by L.E. Duncan

Created on: July 02, 2009

Social networking, specifically Twitter, can be an amazing tool for business owners. Twitter enables you to reach thousands of potential customers with a short 140 character blurb and a click of the mouse.

If you are planning to use Twitter to increase your business exposure, there are several strategies that you should take into consideration. Who you are marketing to, how often you should advertise, and what value are you adding to your customer's lives.

Who Are You Marketing To?

Twitter allows you to be very specific in whom you are advertising to as well. The real magic with Twitter is everyone you are advertising to have asked you to! They looked at your profile and determined that you had something they wanted or something in common with them, and then they chose to follow you. They expect you to communicate with them about yourself, your business and your products.

Even though these volunteer followers have added you to their list does not mean that they want to be swamped with tweets from you. Who you tweet is important, and what you tweet is key, but how much you tweet can make you or break you.

How Often Should You Advertise?

How often you should tweet and how often you should tweet advertising or business related ideas is quite subjective. If you bombard your followers with tweets about your business or advertising or what you're eating for breakfast, soon they won't be your followers anymore. On the other hand, if do not tweet, there is no interaction, no advertising, no business on your end.

Depending on how you are going to tweet your business is critical to your success. If you are tweeting obvious affiliate advertising such as "Get Paid to Take Online Surveys," then it had better be far and few or you will start loosing followers fast. If you make it interesting or engaging, you will probably do better. It is all about adding value to the community.

What Value are You Adding?

What are you contributing to the Twitter community? Are you sending out 30 tweets per hour on 10 different affiliate advertisements? If so, you won't last long. If you are truly contributing to conversation, adding value to the group and leading that group to your product, then you will do much better.

Like any marketing, the customer needs to know that what you are providing, your product, adds value to their life in some way. Whether a better way to do something or a product that can make their life easier, it is critical to your success that your customer or market knows you have it.

So add value to Twitter. You will see motivational quotes, links to interesting articles and engaging conversations happening. Yes, they will be happening between all the spam that is either trying to get rich or telling you about everything they are doing.

Twitter is an amazing marketing tool if done correctly. The people using Twitter are intelligent too and just like any other advertising, there needs to be some white space in between your tweets. Give your followers room to breathe, room to absorb your product, time to respond. Don't just throw advertising out there, contribute to the community. Who knows, you might get something back.

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