Five Ways Twitter Can Help Your Business

from PC Magazine

Everyone knows Twitter is the place to be; all the cool SMBs are tweeting--i.e, running a "microblog" with posts of 140 [corrected: error was editor's, not Matt's!] characters or fewer--these days. But honestly, it's not just about being cool: Twitter actually serves a purpose. Here are five ways your business can benefit from Twitter.

1. Build networks. In business, it's all about who you know and who knows you. And Twitter is yet another place to win friends and influence people. The microblogging site is a good tool to use for online networking: Search for and follow others in your field in order to build rapport over time. Many of them will follow you in turn, and so it builds.

2. Promote your online assets. Send out short (well, it is Twitter) one-liners that tease fellow Twits to follow a link to a blog post, article download, or any custom landing page designed for your site--perhaps one that's promoting a sale. Something like: "Read my post on why BlackBerries beat iPhones at http://link..." Toss in a few keywords, and you'll drive traffic to your site.

3. Promote your events. Likewise, promote your company's physical-world events on Twitter: say an in-store sales, or maybe a lecture series or mixer. For example, tweet to the world that you're going to speak at the NYC Tech Meetup on Thursday. Who knows what'll happen?

4. Get free exposure. Nothing establishes your credibility like an article about your business. First score some PR ink, and then then tweet links to the article. Remember, always make your tweets helpful in some way, so they don't seem completely self-serving.

5. Gather intelligence. Would you like a crystal ball that can tell you what customers want, and what competitors are doing right this very second? Once you learn how to get what you want out of Twitter Search, you'll have exactly that: You'll know what your competitors are doing the second they announce it., and you'll be able to reach out to customers and show them how responsive you can be. Twitter Search can handle some pretty complex searches, and you can subscribe to each one as an RSS feed--so you'll be instantly notified when someone tweets about a topic you hold near and dear to your heart.

--Post by Matt Sarrel, Executive Director of Sarrel Group, an editorial services, product test lab, and information technology consulting company. He is also a Contributing Editor for PCMag, as well as Tech/Games Editor and Technical Director for YRB Magazine. And yes, he tweets.