Top 10 Reasons Small Businesses Should Use Twitter

Many small businesses have Twitter accounts, but not all of them use them frequently.  Merely having a Twitter account isn’t enough.  Here are ten reasons your small business should be tweeting:

1.  Free:  Twitter is free to use, so why not use it for marketing?  The only price is time and effort, or hiring someone else to manage those efforts.

2.  Current:  Having a presence on social media platforms such as Twitter shows that your business is ‘With It’.  The times are a-changing and businesses need to change with them.

3.  Competition:  Your competition is quite likely already on Twitter and tweeting away.  70 percent of small businesses are on Twitter.

4.  Quick: Twitter is a fast way to get a message out.  Printing and distributing takes days and it takes time to put together a message for email marketing or change web design.

5.  Reach: Twitter can expand your market reach through followers, re-tweets, and #hashtags.  People may stumble across your profile and tweets by chance.

6.  Networking:  Using Twitter gives you the chance to meet and talk with tons of new people and the opportunity to discover contacts you might otherwise not have made.

7.  Feedback:  The conversations, re-tweets, and favorites you receive in Twitter can act as great feedback as to what is popular and what is not in terms of your online brand. Over time, you can develop a better sense of what your target market will pay attention to.

8.  Up-to-Date:  Using Twitter can help you keep up with what is going on in your industry.  You can keep tabs on your competition and get the latest news.

9. Engagement:  Twitter allows you to engage your customers.  It is a great way to maintain customer relationships both before, during, and after a purchase and act as a constant reminder that you exist.

10.  Short: With only 140 characters each tweet is short and sweet.  Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows you to share tidbits and updates without having to write an entire blog post.