Is Social Media the end all of marketing? Of course not, but it is a huge powerhouse that if done right, businesses can get a ton of exposure for without spending a fortune on marketing.

Let’s look at Twitter. It’s the most basic of the top sites out there, yet is very powerful if used right to market our business.

Communicate With Customers

Twitter offers a fast and easy way to communicate with customers and prospects. 140 Characters at a time, you can keep in touch with your customers about new things going on with the company. Are you opening a new location? Tweet it. Offering a new product? Tweet that too. What about when you are going to be at a trade show? That too is a great Tweet for your business. Get them involved and let them know what’s up with you and your business.

Fast Specials And Offers

In the past, if you wanted to send a special to your customers you had to mail them a postcard of brochure. Then came the ability to email them, but for marketing a small business, Twitter for business marketing is great. It’s cheap (free), easy and immediate.

Many Twitter users have their Twitter feeds go right to their phones. No need to wait for Johnny to get home and check his email. No chance that your message will get lost in the junk folder.

You can send out multiple messages each and every day without spending a dime or having to wait for the mail to get there.

Customer Service

As more and more people are using Twitter in their everyday lives, Twitter has become a great way to offer customer service for customers and prospects asking questions. It’s easy to do. Someone asks a question and you just reply with a link to a support article, or link to where they can find the answer.

One of the major Credit card gateways had an outage and instead of spending hundreds of man hours replying to single emails and phone calls, they dedicated one person just to post to their Twitter account updates on the issue and how it was being resolved. They then just directed all other forms of contact to that one place.

That gave the customers a one stop location to let people know what was going on and what the situation was.

Things like this are just the tip of the iceberg on how you can use Twitter for business. I know at first glance, most people don’t get the idea of hot to use Twitter for business but it really is a simple and easy to use tool that can be very effect in communicating with your customers and prospects about everything you have to offer. It’s not complicated, just 140 characters at a time.

So, if you want to really take using Twitter for Business to the next level, find a ton of followers and use Twitter as an effective business marketing tool, download my free “Twitter For Business” Step By Step Guide where I’ll walk you through some great resources on where to find followers, build your list and make Twitter a great marketing tool without spending a dime!

Now I do admit there is a ton of useless stuff on Twitter but it can also be a great tool to market your business and communicate with your customers and prospects easily and all for free.

Here’s 3 ways you can effectively use Twitter for business marketing without having to spend a ton of time or any money at all.

Start A Conversation

Find users in your local area and follow them right away. Look for other businesses in your neighborhood or city. What other businesses do your exact customer also visit or buy from? This is the first place to look. Follow those businesses and then also follow a few of their followers. You’ll get some following from just that alone.

Be sure to interact with them. Twitter isn’t just a one way communication tool. It’s a conversation. If you see someone else asking a question that you can answer, then answer it. Be helpful. Offer suggestions. Comment on other posts.

Communicate With Customers

Ask your customers if they are on Twitter. If they are, suggest they follow you and ask for their Twitter Handle (their Twitter name). Get them involved in the conversation.

Start sending out special discounts via Twitter that people can only get if they come in with a secret word of the day. This is a great way to not only get your marketing out there but to also get tracking to see how effective it is.

Ask your followers what they’d like to see in your store. Here’s an example, If you own a coffee shop, you could ask your followers what their favorite drink is. It’s a great conversation starter and can really get a ton of buzz. Every one of your followers that replies to your question with have their own list of followers that will see their post and then check you out to see who you are.

Again… Another bump in followers.

Get Viral About It

Ask your followers to Re-tweet your messages. If you have a loyal following, they’ll be more than happy to do so.

The more times your posts are re-tweeted, the more you’ll get people to check out your Twitter page and likely follow you too.

Then it all goes back in a circle. More and more followers will check you out each day if you follow this simple process.

Every time you post something new on your website, be sure to send it out to your Twitter feed. This will increase your followers AND increase visitors to your website.

It’s a vicious cycle that as long as you keep it going will feed your Twitter account with more and more followers each and every day.

Most small business owners don’t get how Twitter can be an effective marketing tool. This is great for a business owner like you that wants to take advantage of the Social media Tools Out there and get great exposure with out spending a fortune on advertising and marketing.

In order to build a following on Twitter, here’s a few great ideas that will get the snowball rolling.

Find other businesses that are on Twitter already

What other businesses in your area are on Twitter already? Find the ones that have the same types of customers as you and follow them. You want to take part in their conversation and see what they are doing. It’s a great way to get ideas for your own Twitter feed.

Then follow some of their followers. Twitter will show you everyone that is following them. Look at the list and stat adding 10-20 people that look like your target market from that list.

Don’t just add everyone. If you add too many people at a time you might get banned. Plus it’s back Karma to just pillage someone else’s followers. Find the people that do fit your customer and just add a few at a time.

Search on Twitter

You can easily find Twitter users using Twitter’s own search engine. Just click the search button and go to “advanced” this is a killer tool because you can search by state, city, and even a distance from you. Talk about targeted marketing!

Start by finding people in your city using keywords people might search for like “coffee shop” or “Personal Trainer”

You’ll be able to see what people are talking about. When someone asks a question, you can answer it and follow that person. They’ll likely follow you back. It’s that simple.

As you post great stuff and they see how much valuable information you send out, they’ll share it with their friends and you’ll get even more followers from it.

Add your Twitter ID to your signature

If you really want to use Twitter for business marketing, you need to make sure that you let everyone you know aware of your Twitter page and encourage them to follow you.

Add your Twitter page link to your email signature. Any time you reply to someone with your signature, they will see it. If they use Twitter, they are likely to follow you.

Tell your customers. If you send out n email newsletter, be sure to mention it in EVERY newsletter you send out. Again, this will bring more and more people to your followers and grow your list. As people see their post, they will see that they are following you and again, you’ll get more followers from that too.

It’s very easy to get 10-20 new followers each day if you follow these simple steps each day. It’s not about getting 1000s of followers each day. It’s about getting a consistent increase of loyal followers that want to know what you have to say.

Video

• Watch: How To Find Followers On Twitter For Business

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It’s about relationships.
Remember that all social media tools online are about communication and relationships. Though these tools are great ways to market your business, you need to keep this in mind first. Build relationships with your followers. Answer their questions. Talk to them, don’t just pitch them all the time.

The worst thing you can do is to just post tweets with how great you are and your current specials. It’s ok to add these as part of the process but scatter them within other posts about what’s going on, sharing good resources and just being part of the conversation.

Ask questions

Get your followers to become interactive with you. Ask them questions related to your business. Say a coffee shop could post a tweet asking followers to reply with their favorite drink. Take a survey. Make it interactive and make it fun.

There are great tools online where you can even take polls via Twitter that will enhance this even further.

Just make it interactive. You want to get a response and get people involved. This will make you stand out more than anyone just pitching their stuff.

Post community information

Is there a fair going on near your store? Let people know about it. This is great because you are helping the event out by helping to promote it and then guess what happens…

Many of the people that you let know about the event will not only go to the event, but they will also stop by your store too and end up buying something.

This not only helps you out with more sales but also helps out the community of other store owners and you become a trusted source because you shared that information with everyone on your list.

Offer “Mention Twitter” offers

Obviously, the goal is to increase sales from your twitter marketing efforts so lace your posts with a call to action. Get them to go to your website to read a new article you posted, get them to come in for Twitter Only specials, get them to post a comment. Whatever the goal is, you want to make sure that it is something that they have to take action on and that you can track.

Plus, this is a great way to track that your efforts are working. You know that people are using it because they are claiming the discount.

So, how you use Twitter in your marketing isn’t complicated or difficult by any means.

Be sure to share your world with them. Make it interesting and be sure to keep up with it. It won’t work all over night but over time you’ll get a huge following of tweeps that WANT to know what you have to say and will follow your every tweet.

Like this article? Want to know the step by step process to using Twitter as a business tool to market your business? Claim your free copy of Step By Step: Twitter Business today, and learn how to use Twitter as a effective marketing tool for your business.

Video:

• Watch: How To Marketing – With Twitter

Are you taking action on the things you learn each day? Do you attend webinars, seminars, networking events, workshops, etc to learn new things? Great! Now what do you do with that new knowledge?

Check out this week’s video to remind yourself that just having this information is not doing you any good it is all about Taking MASSIVE BOLD action with that knowledge is the key!

So what are you going to do TODAY to implement something you learned recently? Tell us in the comments section below, maybe you will inspire someone else to take action also….

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I still hear it from most business owners… “I don’t get it. I don’t have that much to say. I don’t want to do that. It’s just too much work”

Well, if you want to get your name out there more. Get more prospects. Get more customers and provide better customer service to your existing customers, then a blog is the easiest way to do all these and more.

So, why is it that blogs are so powerful and why should you have one? Let me count the ways!

Blog posts are like pages on your website.
When you build a static website, you have a number of pages that are all static. They don’t change much. Once search engines have got them in the index, there isn’t anything else for them to find. This doesn’t make them come back and re-index your website.

Blogs on the other hand are dynamic meaning you are adding new content all the time to them. Even if it’s only once a week, within one year your blog has 52 pages of food for the search engines. The more you post, the more the search engines learn to come back and re-index your site more often.

Would you rather have 10 pages of stuff that Google can find or 52 pages of stuff for Google to find?
The more you have out there, the more likely Google will raise your rankings.

Blogs provide communication with customers and prospects.
Blogs aren’t generally just advertisements for your stuff. You should have a bit more personality and feeling with your posts. Generally they are more first person. Like you’re telling a story or talking to someone in a conversation.

This adds a more personal feel to the post. Prospects and customers alike will feel more in tune with who you are and feel like they know you more. People buy from people, not companies. Your blog posts can give you a huge relationship with your readers even if you’ve never met them.

The more you tell, the more you sell. You just need to talk to them, not just pitch them your wears.

Blogs provide a way for better customer service.
By posting articles on how to use your products better, you can help cut down customer service. You can even create simple little videos demonstrating your product in use. The more you share how much they can do with your product or new ways to use the product they haven’t thought of before, you’ll help your customers get involved with the product and use it more.

You can even do simple FAQ posts that are tips on ways to help them even more and answer their most common questions.

Now this is just the tip of the iceberg on why you should be using blogs in your business. It doesn’t matter what type of business you have, blogs are an easy way to get more customers, increase your customer service and get a lot more traffic to your website.

Do you have a blog? How often do you post? Do you not have a blog? Tell us why not, what is stopping you?

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About The Author:

Ely Delaney is a dad, graphic designer, author, speaker, marketing consultant and Founder/CEO of My Business Marketing Mentor. His goal is to teach marketing to small Mom & Pop style businesses in a simple easy to understand format that they can use to help gain marketing ideas and market their businesses to boost sales no matter what the economic climate may be. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, free downloads and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.