Twitter in a nutshell is a simple social networking website that lets you share with your friends know what you’re doing – right now! Hence the old catch phrase on the Twitter sign-up page –“What are you doing?” Think of Facebook, instant messaging and sms all rolled into one simple package, and you’ve got Twitter.

Twitter works around a time line which is displayed on a single page that’s updated every second of every minute of every hour….you get my point. It’s a constantly updated stream of news from people all around the world. As a member, you can add your own little message to the time line up to 140 characters long to it known as a “tweet”.

But that doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to see every Twitter user’s Tweets. You can choose who you want to “Follow” and others can choose to Follow you. And it’s these followers who you can converse (tweet) with.

You might be thinking “wow, big deal” but there is massive potential in this mini social networking site to meet other like-minded people, share info and web site links. And those factors mixed with the ability to grow your followers make it a perfect platform for business.

You can also use Twitter to….

* Send direct messages to users instead of broadcasting to everyone,

* Mobile options to send and receive tweets via SMS and email from your cellphone,

* Search options allowing you to find Twitter users posting about a certain topic,

* An API that allows 3rd party developers to develop some great applications.

It’s taking the world by storm and there is a great potential for business owners, online and off, so if you’re not a member yet, sign up for a free Twitter account now.

Now let’s talk about getting your Tweets spread even further and increasing the chance of meeting even more people by using ‘re-tweets’.

Re-tweeting is a common practice on Twitter where you’ll re-post someone else’s tweet that you like and you think your followers will like.

With this method, you take the original twitter message someone else has posted, and rebroadcast that same message to your followers. To do a re-tweet, simply type in RT at the beginning of your tweet and then a @ before the original tweeters username followed by their original tweet.

Now Twitter will let you click the Retweet button on the Twitter website which will set up the RT function automatically.

Reasons To Re-Tweet

When broadcasting the message, you should definitely give credit to the original poster in the way I showed you above. I know at first it may sound like this will only be good for the original tweeter, but retweeting can actually benefit you just as much if not more because;

1. It provides more value to your followers.

When you provide value to your followers, you make them happy! You are also more likely to attract followers. Providing quality content is always a great way to build your business no matter what platform you use.

2. It will benefit your brand.

If you point a reader to a source if good information that is truly relevant and beneficial to them, the amount of trust that they have in you will increase.

3. It will help you build relationships with the original posters.

Retweeting someone else’s content is an act of kindness, and for the most part bloggers like to return the favor. You shouldn’t expect someone to re-tweet your content just because you retweet theirs. Just keep in mind that your chance of being on the other end of a re-tweet increases as you retweet.

Retweeting is all about providing value to your followers so if you want others to retweet your post then you want to make sure that you are providing them with quality content worth tweeting about.

The bottom line is retweeting is a great way to add quality and value to your Twitter page. If done right, retweeting can help you educate your followers, build your personal brand, increase future traffic, and connect you to other great people in your niche.

Just be careful if you use it incorrectly, retweeting can actually hurt your personal brand and future traffic. You want to treat your followers like gold. Don’t ever send them to inappropriate websites or spam them with one sales pitch after another.

Many people see Twitter as a waste of time. However, Twitter is extremely useful in growing your business or your freelance career. There are many potential benefits to using Twitter.

Free Advertising

Twitter can ban accounts that it considers spam. However, that does not prevent you from using Twitter to do a reasonable amount of advertising and marketing. Almost all advertising is beneficial, especially when it’s free. Just be sure not to alienate users by putting out a constant stream of promotional tweets or spamming them individually with direct messages or @ replies.

Small Time Commitment

How long does it take to plan out and tweet 140 characters? The answer is probably not very long. You may be very busy throughout the day, but chances are that you will have time to tweet once or twice.

Self-Promotion

If you want to be successful in business, you will have to learn to self-promote. Some of the most successful businessmen, entertainers, and writers are all ruthless self-promoters. At its heart, Twitter is a means of self-promotion. A tweet lets others know what you are doing, how you feel, or what your opinion is and keeps you in the public eye.

Arousing Customer Interest

Strategic tweeting can generate significant customer interest. For example, if you are releasing a new product or work, you can regularly update that you have something special in the works, and that you’ll make an announcement later. By the time you make the announcement, there will be many followers dying to know what it is.

Staying In Customers Minds

Many customers will make a purchase and then think nothing of it again, particularly the source. By regularly tweeting, followers will take notice of you throughout the day. This way, you or your company will always be fresh in their minds.

Targeted Advertising

Companies spend millions of dollars trying to figure out who they should market to. Twitter makes this unnecessary. Your Twitter followers are already interested in you. The announcements that you make to them will be more effective on a per person basis than other advertising.

Ability to Make the News

Tweets now regularly make the news. Major news outlets cover stories about tweets multiple times a day. If you gain enough followers, or make a news-worthy tweet, you might make the local, or even national, news. This will expose you to the millions who are not on Twitter.

Huge Potential for Followers

There are over 200 Million Twitter users. While the vast majority of those will probably never follow you, how many other free means of advertising are you aware of that even have the potential to reach over 200 million people?

Enhanced Customer Relationships

Business is all about relationships. The most successful businesses and freelancers maintain solid relationships with customers, suppliers, and other members of the industry for years, or even decades. Twitter is a means to form and solidify your relationship with your followers, many of who are likely to be customers or potential customers.

Keeping Abreast Of Your Industry and Your Competitors

Twitter not only allows others to follow you, but for you to follow others. You can follow the accounts of competitors, or industry insiders. This allows you to find out what is happening in your field, and how others are reacting to it. This allows you to react accordingly. For example, it is probably in your best interest to know when your competitors are having a sale, and what the sale is for. This will allow you to have a competing sale.

Can you promote your business on twitter? The answer is yes, you can promote your business on twitter and you can actually drive some really nice results with the right strategies.

Here are a few tips to promote & generate engagement for your business on Twitter.

1.       Grow your twitter following by using search.twitter.com and twellow to find like minded followers.  You can identify your target market and follow them and usually 30% to 60% will follow you back.  You can take a look at services such as Hummingbird to automate this process as well.

2.       Be human, while you don’t want to be telling people you just took a shower, you can be authentic and bring real engagement.

3.       Use Twitter to get past the gatekeeper by contacting corporate twitter accounts through messaging them with twitter to find your contacts.

4.       Post your usual qualifying questions you use in your sales process to drive engagement with your target market.

5.       Use URL shortners such as bit.ly to save character space and to measure the statistics (click through on status updates) this will allow you to learn how to refine your status updates to get the most click throughs possible.

6.       Promote events prior, during, and post so you can possibly engage with your target market.

These are just some starter tips for businesses and professionals, what tips would you offer?

Here is a short video I did sharing how business professionals can search Twitter for targeted prospect pools and begin to grow their twitter followings in a very targeted manner.

Let me know what you think.

When you get into the realm of the small business owner, you will find that social media is truly creeping in at an amazing pace. The majority of this can be found by the usage of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Some of the basic benefits of using these sites would include the ability to make business contacts and maintain the links that you need between yourself and them.

The sites that I mentioned can be utilized in several different and very beneficial ways.

With Facebook, both an account for yourself as well as for your business can be created. By developing good communication with customers and contacts, you can eventually get people to just opt in to get messages from your company.

Creating a LinkedIn account is an amazing way of finding and communicating with professionals all over the world, even those who are already in a field specific to your own. This is a great way to share ideas with someone who already knows about what you do because they do the same thing.

Finally, when using Twitter, remember the great benefit that you get of promoting your business in such a few short words. You will find that when you look at other tweets from business owners that they are short, sweet, and to the point most of the time. This is yet another way of bringing customers to you.

Always remember that it’s the content of what you have that is most important. Useless and boring information will get you nowhere, but the opposite will provide for a truly strong and growing business as you head into the future.

Learn more how you and your small business can get started on Linkedin: LinkedIn Power User Strategies Webinar every Thursday at 4pm EST with live Q&A

Hummingbird How To Videos, Learn how to use an automated twitter following software that is intelligent. Growing a targeted twitter following is an art and a science and these videos along with the software will explode your twitter account.