How to Use Twitter as a Marketing Tool

Twitter has had a meteoric rise to popularity mainly due its nature of being a clever blend of blog and chat. Sharing links, exchanging ideas and generally keeping in touch without needing to reply immediately are key points that have contributed to its success. Due of its popularity, Twitter has turned into an excellent tool for online marketing.

Twitter works in a very simple way: either you follow someone or someone follows you or both. The people who follow you see everything you have to say and conversely you see everything that everyone you are following says. This ability to broadcast to your followers ensures that you can reach a specific target market.

So how do you pick people to follow and get them to follow you? Simply use the “find people” at the top of your Twitter account to find those who have an interest in your niche. For example, if you sell tomatoes, then you search with keywords that are relevant to tomatoes. From the resulting search, pick a couple of accounts with large amounts of followers to be base accounts. Then just proceed to following the people who are following those accounts. You will find that you will get several followers by just doing this.

As with any good method, if you abuse it you will lose it. Using Twitter is about building up your reputation. Therefore, you should avoid spamming and limit your promotional messages to a maximum of one in three Tweets. This will ensure that you do not portray yourself as a door-to-door sales man desperately pushing his products down people’s throats.