Grow Your Business with Twitter

You don't have to spend a big chunk of change on advertising and other traditional marketing tools. This doesn't mean you should stop using traditional marketing, but instead complement it with Twitter and other social media sites.

Many businesses are finding huge marketing successes with Twitter through contests. One company, Squarespace, managed to do so well that its company name appeared on Twitter as a "trending topic." Trending topics show up on the Twitter home page and the right sidebar based on words or phrases that receive the most tweets.

To thank customers for its 100 percent growth, the company gave away iPods for 30 days. To qualify for the drawing, all you had to do was tweet a message plus add the required #squarespace hashtag. This helped ensure the company's name showed up in the trending topics section.

This move put the company squarely in the spotlight. Did business grow as a result of its contest? I can't confirm this, but many buzzed about the company and went to visit its web site. That's one way to compel people to check out your site. Once they land, the company needed to do what it could to tell visitors what it does and how its services benefit the prospect. Another colleague who held a contest on Twitter said he tripled his followership.

Twitter is about more than just numbers—you want high quality followers. What good is it to have followers who spam or do nothing but promote themselves? Need more ways to use Twitter for business? Here are 62 ways you can use Twitter.

How you use Twitter does matter. People tend not to follow those who do nothing but link (to their own content or other people's content), post quotes, retweet (RT) everyone (they don't have an original thought of their own) or do the hard sell. The key is to tweet a variety of types. Reply to people, retweet content you believe is worth sharing, link to people's content (goodwill goes a long way) and share your original thoughts or activities you're doing so people know what you do.

Twitter is a funny place with many unwritten rules. You'd think following many people would be a compliment. It isn't when your numbers are lopsided as in you're following 1000 people and only 100 people follow you. Experienced Twitter users see people doing that as spammers. You might like reading Twitter for Business FAQ.

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