Top 10 ways to promote your business through Twitter

Twitter has been defined in many terms. As a social networking website, as a micro-blogging site, and as a friendship-maintaining site, Twitter has gained prominence. But most do not realize the potential of Twitter as an effective business-promotion website. There are many small-scale businessmen, who try to advertise their ventures in newspapers and television pooling the money they can't afford, but yet they do not seem to recognize the potential of networking sites like Twitter in this regard. Promoting business through sites like Twitter has two advantages: on one hand, it helps you make business relations with people and friends from all parts of the world, not only your local area or your country. Secondly, promotion through Twitter and similar websites are extremely profitable and cheap. All you need is a Twitter account and an Internet connection. Compared to the huge cost of advertising in newspapers and television, this is a great advantage. This article provides an insight to the top ten ways through which you can promote your business on Twitter.

1. Create a website and promote via Twitter

One of the easiest and the most effective way is to create a website of your own firm and promote it via Twitter. If you can't afford to buy your own domain name, at least register a blog under community blogging sites. Websites like eBlogger and Wordpress will let you have a blog under their sites. If you choose a blog that can be customized, then you can build your own website-look-alike blog. Then get a short link for the blog URL and post tweets including that link. This is an effective way. Make sure that every single tweet of yours is NOT about the links. In such case, people will doubt authenticity. Tweet personal thoughts along with promotional tweets. People will consider your account authentic all right.

2. Use Hash tags for promotion

Hash tags are a special feature of Twitter. Since this article concentrates on promotion via Twitter, this should be mentioned. A hash tagged word in Twitter acts as a link to the page where all the tweets with the hash tag will appear. For example, if you post a tweet like this:

"For online shopping of brand new designer dresses, visit www.-----------.com #onlinedressshopping",

then you are hash tagging the word #onlinedressshopping. The advantage of this is that whomever searching for an online dress store in twitter will search for such a hash tag. It is a unique feature of Twitter is that accustomed users, especially business-oriented users search for hash tags along with keywords. Your website will be noticed by those who search. Even if nobody else searches, at least other providers like you will create similar tags and this will bring them to your link and thus will help in interlinking.

3. Follow large brands

Most of the large business firms have their own Twitter accounts. Most of such accounts will have many followers; hence don't expect those big brands to notice your small account. But the advantage of following such accounts is that you can make friends with their clients as well as small firms like yourselves. This will help the further proliferation of your business. By luck, it is even possible that the big brands may notice your work and appreciate you. Hence following large brands is a great option.

4. Get yourselves followers

Getting a lot of followers will help your message reach more accounts. Having followers who have no interest win your work does not count. Whom you need are those followers who are interested in what you tweet and bother to read your tweets. There are some easy methods to gain relevant followers. Follow those people who are related to your firm. Fellow businessmen, clients etc are examples. Most will follow back. Otherwise, you can list people like you on a special list. They will be notified and will check out your profile for sure. If yours is a wholesale venture, it is possible that there will be retailers who are interested in buying from you.

5. Sent private tweets (@mentions)

You can mention a client or an interested person directly and send the link of your website or the contact details of your firm via Twitter. But do this only if you feel that the given person will be genuinely interested in your venture. If you start sending @mention tweets to everybody intermittently, most likely they will think that you are spamming them, and will either block or unfollow your account. Send further tweets only if the person responds affirmatively after to the first tweet. This is also an effective way.

6. Ask your friends to ReTweet

If you have personal friends who won't think it a disturbance to help you promote your venture, it is a great advantage. Ask them to retweet your promotional tweets. When the tweeple see such a tweet retweeted, they will consider it genuine and not a spam. Hence it will be advantageous to your firm. Asking them to mention you as a personal friend will also help. Your friends' followers will understand that your tweet is not a fake link. If they are interested, they will sure visit your profile or contact you in a necessity.

7. Use twitter tactics

One feature of Twitter is that everybody will want to promote his or her own firms in Twitter. Hence your rival firms will be also detailing their tactics and strategies on their profile pages. If you surf through the profiles of such ventures, you have two merits:

You can understand their good tactics and imbibe from them

You can understand their drawbacks and come up with better tactics

If you feel that a particular tactic a firm uses is working, you can emulate them in your profile as well. On another hand, if you feel that they have any drawbacks, you can rectify them in your profile. Visiting a profile, you may feel that if the profile owner had given some contact information in their bio, it will be better. If you too haven't done, you can modify your account on the basis of what you learned. Social media is the only platform where your rival's patterns will be publicly available to you. Hence make use of this advantage.

8. Furnish an attractive profile and biography

Your profile consists of your biography, profile picture, username and website declaration. Using promo information only on your tweets is not enough. You can furnish your bio in an attractive manner. You can begin in a friendly tone and state that you are the owner of a firm that sells so and so. You can add the plus-points of your firm in your bio. You can provide private email or phone number and end the bio asking the visitors to feel free to contact you on any need. Your username can also be helpful. It is always better to use your original name because it will convince the people that you are not faking. If your own name is already taken, choose something that will highlight your work. Using vague and cynic looking names with a lot of numbers and letters that do not make sense together will avert genuine clients. You can specify your firm's blog address or website address on your profile page. You can also upload your real profile picture. This also will add to the genuineness of your account. If you don't want to disclose your personal picture, then you can upload the photos of the office of your firm. Or you can create a logo for your firm and upload it. This will bring your account more authenticity than using Mickey Mouse photos or cute baby photos!

9. Upload the pictures of your firm and work

Unlike Facebook and other social media, Twitter does not allow you to upload pictures directly from their website. Instead you have to go to sister sites like twitpic and yfrog to upload your twitter photos. Anyway you don't have to create a separate account – you can log in with your Twitter account itself. Once you start uploading pictures, you can use them to promote your firm. In the case of the above-mentioned example of dress store, you can shoot exotic pictures of the designs and upload them. Make sure that the pictures look professional and attractive. Twitter recently has started showcasing the images you upload in your profile page's sidebar with the title 'recent images'. People who visit your profile have a general tendency to click on the images. Those who get hooked will contact you for sure.

10. Interlink and inter-promote your other social-networks

Today is the age of convergence. Don't limit your profession on Twitter alone. You can open Facebook, Google + and similar accounts for the promotion of your tweets. You can interlink and inter-promote these as well. For example, you can share your Twitter status or Twitpic uploading on Facebook. Interlinking works very well. You can also showcase your facebook, twitter and google + pages in your Google Profiles. This will provide a complete index to your social networking sites to the clients.

On a widening horizon of e-commerce, promotion via social networking websites has great scope. Twitter, as a microblogging site, holds a special position in the virtual world. Realizing the potential of Twitter and using it in an effective manner will cause a great difference in the area of action of your business venture.