You should have a Twitter account for your business. There are so many places online and so many ways to connect with potential buyers or even current customers. As a business, it is not always about selling, but also connecting with people interested in what you do. Hopefully, you are a business owner that is passionate about your product or service.
Why You Should Have A Twitter Account For Your Business
Just to give you a little background on where I live – I live in Centralia, Illinois, which is in southern Illinois, barely within the St. Louis metro east. Centralia is a very small place. It is a city that has a annual Balloon fest that attracts a lot of people from over the region, and a large yearly Halloween parade, much larger than some of the city parades I have seen growing up.
I have the privilege to talk to a lot of small business owners. Centralia is a place where people are still a bit hesitant about the Internet, but those in business are contemplating if they need a website. The problem is, a lot of them do not have that much money to fork out for a shiny website made by a big kahuna web design company. I offer my services. I often talk to them about Twitter as I believe any business should plug into the social network.
This is helpful on several levels. If you use Twitter to connect with others, and they find you trustworthy, you build a reputation that is easily searchable. You help your business virtually get on the map, and furthermore, you get your town/city on the map. A lot of smaller cities do have a website, and for places like Centralia, it is great to see business coming in from anywhere. The brilliant part about Twitter is – IT IS FREE! 😀
There are many tools to find people in your general area or even in your niche. You do not necessarily have to have an e-commerce site, but if you have products you like to feature that are unique to your business versus others in your niche, Twitter would be one of the great places to share that information. You never know, you might either make a good transaction over the phone, or actually set up an e-commerce site.
Another thing is that you can use Twitter to provide Live Support too. There are several places already that do, like Best Buy’s Twelp Force. Even though they are a larger business, small business can use that as an example to help others.
Going further, Twitter is great for freelancers. Freelancers are small business owners in their own right too. Using Twitter allows them to connect with others in their niche. The number of projects I have paired up with other freelancers who needed my skills are more than I can count, and a lot of them came from connecting with them on Twitter.
There are more reasons, but I thought I would allow some room for conversation. If you are a small business owner, what are your reasons? How have you used Twitter so far for your business?
Absolutely spot on for having a Twitter account for your business. Those not using these social media sites are missing out on a lot of potential customers.
I thought twitter is useless nowadays, but you gave me different perspective to it…nice post
Twitter is a good tool if you are good at pithy messages. It does seem to be gaining numbers while Facebook is declining.
I have found Twitter to be incredibly useful in my search for a better business model that grows and advances in the right ways. I find that Twitter followers can be very supportive.
i do not know why, but Twitter is quite an unsuccessful option for me in promoting my blog. i prefer to use any other social media service than twitter.
Twitter account helps in getting exposure to our blog. So we should always create a twitter account to our blog. Thanks for sharing this post.
Very useful article, i’ll creat an account right now 🙂
People can easily discover you and your product if you make use of hash tags , this is what i like in twitter ..Twitter is a must use website for marketing your business and products free of cost . thanks for sharing this great information
best wishes,
pramod
Great Post Nile ! You are absolutely right, A twitter account is must needed for any small or large business. It increases visibility of any business in social eyes.
Hi Nile,
Thanks for the post, I have to say twitter works really well for me, but you must use is wisely.
So many companies’ make the mistake of not interacting with their followers.
Think of twitter as a big party and getting to know people
. Ask questions, re-tweet join in the conversation. You don’t want to be the party bore and end up with no one wanting to talk to you.
Take it slow and engage with other people, be interesting and give something back.
Thanks for the post, I have to say twitter works really well for me, but you must use is wisely.
So many companies’ make the mistake of not interacting with their followers.
Think of twitter as a big party and getting to know people
. Ask questions, re-tweet join in the conversation. You don’t want to be the party bore and end up with no one wanting to talk to you.
Take it slow and engage with other people, be interesting and give something back.
Twitter has helped me to increase my blog traffic. I think twitter is a good way to let others know about your business.
wow nile, great article !makes me think over and over again i would have been on an other side of my business if i have started with a twitter account earlier. but now i have one i just made one after visiting here ! a very good post indeed !
Namaste Nile,
How are you? I hope you are fine..
There is no doubt that Twitter is must for all online business owners.
Services like HootSuite and TweetDeck let you schedule your updates in advance, which can do miracles for the online business owner who doesn’t think he has enough time to frequently update his social media accounts.
Thanks,
Best regards
-Amrik Virdi.
I love Twitter for networking with people all round the world, connecting with people’s content, potential customers and a heap of fun too…love looking at trending things…it is a #guiltypleasure these days for me 😉
in the era where the social media is creeping to obtain new heights daily, it is always mandatory to have an online presence in the various social networking sites. Twitter is a lead in the social marketing. It will enhance your number of readers.
This is absolute necessity nowadays. Actually I know that most businesses already have Twitter accounts, but I doubt that majority of those accounts are well managed.
Agreed with you on live support thing. I’ve see more webhosting company such as Dreamhost and WPEngine that use Twitter to receive any complaint from customers. Most importantly, they respond very fast to almost tweet.
it’s very important to have a twitter account for your business without it you’re missing a great chunk of traffic from a 10 PR site 😉
thanks for sharing
Nile, You brought out some very valid points for having a Twitter account. When I first got an account, I was totally unfamiliar with it all. It felt so fast paced….like is anyone even seeing your tweets. I soon began to learn there was more to Twitter than just tweeting….like interacting and getting to know different people. One marketer friend of mine even taught how to choose wisely who you should contact and what you might say. All good stuff. Thanks for the great share!
Lynn
Nice post Nile…:-) With Twitter u can find people who have similar interests,which can help u target potential customers.
HI Nile! I do have a Twitter account but I really have not used this a whole lot I guess I will have to start interacting with people there and see what happens HUH? Thanks for the great tips Chery 🙂
Funny Nile I just added my blog with Twitter – I was using myself for it and just added the blog name. It will be slow starting but thought good to register the name and slowly switch over. I found with my own name and face to get more engagements and followers. Twitter for my other online businesses has been the best social network.
u have said it right NILE!
a time ago i pay no attention to twitter and it feels bore to me.
but when i start my own blog then i realize how important this for my blog fame.
social media networking sites are providing a great help for all the businessmen and others who want proper promotion of their products among the intended users. Thus, twitter being a lead among those is surely going to help the business sprout.
This is a no brainer. You can even automate it with TweetDeck as well.
Interesting article, thanks for putting together!
So Nile,
What have you for us, another great post, as usual, with some ideas that never occured to me. Twitter is getting a “second” look as using it for business, not just connecting. So thank you for the info!
Nile, You made some great points on the importance of having a Twitter account for your online business. I use Twitter every day and have made some wonderful connections from being on it. Thanks for pointing out some other ways to maximize Twitter that I didn’t know about.
Hi Nile,
Thanks for sharing this awesome post ! 🙂 I have been using twitter account for many years, mostly to tweet and retweet blog post. What I am lacking of is connecting with people. I realised that I have also lost quite a number of friends when at one time my twitter account was hacked and friends on my contact lists received some kind of weird messages in their inbox. Just because I did not build relationship with them, obviously they do not know me well and will definitely unfriend me. However, I have some good friends who happen to be my facebook friends told me about the messages the received from me on twitter. so, from there I started to change password regularly and the number is starting to grow healthily now BUT I want to learn to make connection on twitter which I havent done so.
Thank you for the tip, Nile 🙂
Cheers
Pearly 🙂
great article thanks for sharing. definitely your article is wonderful. twitter is second largest social networking site over the net.
hi this is a awesome post. i too have a twitter account but i haven’t use that in this manner. thank you.
Hey Nile,
Good article. Twitter is most important tool for business after Facebook. One problem I am facing is that someone has already taken twitter username same as my domain. The account has been inactive for more than 3 years. Should I use another username or is there a way to claim that name ?
I have to admit I have a twitter account but I have never really used it, this article has opened my eyes to how valuable twitter can be.
It’s really so interesting article. I really much like your this article. Great job.
Twitter account is must for every business……….
Yes,you are right it is must as we all know the professionals and perfections we will be finding there only and it gives us a chance of connecting with them and learn a lot from them.
Hi Nile – Your advice is spot on for all business owners – today you need a social media presence. What I like about this post is how you don’t let your clients off the hook – you push them forward into social media which is so necessary because most are skeptical and uncomfortable. We do the same with people although it might not be Twitter to start with – I give them the range of choices and see where they seem to gravitate then we work on that channel until they’re comfortable and add the next. For some Facebook is more of a natural because they’re already on it. I had one the other day where the answer was Pinterest because he loved taking photographs and posting them. I just realized though from your post that he’d also be a natural for Twitter and Instagram – Thanks for the knock on the side of the head (as usual) Marty
Twitter for live support is excellent. We stopped proving quotes over Twitter for one business over 3 years ago. Customer expectations were unrealistic -late night tweets for prices and then abuse for not responding to their 1am requests! We tried to manage their expectations better but then decided to stop quoting via Twitter.
Hi Nile,
living in a small place is something I can relate to and people’s reluctance in regards to the online world it seems to be slow to change here in a small town in New Zealand. Some businesses have a twitter account and they may even have a Facebook page.
I never heard of Twelpforce and I appreciate being introduced to it.
Cheers,
Yorinda
I’ve been trying many strategies to grow my business with twitter with no success. Maybe i need just a little more patience. Really great article. continue pushing on content. 😉
Hi Nile,
Thanks this site admin ” Nile ” for post. Really amazing post for business life. Twitter is best support for business. Twitter account is must for every business man.
Hi Nile,
Twitter can be an excellent tool for business if used properly. It is a social platform and it is fast and furious! Relationships have to be developed just like Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube or Instagram (major platforms). When I started using Twitter, I didn’t understand how it worked. I decided to give it another try and with engagement, I’ve made some wonderful connections through Twitter, which I would not have thought possible awhile ago.
Even though we as bloggers or marketers are familiar with social media, it feels that everyone else is too, which is not the case. Social media is still in its infancy and there are many businesses that are still not connected. It’s coming to a point that every business must become involved with social media using at least one social platform. Otherwise they will not be able to compete with those that are. Twitter is only one possibility of many, but it can be very effective. Thanks!
Raena Lynn
Personally the main reason why i prefer twitter for my online business is because of updates, otherwise sometimes i find it not useful at all since most of active twitter users are just a bunch of online businessmen tweeting and spamming all over.
For quite a while I thought that Twitter was just a waste of time and did not really do anything for business. But by and by I have come round to the idea of accepting Twitter as a great marketing tool which would allow one to keep in touch with the influencers.
We too have a twitter account now and hope to be able to connect with potential customers and build some long term relationships.
Social Media is a very platform for business. I think twitter and facebook are very important platforms for business . in your article you made some great points on the importance of having a Twitter account for your online business
WoW! It’s a great post on Why You Should Have A Twitter Account For Your Business! Personally I got important points out of it. Yes, i strongly do agree with this issue that every business should have twitter account. Thanks.
I love the social connection that comes with all social media and Twitter is one of my favorites. Glad you’re spreading the word as many business owners are still on the fence when it comes to all forms of social media.
You are so right, social media is growing every day and not having a twitter account will give your competition a big advantage.
So true! few days back i started using twitter as source of traffic! gotta concentrate further!
Twitter is great for connecting with other bloggers but I hope they can tighten their security. A few of my friends have had their twitter accounts hacked. Of all the social networking companies, they seem to get hacked the most.
Hi Nile,
Couldn’t agree more with your point about social media and making connections. Speaking of which, it was so nice to see your post on the BizSugar community. Nice to make your acquaintance.
Thanks Heather! Someone submitted it and I haven’t got a chance to put back up my share button..lol
These days online marketing is very important and social networking like twitter is very beneficial to approach the potential customers.
Thanks for sharing your views and realize the importance of twitter for business. Amazing blog!
Keep suggesting like this. I am bookmarking this blog.
Using Twitter is very important for gaining exposure for your website. One important thing is to tweet other people’s tweet more than posting your on tweets. They will in turn likely do the same for you, which vastly increases the number of people your message can reach.
Nile,
well, as usual, this post is amazingly important to read and learn from it.
I heard so many great things about twitter and now reading your post confirmed all of them… using twitter properly can be very useful in your business.
For my experience, I noticed that many Twitter followers can be very supportive and it is nice to be part of their group.
Thanks so much.
nickc
its is helping to get more traffic.. you cant get as more traffic as you get with help of social networking sites..
Not a Twitter user but for some time I want to use my media networks to promote business. I read about evantajele and disadvantages of this strategy and so we reached the site. Thanks for posting!
Having a business twitter account will surely provide benefit to the business person. It wa nice discussion over twitter marketing. I am happy to come across.
Twitter account helps in getting exposure to our blog. So we should always create a twitter account to our blog. Thanks for sharing this post.
Nile, You made some great points on the importance of having a Twitter account for your online business. I use Twitter every day and have made some wonderful connections from being on it. Thanks for pointing out some other ways to maximize Twitter that I didn’t know about.