What's the Point of Twitter? 5 Reasons Why You Should Tweet for Business

I’m always knocked off my feet when a small business owner asks me, “What’s the point of Twitter?” What’s even crazier is how often I get asked this.

Maybe I take it a bit too personally because Twitter is my absolute favourite social media outlet: I love how it’s concise and simple and to the point. It’s short and sweet like a haiku or a Tiny Tom donut.

If you want to get the most from Twitter, the first thing you have to wrap your head around is that you yourself need to do something worth sharing. So ask not what Twitter can do for you, but what you can do for Twitter. And you can expect Twitter to reward you many ways:

1) Find your customers (and potential customers) and converse with them –  Last week, my friend @FriendlyLawyer and I participated in the Terry Fox Run at High Park in Toronto. We were so stoked and proud of ourselves after completing a breezy 5K that we decided to head over to the nearby Ukranian Street Festival and hunt down the Tiny Tom donut truck, only to discover that the truck wasn’t yet open for business. So @FriendlyLawyer tweeted our dismay. And what happened? They tweeted back! Do we still love Tiny Tom? You bet we do: they showed us they cared, they congratulated us on our run, and they made us feel good about the whole experience.

@FriendlyLawyer Darn festival hours! No where near charity run hours! Such a great cause, hope you did well. #donutlove

— Tiny Tom Donuts (@TinyTomDonuts) September 17, 2013

2) Keep on Top of News – Twitter is for news hounds. Follow reliable Twitterers to keep up with trends, news, and opinions regarding your industry. An informed business owner is a savvy business owner

3) Be a Part of Your Community – I’m not just talking about a Twitter community, I mean a real live community. Use neighbourhood hashtags and follow local businesses to nurture relationships and create a referral network that will help you grow your business.

4) Be a Fountain of Knowledge – Now that you’re following industry news and trends and you’re building a community, use Twitter to redistribute what you’re learning via the Retweet. Now you’re an expert too,  starting conversations, and engaging more followers. All good for business.

5) Be a Guru – Your blog, your articles, your special and promos… tweet them all to your content-hungry followers. Just remember to keep the selling down to a respectable level and make tweeting useful content and engagement a priority.

Twitter is relatively easy to learn (it usually takes me an hour to an hour and a half to teach even a very intimidated client all the basics). Need some social media training? Get in touch for a one-on-one Twitter tutorial with me!

– Nishi, Social Media Trainer

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