Twitter and Small Business Marketing
Now that you have a Twitter account and have made a Tweet, let’s start to reshape your Twitter presence to make it an effective marketing tool for you and your business. In the next several posts, I will look at the various structural pieces of Twitter and give you tips on how each of these can be changed to create an effective small business marketing tool.
The Goal
You are on Twitter with over 20 million people. This number is doubling almost every six months. At this point in time, Facebook has over 200 million participants. Already Twitter has more businesses using its site than Facebook has with its 200 million participants. Clearly businesses are recognizing Twitter as a marketing tool. Bottom line, you have plenty of competition for attention on Twitter.
With this type of competition, you need ways that make your Twitter presence (think of your Twitter account as another website for your business) interesting and attractive. People will be looking at your Twitter website 24/7. How can you make these Twitter structural elements interesting and attractive to get people to follow you?
Your Picture
I already suggested using a head shot picture of you on Twitter. People buy from people not from a logo. Studies have shown that a picture on Twitter out performs a logo or a company name in getting more followers. 
The tone of Twitter is causal. This is not the place for a slick corporate marketing document. What type of picture would people expect from someone in your profession? You picture needs to be a balance between professionalism and casualness. Make sure people can see your face on the picture. People relate better to faces than bodies. You will have an opportunity when you customize your Twitter background to have a larger picture of yourself.
To be continued, your comments are welcomed…
Al Hanzal
