The early stage of marketing for any small business is always challenging, it’s not easy, and it can turn out to be a series of trial and error that’s tricky and time-consuming. That is why we see many businesses reinforcing an online marketing strategy with the use of the micro-blogging platform of Twitter.

Since it’s launch in 2006, Twitter has really made it as a networking and marketing tool. It’s now considered a major approach for growing a business by both big corporations and small and start-up businesses alike because:

• It offers a free marketing option
• It’s effective in directly connecting companies and customers instantly and consistently making people feel that they are connecting with a real person all the time
• It’s simplicity makes it easy to implement a direct marketing campaign in real-time allowing businesses to measure marketing efforts to sales promptly

Like any social media effort there is no guarantee of a pay-off, but Twitter does give a business considerable exposure beyond the traditional means of advertising. By teaming up basic online and offline advertising with the use of Twitter, it adds a new twist to traditional marketing.

Here are a few ideas we can study on how small and big businesses have benefited by using Twitter without doing tacky, upfront selling:

1). Build your following. Twitter should be an important component for your online branding strategy. It helps you keep in touch with your group to build your own personal branding. There are currently over 20 million examples, but let’s just randomly take one particular case in point: Dan Schawbel, “the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y, author of Me 2.0, blogger, national speaker, magazine publisher & Business Week columnist,” now with over 70,000 followers.

2). Expand your reach. A good example for this is to use Twitter combined with your other blogging strategies to widen your site or blog’s reach and expose you to other sites or blogs to build up your website visitor or blog readership base. Or announce gigs, events and updates on events to get people who are accessible to come and support your activity.

3). Sell products. Actual sales do result from other people tweeting about a product/service. The re-tweeting power is excellent publicity. Take the following examples: Send out photos of your product, tweet them to people following you as presenting it to them and ask them to re-tweet to their own network. Or maybe a friend can make a book review on your newly published book then tweets that review with links to your sales page.

4). Build up buzz to introduce a new business. For instance, tweet a simple 140 character press release to hype the launch of a new website or blog or the opening of your offline local retail outlet.

5). Open doors of opportunities for you. Be active on Twitter and engage with your target audience to land potential clients, build your connections, and find new employers or employees. Twitter makes it very easy to get and build up referrals without the need for an introduction.

6). Announce discount sales, bargain deals. A great case in point is Dell Outlet’s twitter that goes: “15% off any Dell Outlet Inspiron 14z – 1470 laptop with coupon! Enter code at checkout: 9SCKT1XG52Z80$ at http://cot.ag/a8tJVT – exp 2/24 7:48 AM Feb 24th via CoTweet”

7). Create buzz on special promotions, contests, raffles, giveaways. Any program that rewards customer loyalty is a great way for community interaction, brand visibility and collecting vital contact information. A sample post in Twitter can go like this: “empowermentdivaFeb 26, 2010 @ 2:41 am FREE online training prog. contest Starting a business? Need 2 get clear on vision, goals etc. http://budurl.com/entertowinbt2010”

8). Create inventive customer service that really puts high value on your customers.A great model is CoffeeGroundz Cafe in Houston, Texas. The cafe uses Twitter to operate as an automated ordering system where its customers can send their drive-thru orders via a tweet and their meals and drinks get delivered to them.

Twitter continues to gain momentum. In this unstable economy, it has proven to be a low-cost approach and major part of a business marketing strategy that helps keep consumers aware of and responsive to their brand.

THE TOP TWO TWITTER MARKETING STRATEGIES