Guest Author: Jessica Swanson

As a small business owner, you’ve undoubtedly heard that your business needs to have a strong Twitter presence. So, you have dutifully signed up for a Twitter account, have a some followers and have even sent out a few Tweets. Now, you’re wondering how in the world Twitter will actually help your business.

Here are 12 reasons why your small business needs to be on Twitter:

1) Build Authenticate Relationships. Twitter allows you to begin building authentic relationships with your prospects, clients and customers. As a small business owner, strong customer relationships are one of your greatest assets.

2) Share Your Expertise. If you provide valuable, interesting and compelling Tweets, you will begin positioning yourself as an expert in your particular field and industry.

3) Generate Traffic To Your Website. As you build a strong presence on Twitter and offer valuable Tweets, your followers will begin to take notice of you. Consequently, they’ll naturally want to visit your profile to learn more about you and your small business.

4) Obtain Qualified Leads For Your Business. If your Twitter profile gives your followers a compelling reason to visit your landing page or website, they will take action. Make sure that your landing page is set up to collect their name and email address (in exchange for a free downloadable offer) to begin building your list.

5) Allow Others To Spread Your Ideas. As others retweet your quotes, ideas and strategies, your ideas are spread to hundreds, even thousands, of fresh, new eyes around the world.

6) Extend The Reach Of Your Brand. If your Tweets are filled with expert tips, advice and strategies, Twitter becomes an amazing tool for establishing a strong presence for your brand.

7) Discover The Latest “Buzz” About Your Company. What’s the buzz about you and your company? If you subscribe to www.TweetBuzzer.com you can keep abreast of everything that is said about you in the Twitter world.

8) Get In Front Of High Profile Individuals. There is simply no better way than Twitter to connect with high-profile individuals. As long as a high-profile individual follows you back, they have access to your Tweets. Think of all the possibilities!

9) Track Your Competition. Twitter is a wonderful way to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. As a marketer, it’s imperative to understand what is happening in your industry, and your competitors are a great place to start.

10) Conduct Market Research. Big companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to perform market research. But, through Twitter, you can perform market research for free! Through the use of quizzes, polls and surveys, you can discover, first-hand anything that you want to know about your target market.

11) Keep Current Within Your Industry. As a small business owner, it’s essential to keep current with the latest trends in your industry. You can subscribe to the Tweets of bloggers, PR professionals and others Twitterers connected to your industry to stay fresh and updated.

12) It’s FREE. As a Shoestring Marketer, there’s nothing better than tapping into a low-cost, high-impact marketing tool to help build your small business.

So, take the time to build your Twitter presence, tap into its power and build your small business on a shoestring marketing budget!

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Jessica Swanson, “The Shoestring Marketer,” has helped entrepreneurs, all over the world, explode their businesses using cutting-edge, proven and completely free marketing strategies. To receive your FREE Shoestring Marketing Kit, which has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you, learn the exact techniques for marketing their businesses for no-cost, visit: www.ShoestringMarketingKit.com

The information below is straight from LinkedIn and as you can see, some of you are seeing the new layout and some are not, so don’t be surprised/thrown by this.

And another FYI, some of you asked me to let you know when the new dates were posted for upcoming Labs.

Here’s the link to the page on my site called COURSES with the information on both LinkedIn Labs and TwitterLabs  (and how to register):
http://www.barbarademarest.com/courses/

LinkedIn Labs:
Thursday, December 3, 2009 at Noon (Eastern Time)
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 5 p.m. (Eastern Time)
Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 9 a.m. (Eastern Time)

TwitterLabs:
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 9 a.m. (Eastern Time)
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 5 p.m. (Eastern Time)

Please send your friends!

*************************From LinkedIn about the new layout *******************************

Have you changed the navigational bars on the site?

You may have noticed a new site navigation experience on LinkedIn. We are in the process of doing limited testing on a new design that should wrap up over the next few weeks. During this testing phase, some users will see the new design, while others will not.
Here are some of the new things you could see:

Happy networking!
- Barbara

Barbara Demarest
Executive Coaching, Seminars & Keynotes,
Online Networking & Positioning for Career & Business Growth
info@barbarademarest.com
Ph/vtext.com 336-303-1577
Twitter @barbarademarest
LinkedIn /barbarademarest
Coaching Profile: www.thecoachingassociation.com
Blog: www.barbarademarest.com

My e-book with Joyce Richman, Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job is now available at www.GettingYourKidOut.com

If you are someone who has not searched for a job in several years, you may need to brush up on how to use online profiles to position yourself for career advancement or transition.  In addition to being a helpful tool for your actual search, using LinkedIn also shows employers that you can navigate social media.  Don’t scoff!  Social media is working its way into the workplace and employees at all levels will be using these platforms within their organizations.  Don’t be surprised to see the technology behind social media showing up in your knowledge management systems, your internal and external communication tools, and your orientation, learning, and development structures.  Make sure you keep learning!

My approach with the Labs, both Twitter and LinkedIn Labs, is to do some information sharing on the phone and then dive in and have participants try things out on their computers.  I take questions and we don’t follow a prescribed format.  Instead I try to respond to people’s questions and make sure that they come away from the session having tried something on the site.

That which I hear, I forget.

That which I see, I remember.

That which I do, I understand.

– Confucius

To sign up for the LinkedIn Lab, please choose one of the following methods:

1 – Send me an email: info@barbarademarest.com and let me know which session you would like to attend.  Then please send a check to BarbaraDemarest.com 1577D New Garden Road, Suite 161, Greensboro, NC 27410.  Please make checks payable to Barbara Demarest for $15.00.

2 – If you would like to pay online, all you have to do is use the PayPal button here and in the box let me know if you are planning on the Monday, Nov. 16th session at 5 pm or the Thursday, Nov. 19th session at 9 am by typing in the word Mon or Thur so that I have a count.  You can also send me an email at info@barbarademarest.com so that I have your email address to which to send any instructions.

Looking forward to working with  all of you on LinkedIn!

I am attending (Mon or Thur)

• What is Twitter
• Getting started
• Learn the lingo
• Best practices
• Case studies
• Other resources

I’ve been on the fence about Twitter because I initially saw it as public texting and I really only text with my sons.  I didn’t think the public really would be interested in my illuminating words such as “whr r u?” and “dinner now.”  However, the attention Twitter has received from recent international incidents and some gentle prodding from some of my friends on the West Coast has me looking more closely at Twitter.  As a person who is interested in communications and marketing, Twitter is a pretty fascinating subject.  Did you know that Twitter had 4.42 million unique visitors in December 2008 and is on pace to hit 50 million in December 2009?  Can you believe that growth?  Just to compare, it took the top four television shows combined in last week’s Nielsen ratings to hit 50 million viewers.  That’s a pretty nice space to be in at no direct cost for a business.

Here’s a quote from Twitter 101:  A Special Guide for Business that captures why you may want to look at Twitter for your business even if you aren’t all that interested in it personally:

“Twitter is a communications platform that helps businesses and their customers do a number of useful things. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you’ve had a great–or disappointing–experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.”

The key reasons a business might add Twitter to its overall communications portfolio are:

• Instant connection to customers and prospects.  You can see who is already mentioning you, you product, or your business and respond.
• Customer feedback and real-time market research.  What you hear in a focus group is helpful, but observing and being a part of what is really happening is even better.  And on Twitter, you get unvarnished reactions and feedback on things that customers may not have even bothered to tell you in a survey.  In addition, you can easily see what other companies in your field are doing.  What sort of content are they putting out on their tweets?  What kinds of offers, coupons, and announcements are they using Twitter to disseminate?  How are they responding to their customers?
• The opportunity for an informal, conversational communication tool with the chance to build a relationship over time.  There is low commitment on the part of those following you.  They don’t feel caught up in a marketing mechanism; they just add you and your business to their list of people they are following.  Offer good information and they will stick with you.
• A way to tap into the short attention span of today’s market.  Communicating in 140 characters takes some getting used to, but today’s world is about headlines.  Twitter serves up the headlines.

What I don’t think we think enough about is what it takes to dive into Twitter or any other social media pool.  The platform may be free and the amount of time to write and post a 140-character tweet is not all that time consuming, but the overall strategy of how and why to use Twitter for your business is not so simple.  If you read the Best practices and the Case studies sections of Twitter 101, you’ll see that you do need to take a little time to set yourself up properly, learn Twitter norms, and think about who you want your business to be on Twitter.  How often will you tweet?  How personal will you be?  Who are you going to follow?  How many people from your company will be tweeting?  Bottom line, whether you are a sole proprietor, a small business, or an international conglomerate, Twitter is on the radar and you need a plan.  This initial tutorial from Twitter is a good place to start.

This event was sponsored by WFMY 2 Television as a community service. The idea was to have coaches from a variety of disciplines providing “curbside consulting” for people seeking jobs.  Each person would pass through for about 3 minutes to get some headlines on how to improve their chances in looking for a job.

My one-page handout (in WORD) from the event can be downloaded here:
Tips for Using Technology in Your Job Search Jun2009

Although the handout is short, here’s a summary of the points I make:

• 85% of jobs are the result of networking – so use social media and online networking tools to your advantage.
• Make it easy for people to find you – and make sure that what they find online about you is employee-appropriate (don’t have photos or comments in your profiles that would turn off an employer).
• Make it easy for people to help you – have your resume and information email-ready.  And be succinct and specific in your requests for help.
• Use online tools to research the best ways to describe yourself for the jobs you want (keywords) and to find out about employers.

I also think that LinkedIn is a must for job seekers — whether it is a full-time job, a consulting job or a temporary contract job.  There are some great blog posts already out there about leveraging LinkedIn, here are some of my favorites:

Guy Kawasaki’s February 2009 Post:  Top Ten to Use Linked In to Find a Job

I often find the About.com posts a nice compilation, here’s their take: LinkedIn and Your Job Search

Here’s a quick quote from the Guy Kawasaki post to help you get motivated on filling out your LinkedIn profile:

LinkedIn has over thirty-five million members in over 140 industries. Most of them are adults, employed, and not looking to post something on your Wall or date you. Executives from all the Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn. Most have disclosed what they do, where they work now, and where they’ve worked in the past. Talk about a target-rich environment, and the service is free.