The following is part 1 of a series on how Small Businesses can use Twitter to increase their market reach.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a platform for “micro-blogging", which are very short messages (called "tweets" in Twitter vernacular) of 140 characters or less. only receive tweets from people you choose to follow.

How can Twitter Help My Small Business?

Twitter can provide a means of helping businesses stay connected to their customers and other businesses. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. Learn about great offers your are offering.

Twitter is also a great feedback mechanism from your customers. Your customers can use Twitter to tell you that they have had a great (or disappointing) experience with your product or service. Customers can also provide feedback on how to improve products or services, so the instant feedback is of high value to small businesses competing with larger businesses.

Some Twitter Terms Defined

• Tweet – A “tweet” is a post to Twitter (also known as a status updates). A "tweet" can be used as a noun, such as “That tweet you sent about the puppy was hilarious!”, or a verb, “Tweeting is fun”.
• Followers, Following, and Friends - You can create your own “Twittersphere” by choosing to follow certain people. You can search for people and follow them using the “Follow” button, or you can navigate directly to that user's Twitter homepage by typing http://twitter.com/username (where ‘username’ is the person’s username. Duh.). Mine is http://twitter.com/WebsitesWork.
• @username - To reply to or reference another Twitter user, put the @ symbol in front of their username.
  For example, my Twitter username is "WebsitesWork". If you wanted to send me a tweet, type out your tweet (remember only 140 characters plus the username), and put "@WebsitesWork" somewhere in your tweet. That way I can see who has referenced my name and reply if to yours if needed.
• #hashmarks - The all important hashmark or hashtag. Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata “tags” to your tweets. Topic trending is shown on several websites, including hashtags.org in addition to the Twitter homepage. So when you post something as a small business, ensure you do some research on what hashtags may relate to your business. Use several if needed.
• RT or "retweet" - To “retweet” means to post someone else's tweet and crediting them with it. The convention for retweeting is to put "RT @username" in front of the tweet you are retweeting. It's polite to leave the original tweet as unedited as possible, though it's acceptable to edit the tweet for length or clarity.
  RTs are very powerful in propogating your tweets throughout the Twittershpere.

Use for Small Business

Small businesses can use Twitter in a variety of ways to increase market reach, gain visibility, gain credibility and reach out to your customer base. Below are some ideas on how to use Twitter:

• Answer common customer questions
• Share insight and opinion related to your specialty
• Tweet links showing your company featured on other media
• Keep your business visible to your customers by tweeting often
• Post high-quality content that is relevant to your customers needs
• Promote upcoming events
• Tweet about company culture and values
• Offer discounts, coupons or special offers to customers who find you via social media
• Tweet about new blog posts you have done related to your business
• Direct traffic to your website
• Hold contests
• Highlight employees
• Tweet when you do something noteworthy such as social outreach and volunteering
• Use relationship building instead of cold calls and cheesy flyer
• Listen to what your customers are saying
• Tips to get more Followers
• Publish your Twitter username on all direct mailings, email, newsletters, on your website – anywhere you can think of
• Follow big-name social media VIPs such as @ChrisBrogan, @garyvee and @timoreilly. You'll be amazed at how many followers you'll get just for following some of the big-name social media VIPs
• Use Twellow or Listorious to find people with common interests

I'll be posting more information on how small business can utilize Twitter to market their small business in the near future, so be sure and follow me on Twitter @WebsitesWork.