For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter, it’s a free social networking and micro blogging service, where users can send and read each other’s updates (tweets). Unlike blogging, which requires writing full blown articles, tweets are limited to 140 characters.
A couple of days ago, on Local Biz Bits, Larry Sullivan recommended a few articles on Twitter and how local businesses can use it to promote their business. He starts with Dave Wallace’s Can Twitter Be Useful For Business, where Dave presents 5 points where Twitter can be useful for SMBs:
- Puts a Human Face On the Company
- Community Outreach… Keeping in mind that you should work to build a community around your products and/or services anyway, Twitter is a great tool to help in this process. By setting up a Twitter profile for your company and then making sure you invite your active customers and prospects to follow you, you now have a direct connection to them.
- Product/Service Promotion. Once you have a decent amount of followers, announcing new products and/or services, upgrades or even promotionals becomes a breeze. Also consider that many Twitter users will use specific search queries to locate topics that interest them. Therefore by associating the right keywords along with your tweets, you can attract those that aren’t even following you.
- Brand Management. With so many people using Twitter, there are bound to be occurrences where your company and/or products will be discussed.
- Polls/Surveys. This is one of the most useful functions of Twitter – the ability to gather feedback via polls, surveys or even by asking a simple question.
The other articles Larry recommends are also very interesting, presenting cases of SMBs who use Twitter for promoting their business, and giving more tips on how to use the word of mouth marketing opportunities Twitter allows.
To read Larry’s full article and his recommendations, go to http://www.localbizbits.com/2009/05/12/twitter-and-local-business/
