying to brand), or a variation of it, as your username.

Write a good bio.

The bio doesn’t have to be a literary masterpiece, but it does need to succinctly describe who you are or what you offer. And the bio should contain your keywords.

Keep in mind when you’re writing your bio that people will be finding you using the information you put there. So if someone is looking for a virtual assistant, but your profile bio says “chocolate-eating dragon slayer,” chances are no one is going to find you. Well, not anyone you’ll do business with.

Choose your profile picture wisely.

The best option for your profile picture is a photograph of you. That said, it should be a professional shot – you really do want to present a positive image for your business. Make sure the shot is clear, well lit and that you’ve put your best face forward.

You can be quirky or funny, but make sure it’s appropriate. So if you’re tweeting as the CEO of a major corporation, you don’t want your profile photo of you in a Hawaiian shirt sitting on a bar stool. However, if you’re a quirky, creative photographer, you might be able to get away with pink hair and a tongue piercing. The bottom line is to be YOU and let others see who you are, without damaging your own reputation in the process.

Use a custom background.

You can have a designer create a background for you or use a free background generator online. The background will not only show Twitter users that you mean business, it will also enable you to display more information about your business and additional means of making contact.

You can also place your logo on the background to further brand your Twitter profile. And if you’re branding yourself as a business – say if you’re a life coach, for example – you can even put a full body picture of yourself, perhaps holding your logo in your hands, or something memorable like that.

Remember, whatever you do, you want to set yourself apart from the pack with your profile. Make it professional, but memorable. Include information so that people can contact you on other sites, by email and by phone. Make a statement about the value your business can provide to those who land on your profile.

Incoming search terms:

• twitter profile logo setup

When you’re taking a trip, you’ll often set overall goals like: Fly to Orlando, go to Disney World, and meet Mickey Mouse. While those are wonderful goals, they don’t contain the plan for how you’re going to achieve them.  You need to know what airline you’ll buy tickets through, where you’re going to rent a car, what hotel you’ll be staying in and how much it all is going to cost.

Using Twitter to grow your business is like preparing for a trip in that you need to plan out all those small details as well. While you’ll have your own goals and will need to create your own plan to meet them, here are some basic stops that you’ll definitely need to include:

1. Follow the right people. Following your uncle’s daughter’s third cousin is not going to help you get to know people needing a virtual assistant…unless the cousin needs a VA… Instead, you should use the search function in Twitter to find potential customers and find colleagues that you can interact with.
2. Plan one month ahead.  You’ll need to fit what you’ll be tweet about into your overall marketing plan. Now, that’s not to say you can’t have an impromptu conversation or help a customer with a question. But you should have an overall roadmap for where you’re going and have some tweets planned out that will advance your marketing and networking goals.
3. Automate what you can. OK, pull over for a moment and let’s get straight on this topic. There are some people who say you should never automate and others tell you to automate everything. As a business though, you should take a middle road. Automating DMs or sending out thousands of irrelevant tweets a day are never a good idea. But sending 1 or 2 blog updates per day and perhaps automating a couple of inspirational or helpful comments is not a bad thing. You just need to make sure you balance that with real conversations and connections.
4. Use tools to maximize your effectiveness. Twitter tools such as Seesmic and TweetDeck can be downloaded to your computer and used to help you manage your Twitter profile – or profiles if you have more than one. Hootsuite is an online tool that does the same thing. Or you can download the Tweetie app to your iPhone and keep in touch while you’re on the road… preferably not while you’re driving.
5. Track your results. You can pour all kinds of time and effort into Twitter – and trust me, it’s easy to do – but if you don’t know how effective those efforts are, you’re wasting your time. You’ll need to keep track of how many people are following or unfollowing you. And you’ll need to track how many people do end up at your site. Tools like Google Analytics can help you track the traffic on your site. And you can keep track you conversations and connections in Twitter using the search functions and hashtags.

 In short, just knowing where you want to go with Twitter is not enough. You need to have a detailed plan of how you’re going to achieve your goals. Once you have the plan, the only thing left to do is implement it!

Wouldn’t it be great if you had Twitter followers in the three-and-four digit numbers? Sending out affiliate marketing messages using Twitter can be very effective, but when your list of followers is still in the double digits, it’s time to work on some techniques that can increase the number of followers on your list. Read on for some simple ways to attract more subscribers to your tweets.

1. Add hashtags to your tweets. A hashtag, or “#” is used somewhat like a tag indicator. It’s an effective way to annotate a message, so that anyone searching for your particular hashtag annotation, such as #insomnia, will get your tweet in their search results. This can help you effectively target subsets of a large crowd of users, making your messages more applicable to certain readers and bringing you new followers.

2. Post information that followers will find unique and interesting, and do it three to four times each day. Consider also releasing pieces of information separately in a series, so that your followers will have something to look forward to and stay more engaged with your tweets.

3. Add interesting photos to your Tweets. Readers love seeing images! Find attention-getting ones that will help you convert readers into followers.

4. Create a very good, interesting avatar photograph, and do not use a logo or an icon. Additionally, have a succinct, interesting bio. This tells people something about you and makes your messages more personal. Too many times, marketing becomes so much about the product push, that the personal touch is left out, even though this is one of the important keys to attracting consumers and building trust in the online world.

5. Engage everyday in conversations with your followers. This tells people that you are interested and involved, rather than making your tweets just a one-way information flow. Reply at least 10 to 20 times each day, possibly more, if you can. When others come across your tweets, they will be more motivated to follow you because of your interactions.

6. Find a Twitter user directory and get yourself in it. The URL for your Twitter profile is nofollow, but once you join a directory you can get a dofollow link, which allows you to have a new way to grow your list of followers. This also allows you to get Twitter links built right into your profile, which can reward you with a higher serp ranking.

7. Check out a site like Twitterholic, and see who the most popular Twitter users are. Follow a few of them, especially those that are relevant to your product or follower demographic, and some of their followers will start to follow you.

8. Offer something for free or hold some kind of contest. You can offer a free report, gift certificate or other desirable giveaway. Tweet the news and add a #free hashtag, and add to your other non-Twitter marketing efforts, such as your Facebook page.

Now that you know a few new ways to increase your list of followers, integrate these ideas into your Twitter strategy and see how they work out. Increasing your list of followers may take time, but if you apply a methodical, consistent approach, you will be rewarded with a lengthy and engaged list of Twitter followers, and hopefully, buyers.

Twitter is easily the most popular social networking service online today, and it’s an awesome way to build exposure. Twitter’s popularity has made it one of those tools no internet marketer should be without (which most already know).

Even though the service is nothing but a micro blogging platform, it’s become a lot more than that, especially for websites that are looking to build targeted relationships and take their traffic to the next level.

The biggest reason for initial failure when using Twitter is impatience rather than actual failure - simply giving up too soon can be fatal. So what’s the best way to use Twitter for maximum exposure for your web-based business? How do you rise above the rest using Twitter?

Your Username

Start with your Twitter username; you need to choose it with care because it will represent you in front of your market. You will brand yourself with your username whether you want to or not; so create something that people will easily remember. You absolutely must be serious and professional about your online appearance to your market. Remember that the dynamics of doing business and marketing on Twitter are radically different from those of Facebook. You only get one chance to make a great first impression, and the way you will begin to accomplish that on Twitter is with your name.

Your Profile Picture

Use a real picture. You need to look and sound as real as possible, because one of the main issues people face on the internet is trusting others. People will see your real picture and realize that you aren’t a scam.

Tips

Try to tweet great tips to your followers. For example, a tweet with a link to a guide on how to combine The Best Spinner with this spinner tool would be a valuable tweet that people would appreciate.

Once you do begin building rapport with people, then you can demonstrate your knowledge by helping them. Twitter is more than marketing, it is good old fashioned getting to know people. If you show yourself as just a business, then people will tend to be unresponsive to you. The old adage is alive at Twitter which is that people do not want to be sold to.

All in all, from the above article we come to understand the real importance of doing small things with your Twitter account to make it stand out of the crowd. Twitter can help you take your business to the next level by helping you brand it, and effectively growing with your target market. Using this tool will make it easier to have interaction with prospective clients. Need a micro blog service? Use Twitter.

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