My Twitter Directory

Web 2.0 is redefining the way we do business. There are many Web 2.0 technologies, which help grow your business. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. are just some of the sites you can use to boost your business for free. And no, you don't have to be a geek or even technically savvy in order to get full advantage of Twitter and the other sites.

Again, What Is Twitter ?

Twitter is one of the most popular microblogging platforms. It certainly isn't the only one but it just happens to be one of the most useful. Your main Twitter activity consists of posting tweets. Tweets are short messages and they can be about whatever you like. Each tweet is limited to 140 characters, so you can't be very talkative but this is microblogging, not blogging, right? The people who are your followers can see your tweets and you can see the tweets of the people you follow. If you select to have less privacy but better reach, you can make your tweets visible to everybody on the Net, not only to your followers.

How Twitter Can Help You Grow Your Business

Twitter is a powerful marketing tool and it helps you reach more people at a low cost. There are many examples of companies and individuals, who successfully used Twitter to promote their products and ideas. Barack Obama uses Twitter and many analysts think that thanks to Twitter he managed to reach many voters he wouldn't have otherwise reached. Of course, you don't have to be Obama in order to make use of Twitter. Millions of companies of all sizes (and possibly your competitors are among them) use Twitter and for them Twitter (and Facebook) work like a charm.

Twitter is especially great for driving traffic to your site but generally it doesn't work that nice for sales. You can use it as a sales tool as well and you can make sales thanks to it but usually this comes secondary to the free publicity you get there. Also, when you get traffic to your site and you promote your products for free, this leads to increased sales, so indirectly Twitter is a sales tool as well.

Tips for Using Twitter to Grow Your Business

Twitter is a very powerful marketing tool but if you want to feel its true power, you need to know how to unleash it. There are tips and tricks that can help you use Twitter to grow your business and here are some of them:
Choose a suitable Twitter nickname. Your nickname on Twitter is very important because this is how you are identified there. Needless to say, you need to choose a serious name. In many cases your company name is the best nickname, so unless you have reasons to pick something else, you can use your company name. Twitter allows to have multiple accounts, so if you want to promote products separately, you can create an account for each product rather than use one joint account for all of them.

Create an attractive profile. Your Twitter profile is your business card. This is why you need to make it look professional. You also should include a lot of (relevant) information about you, your company, and your products.

Create a network. One of the most important things you need to do in order to see Twitter boost your growth is to build a network. You can start building your network by inviting your partners to follow you. You can also use the search functionality Twitter offers and search Twitter for other users, who could be of use to you. You can search for suppliers or for customers of yours. When you find somebody worth following, add them to your list. Twitter is about mingling with other users – read their tweets, retweet the ones you like especially, post comments.

Tweet regularly. When you have already built your network, the next step is to keep it. One of the proven ways to do that is by tweeting regularly. When you tweet regularly (once a week, every day, or even better – many times a day), your followers get the habit of visiting your site frequently to see what's new. This way you can build a community of loyal followers very quickly.

Retweets can help you reach a larger audience. Retweets are one of the greatest things on Twitter. When you find a useful tweet, just retweet it and include a reference to the original author. When you retweet the messages of the people you are following, they do the same in return and this way your tweets reach the network of your followers and their followers. If you have influential followers, getting your message through them to their network can mean your message reaches thousands, if not millions of potential clients.

Post links to your site. If you have news on your site or new posts on your blog, you should always post a link on Twitter. If the post is interesting, many of your followers will visit your site to read more.

Post links to articles/videos about you and your products. In addition to pages on your site and postings on your blog, one more type of links your followers will like is links to articles/videos about your and your products. If a newspaper writes an article about you, don't forget to post the link to it on your Twitter page. There have been many cases when articles and videos go viral after somebody posts them on Twitter and other Twitter users start retweeting them.

Look for new partners. One of the goals of building a large (and targeted) network of followers and users whom you follow is that by doing so you meet new people, who will be useful for your business growth. It is quite possible to find many new partners on Twitter. Just be careful – as you probably know, doing business with strangers you met on the Net is not the most risk-free activity, so take all lucrative partnership proposals with a grain of salt.

Learn the lingo of Twitter. Twitter is a community and if you want to be popular in this community, you need to learn its lingo. You can start by reading this helpful article.

Offer coupons. Sales might not be the strength of Twitter but this doesn't mean that Twitter has no potential in that aspect. One of the ways to use Twitter to boost your sales is to offer coupons exclusively to your followers. Depending on what you sell, this technique might work. For instance, if you are selling books, coupons are great but if you are in real estate, it makes no sense to offer coupons for a $100 discount on a multimillion house, for example.

Promote your Twitter account. When you see that Twitter can work for you and that your business is growing thanks to it, the next step is to promote your Twitter account. Promotion of your Twitter account will help you to attract new followers and further expand your reach. There are many ways in which you can promote your Twitter account and two of the best places where you can list it for free are  Wefollow and Twellow. Both Wefollow and Twellow are Twitter directories and they can help you attract new followers.

Twitter offers endless possibilities to grow your business. The tips we gave are just a small fraction of the tips and tricks you can use to make Twitter work for you. Our tips involved only the basics and we dealt only with Twitter itself. In addition to its main functionality, Twitter has many applications you can use. These applications are numerous and new and new ones are added all the time. Explore them on your own and you will discover many new opportunities for business growth.