Have you taken a serious look at Twitter to help market your home based business? If you think this is a site only for teenage girls, then you're missing out on something really big. There are millions of people checking their “tweets” every day—from celebrities like Oprah or Obama, to ordinary folks like you and me. Also, many entrepreneurs are making bundles of money from this new form of social-media marketing. Wouldn't you like to cash in on some of that windfall as well?



I currently send about 12 tweets a day to my 3500+ followers. Some people have 60,000 or 70,000 followers or more. I believe the record is over 1,000,000. My target is to have 50,000 followers in the next few months. To those unfamiliar with Twitter, this means that when you write a short message and click on your mouse, all of your followers receive that message. You can even schedule your "tweets" to publish sometime later. For example, I spend a few minutes each morning scheduling my tweets for the entire day. I may be having lunch with my wife later in the day, or playing tennis or sailing when my chosen message hits the Tweeter airwaves. But there is one word of caution. You must be careful about what you send. If you try blatant spam-type “sell” messages, most of your followers will turn you off and stop following you.

What would you think of a man who meets a woman at a social event and immediately asks if she will marry him? Is that a smart move? Of course not. But some people think nothing of sending out a blatant promotion for their business or products in their first tweet message. This doesn't work. As Zig Ziglar says, "Sell a little, first." Give your prospect time to get to know you. Romance them a bit and then pop the question. Your chances for success will be much higher.

Here are a few other pointers that I've learned about using Twitter to market a business:

•Twitter users are information junkies – this means that to keep their attention, you must supply them with quality information. Share your specialized kowledge about any subject. Or send out daily inspirational quotes--we can all benefit from these.

•It's okay to include links to your business, but not too often. Followers are easily turned off by what they perceive as spammers. Unless you're quoting something valuable from your site, resist the urge to tweet about your website over and over. This is a fast way to lose followers. Remember the Golden Rule as applied to marketing: if a particular marketing method turns you off, don't expect others to buy it.

•When people "unfollow" you, don't take it personally. Some come back to follow you again. You only want people who are interested in what you have to offer.

•Follow other users. Search for their names or by keywords ("home business" or "work from home,") then follow the users that interest you. If you follow them, they will probably follow you back – this increases your follower numbers.

•Twitter is also a good way to check what others think about your business. Create saved searches of your business name or products and track what others are tweeting about your site. Remember to thank them for tweeting about your business (or "retweet" in Twitter parlance)

•Tools such as Tweetdeck, Huitter, and Social Oomph help simplify your Twitter operations. Go to any of these sites for further explanation of how they work.

Bottom line, the Internet today offers a whole new marketing world out there, folks. Social-media marketing--using sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc--is changing the way people interact and connect. Remember, people prefer to do business with folks that they know, like, and trust. Twitter is a terrific place to develop new relationships. Oh yes, I almost forgot to add: This type marketing is FREE.