Women Can Do Anything

If you're a home business owner, you've probably heard about how Twitter can be a great tool to grow your business. Everyone from Oprah to Jamie Oliver to Barack is on it...are you? I've summarized a few simple steps to take in order to grow your following and build your list and in turn grow your business online.

If you're a home business owner, you've probably heard about how Twitter can be a great tool to grow your business.

It's the talk of the online world right now. Just about every famous person is on it...from Oprah to Jamie Oliver. Actually, the latest numbers show that over 6 million people are on Twitter.

I found out about Michael Jackson's death on Twitter before it even hit the CNN home page.....so it's pretty powerful stuff.

I've taken a while to actually start twittering, cause it just didn't make any sense to me. I thought it was a real time waster...and I still agree it can be if you don't use it smart.

The best way to use Twitter is for list building. The big idea behind it is to drive people to your site where they are presented with some great content and are made an offer they can't refuse and sign up to be on your list.

So if you're new to Twitter, here's a run down on how to get started and some extra tools to use to make your life Twitterific!

1. Create Your Account

Inject some personality into your bio and make sure you put your website address in there somewhere...but please DON'T put your company's replicated website or an affiliate link for a product....best bet is to put a link to your blog where you're not selling anything.

2. Setup An Eye Catching Background

You can get some great images at http://www.twitterimage.com, http://www.twitbacks.com or http://www.mytweetspace.com. Keep it fresh and original. Be sure to include links to Facebook, your blog and if you want, your phone number...along with something else fun/attractive or interesting.

3. Setup Automation

When people follow you it's a good idea to respond to them and introduce yourself. I was doing this manually at the beginning but it's a time sucker...so use a tool like http://www.socialoomph.com to automate the process.

Don't put messages that try to sell them something ....just be friendly and say Thank You for following...maybe give them a free gift or ask them what they do in order to start a dialogue. You can also use this to automatically follow and unfollow people. You can use a tool like http://dossy.org/twitter/karma to unfollow people who don't follow you.

4. Find Some Friends

You can use a tool like http://www.livelybrowser.com, http://www.twellow.com or http://www.twollo.com to find friends who are your target market. Here's a great tip: Let's say you're looking for people who are interested in nutrition...you might look up a large retailer like "Whole Foods" and take a look at all their followers. Follow some of them, and some of them are bound to follow you back.

5. Start Twittering

If you're not sure what to twitter, you can check out this site: http://www.stufftotweet.com for interesting, fun stuff...but you'll also want to tweet about things your market will be interested in. You can retweet other people's tweets...but don't go overboard on that one.

The key is to share valuable content and not sell...at least you don't want to be seen as always selling. People will unfollow you faster than you can say "Bye Bye Tweetie Bird".

6. Interact With Everyone

It's great to twitter about your own stuff...but remember to be a real person. Use the @Reply features to actually start dialogues and share other people's ideas and interests as well.

Additional Tools

http://www.tweetdeck

http://www.twitpic.com

http://www.bubbletweet.com