by Maxwell Payne

Created on: April 21, 2009   Last Updated: April 09, 2012

Twitter can be a great promotional tool for your blogs, websites, business, or brand.  Twitter allows you to reach a large number of people with small messages known as Tweets. These tweets can be a great benefit for your site or brand because it can keep followers up to date on the latest.

Some of the benefits of setting up a free Twitter account for your blog, website, or business include:

• Reaching a targeted audience

As you begin slowly adding people to follow' on Twitter, you'll notice you can select them based on their interests and followers. You can choose to follow people that you think will be interested in what you are doing.

Your hope is that they will follow you back and thus allow them to see your updates and posts on Twitter. As your brand grows on Twitter, people will follow your Twitter account because they are interested in what you are doing or selling. Many people may simply follow you because they already like or follow your work elsewhere.

• Deliver updates in quick messages

Twitter messages are 140 characters or less, so you don't need to say much to get your point across. You can include links to your blog, online store, or website through Twitter. You can also post updates relevant to your venture. For example if you are launching a new site or new product soon, you can deliver updates to Twitter to your followers.

• Updates across your entire online presence

Numerous free applications exist to allow you to post a new message in Twitter and then have it appear on your blogs and websites. Users of Facebook can have their status update with their latest tweet. You can get free applications to embed on your blog or website that will show your latest Twitter activity.

• Interact with existing and potential customers, fans, clients

As you browse your Twitter home page you can find excellent opportunities to communicate with existing and potential followers. As you browse these Tweets, look for ones that discuss a topic relevant to what your blog, business, or craft involves.

You could offer advice, offer your services, or simply start a dialog with them. You can grow your brand by responding to Tweets (the short messages) that you can reply to using your knowledge and your brand.

Of course when using Twitter to promote your blog, services, brand, or business you'll want to consider carefully what you post in your Tweets. Personal information or day to day happenings in your life might be something you'll want to include or exclude depending on what you are promoting.

Also a lot of the success promoting on Twitter comes from having regular contact with your followers and those that you are following. Take the time to reply to @replies and direct messages, retweet tweets that interest you or your business venture, and participate in the Twitter community regularly so that you aren't just always posting links and promoting yourself.

Learn more about this author, Maxwell Payne.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.