Is your marketing and advertising budget ZERO?

Then Twitter might be the answer for you, well ... at least ONE of the answers for you :-) There are others which I'll talk about in other articles.

Who's talking about your business on Twitter?

Set up Twitter Alerts to track all mentions of your website, your brand name, your products and services.

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If you can capture and more importantly follow these mentions, you can hear about client or website visitor problems immediately. If you ACT on them immediately, you'll build a huge reputation as a provider of fantastic and fast customer service.

Talk about your products and services in a cool - non-boring - way

Whether you're a shoe store, SEO specialist, local cafe, cake decorator, work-at-home Mom or a lawyer, avoid being boring on Twitter.

Whatever you do DON'T ANSWER THE QUESTION, "What are you doing now?" - seriously, this is what puts people off Twitter :-)

Instead, think of ways to entertain your followers and potential followers.

Use Twitter as your online Q&A (Questions & Answers)

This might surprise you, but if you encourage people to post questions, you'll build up a following of tweets (messages posted on Twitter) which are of interest to your other followers, and also makes great content for your website. (Each question can become a page on your website, with your solution/answer.)

Ask for input from your Twitter followers

No matter what your product or service is, there are times when you'd really like feedback, and Twitter can help you with that.

Don't SELL, don't PUSH, don't be ANNOYING on Twitter

The best tip I can give you about interacting on Twitter is to be interesting, friendly, engaging ... and make sure your Twitter followers can see your first name on your Twitter Bio (it's more personal than just a business name).

If you try to shove your product or service down people's throats all the time, you soon lose followers.

Instead, type an interesting snippet with a link to an interesting page on your website or blog, which does NOT have in-your-face advertising on it, but encourages people to post comments or read more of your snippets.

Do be friendly, interesting, vibrant and even fun on Twitter

Don't be afraid to show the fun side of your personality, even if you're the CEO :-)

People follow people they LIKE in social media - if you're likeable and what you say is interesting and even fun sometimes, people will enjoy your tweets.

Don't think anyone will follow you? Everyone has to start somewhere :-)

Everyone starts their Twitter account with zero followers, and here are a few ways to let people know you have a Twitter account:

• add a Twitter icon to your website pages
• add a Twitter icon to your website pages
• add your Twitter name to you signature file in your emails, forum posts (if allowed) and letters
• next time you print your business cards, add your Twitter name, for example mine is @build_website
• email your friends and ask them to follow you if they'd like to help you out

Other tips

• you don't need to follow everyone who follows you
• only follow people whose tweets you enjoy
• thank people for following you, and retweeting you
• ask questions of your followers, get to know some of them and engage in conversations which will be interesting to your other followers

I do hope you've enjoyed these tips - do you  have any you'd like to share? I'd love to hear them, you can share them by clicking the ADD A COMMENT below. Thanks in advance!!

Teena