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Twitter: Helping Businesses, a Tweet at a Time

Posted on Jan. 13, 2012  by Philip Betz - Internet Marketing Technician

It's no secret that Twitter's skyrocketing popularity makes the event marketing platform ripe for use by companies all over the globe. But when it comes to the specific benefits that it can provide to the small or medium-sized business owner, there is often a measure of uncertainty. After all, just how much information can someone really cram into Twitter's 140 character-a-message limit? It has been used to great effect by national chains and corporations, but how much of an effect can the tool have on a small, local business?

The short answer is that plenty of information can make its way to customers on Twitter, and that information can significantly affect purchasing decisions if distributed properly. Small businesses throughout the nation have been able to use Twitter in a wide variety of creative and unconventional ways to generate traffic, drive sales and build awareness of their brand.

The more detailed answer? Well, depending on the high-level strategy you have for your specific business, you can use Twitter to get your name out, advertise special deals, help customers and much more, greatly affecting how your business is perceived by the public and getting people in the door or on the phone. Regardless of the tactics you use on the platform, however, it's important to know a few of the many benefits it can bring to your brand:

National Reach: When you join Twitter you're joining a community where you can engage with consumers on a local and a national level. Your tweets will appear on search results in a wide area, bringing awareness of your business to customers throughout the country if that factors into your strategy.

Direct Interaction: Short of an in-person or a phone conversation with your customers, there are few better ways to directly interact with them than through Twitter. Customers can send messages directly to your account, and you can reply to them at a moment's notice. You can even talk to multiple people with at once, bringing engagement with your customers to a whole new level. Think of it as a conversation with your customers that you can join any time of the day, from nearly any location.

Easy Link Building: In addition to directing users to your other presences on the web, placing links in your Twitter messages (or "tweets") is a great way to build credibility for your brand on Google, Yahoo and Bing. This has the effect of making your business easier to find—not just on Twitter but on all the major search engines. This practice of link building is an important piece of the Search Engine Optimization puzzle, and is actually quite simple to do on Twitter—all you have to do is cut and paste it to your message!