by Margie Clayman.

When Twitter first came out, one of the first things people were saying about it was that it was going to change how people did business. It was going to personalize client-customer relationships. It was going to humanize brands. Remember all that stuff?

Here’s the funny thing about Twitter and how it has evolved. A lot of the people who joined up so that they could do business somehow forgot along the way that they were using Twitter for business. They started to move over into the land of “How many followers can I get” and “What’s my Klout score?” Unless you are social media consultant (and even then you’re on shaky ground), these numbers do not necessarily prove that you are great at your actual paying job. If you are a plumber, people aren’t gonna really care that your company has 5,000 followers. They want to know if you can get their sinks to stop making that drip sound.

Read the rest of this article from Business 2 Community.

by Jeff Haden.

I like statistics as much as the next guy (which means not very much) but I don’t need statistics to tell me Twitter is a popular small business tool: My plumber has a Twitter account.

(No, I haven’t checked out his tweets. I found out because his Twitter handle is on his business card… and his invoices, and his envelopes, and the side of his truck.)

Feel like you’re getting left behind? No problem. Here’s a simple guide to getting started with Twitter for business purposes:

Read the rest of this article from Bnet.

by Neil Brown.

Though Twitter doesn’t get as much recognition as Facebook, it is still a powerful social networking site that has many benefits for business use. It’s a great place to connect with peers and thought leaders in your particular industry who can be a valuable resource to you. And, of course, it’s a great place to connect with customers and prospects as well.

Let’s take a look at eight best practices for using Twitter for business:

Read the rest of this article from Brown Advertising.

by Atlanta SEO Group.

If you ask a hundred folks whether you must use twitter marketing for you organization, you’re most likely to get split answers. Twitter is without doubt rather popular, and it can give income and a new degree of client interaction for your company. There are quite a few features and weaknesses to working with Twitter for your smallish organization, lets consider a search at them when in comparison to SMS text message promoting.

Twitter is element of a bigger group of social media web two. sites. Also in this realm are Facebook and LinkedIn which we use but as you will obtain, it is hard to target your attention on one particular and obtain maximum advantage. Twitter is free of charge and you almost certainly already have shoppers and prospective buyers applying it.

Read the rest of this article from Atlanta SEO Group.

from How to do Something.

Twitter, a microblogging website that allows members to post 140-character messages called Tweets, was released in 2006. As of September 2010, the site had 175 million registered members with 95 million tweets written each day, according to Twitter. Businesses have taken to twitter because it provides easy access to potential and existing customers at no cost. Many business twitters exist as a form of advertising, public relations or both.

Read the rest of this article from How to do Something.

from Social.Motive.

I’m a self-proclaimed MSN nut. It’s the first website I look at every morning, and it’s likely one of the last ones I see at night. Throw in my multiple visits throughout the day and you have some idea of how much I need it. The content is refreshed every few hours and it just has a way of  being able to read my mind, of knowing what I care about.

So when I saw an article entitled Seven Things Women Do On Facebook That Guys Hate I was more than a little intrigued. That got me thinking. I get questions all the time from people who want to know the difference between this network or that. They always want me to choose sides and I never can. I tell them that both networks are great for different things and very different audiences.

Read the rest of this article from Social-Motive.

by Greg Voakes.

Silicon Valley superstar Marc Benioff recently stopped in Boston and pushed the idea of the social enterprise. The Salesforce CEO delivered a memorable keynote address at his 2011 Cloudforce event to drive home the message that businesses are increasingly becoming social. Marketing used to be a one-way street. Companies would push their advertising message to the masses and hope it stuck. Very recently social networking websites have opened the door for consumers to respond to the marketing messages with their own voice.

Twitter is one of the channels where consumers have become particularly vocal about their loved (or hated) brands and businesses. Many old school marketers and companies think it’s a cool medium but will have no effect on their bottom line. Wrong. The research shows that social media channels like Twitter can have a heavy impact on a business’ performance. We’ve established that your customers are on Twitter and what they say will affect your business; so how does a company get started on Twitter?

by Brad Hess.

Understanding the purpose of twitter and using it appropriately has been a source of confusion for many business professionals. I have run into many professionals who don’t believe they have any use for such a platform and I’ve also met others who know they need to use twitter but don’t understand how to do so appropriately. Using twitter is important in personal branding because, unlike blog marketing in which the reader must spend a few minutes to sift through your information, it only takes a few seconds for your reader to decide whether or not they have interest in your information and continue from that point.

It is also a great platform to push out highly valuable and viral information to a large amount of people in a short amount of time. With a basic understanding of the usefulness of twitter there are two important concepts to understand before commencing on your micro-blogging journey: The type of followers you need and the type of information you should tweet.

Read the rest of this article from Twitter Marketing Guidelines.

by Leon Widrich.

Do you want to build a loyal and engaged Twitter following (a tribe if you will)? If so, this article is for you. It will show you how to find people and what to do to engage them.

Find the right people—build the right community.

This is a tricky headline. As if there’s something like the “right” community waiting for you out there. Yet focusing firmly on the people you want to interact with will pay off greatly. Following those who show a real connection to your niche is key to getting the return out of your Twitter conversations.

A fundamental question when creating your own tribe is to ask yourself, “Whom can I help on Twitter?”

That’s right, instead of saying “Who could help me?” or “What will I achieve?”, Twitter is a place to extend your reach by helping others. Stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about other people first. This is the most important lesson I ever learned.

Read the rest of this article from Social Media Examiner.

by Gabrielle Conde.

I’ve probably approached Twitter marketing in fifty different ways.

And in an attempt to find the best way to go forward with my own marketing efforts on Twitter, I recently realized that I’d collected a fairly valuable list of killer resources along the way.

Would you like to know how to start marketing your business on Twitter?

How about more advanced approaches to getting more retweets, more followers, and more prospects for your business?

If there are secrets and special formulas that can magically unlock the power of social media out there, I don’t know them.

What I do know, is exactly what the experts are doing — day in and day out.

And now, you will too …

Read the rest of this article from Copy Blogger.