Using Twitter To Promote Your Small Business

The article includes case studies of small businesses that have used Twitter effectively and advice on how to succeed using the micro-blogging site. Sample recommendations: listen first, then tweet, and don't be boring.

"Many businesses are struggling to make sense of Twitter, but even if it strikes you as an enigma or hype, consider this: many of your customers are already there.

Twitter has more than 100 million users and is becoming a free forum for business. Companies are using Twitter to engage in highly personalized interactions — sometimes right to the phones in our pockets. Twitter recently introduced a program of “promoted tweets” that will display ads in some search results, although this program remains limited to a select group of Twitter partners, including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull and Sony Pictures. Eventually, Twitter plans to offer advertising more broadly, but until then small businesses can continue to make productive use of the service."