Twitter Tips from SmallBizTrends.com

Small Business Trends (www.smallbiztrends.com) asked its readers for their best Twitter Tips. The feedback must have been overwhelming, because the list ended up with a whopping 137 recommendations! If you don’t have time to read all of “137 Small Business Twitter Tips” 29 pages, no worries…read my Top Ten List!
Rachel, Baying Hound
Web: www.bayinghound.com
Twitter: @bayinghound
“Use linked in contacts or your business card collection to look up and follow people in your field: vendors, peers, and, importantly, competitors. Then, browse through who they are tweeting with and add those people. Join the conversations and tweet questions of your own.”
Heather Smith, MYOB Trainer
Twitter: @myobtrainer
“Alternate between something relevant to your business and something irrelevant. I work in the accounting world, so I tweet comments on the budget, tax season, an opportunity that clients may like etc. I then will tweet about something positive, upbeat, but irrelevant to my business…my passion fruits have come into season and they are yummy…”Joseph Manna, Infusionsoft
Web: www.infusionsoft.com
Twitter: @JoeManna
“Commit. Don’t just Tweet and neglect it, focus and commit yourself to at least a half-hour a day to discovering and Tweeting.”
Yiana, DIY SiteExpressWeb: www.diysiteexpress.com
“Always keep up with your business branding! This means creating a custom Twitter background that shows your brand. You can get tips and a free template in a recent blog article that I wrote “Brand Recognition: Creating a Custom Twitter Background” http://tiny.cc/NGWJA”
Paul Rosenfeld, Fanminder
Web: http://fanminder.com/
Twitter: @fanminder
“My favorite tip is how to use Twitter to find new customers. I first use Google and type “Twitter for ______” and fill in the blank with a vertical that might use Twitter - for example, restaurants. I typically get a few articles that are round-up articles of all restaurants in a given city using Twitter. Then I follow these restaurants and engage in conversations with them - we’ve gotten one customer so far this way and I expect we can generate many or even most of our new customers in the next six months this way.”

Jeannette McCreight
Twitter: @mccr8
“Don’t be all about business; share the human side of your company.”
Katasha Butler, K Sherrie and Company
Web: www.ksherrieco.com
Twitter: @ksherrieco
“Please do not use Twitter for one long commercial about your company. We don’t want to always hear about you, you, you: what you did, what your company is doing, and what your company wants to do. Be interactive, ask questions and be the mensch. Otherwise—you’re unfollowed!”
Tim Milburn
Web: http://studentlinc.typepad.com/
Twitter: @timage
“A quality “T.W.E.E.T. is: Timely, Worth-reading, Educational, Entertaining, and Tweople-connecting.”
Lisa Sonora Beam, CreativeEntrepreneur
Web: www.thecreativeentrepreneur.biz
Twitter: @LisaSonoraBeam
“Be sure to RT others first and often. What goes around...”
Lisa Picarille
Web: www.lisapicarille.com
Twitter: @lisap
“I recommend checking twitter first thing in the morning so you can respond to any questions or join in conversations. Then I typically wait about two hours and then limit my time to only 10 minutes. I do searches on keywords I care about and have some alerts already set up. I also look at my @ replies. I don’t usually look again until lunch time. And again, I limit my time to 10 minutes. I follow that about every two hours.”

Now go follow these Twitterific people! I’m off to do so as well.

Link to “137 Small Business Twitter Tips” from Small Business Trends:
http://smallbiztrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/smbiz-twitter-tips-2.pdf