In an economy already squeezing small businesses one underutilized tool is an advertising and branding equalizer. Twitter is the fair playing field where even the smallest entrepreneur can compete with the corporate giants. Everyone starts on Twitter with zero followers, zero tweets and generic background to build from. This Free tool can promote your product or service to the almost twenty-five million daily visitors.

Twibs the Twitter business directory is a great place to start to size up your competition and learn from their failure or success in garnering followers. You can search the business index either alphabetically or by keywords to find relevant information. Look at Twitter bios and their following statistics then go to their profile page to see what is working or not working for those in your field of business. From @Oprah with 1,019,191 followers to @bead4you with 173 followers a wide range of celebrity brands and businesses can be found in the directory.

Once you have done your research there are several basic rules you will want to follow when getting started. Do not begin by tweeting a hard sales pitch 42% of Twitterers polled said it was the main reason to unfollow. Review other businesses for ideas for a tweet stream that will work for you. Have a custom template designed to display your business logo and carry your branding in to the social media forum. Your background can contain both text and images so consider adding your URL, email product images and email.

Insure your first are tweets conversational with video links, news links, humor or famous quotes. If you sell travel packages provide links to hotel reviews or links to growing tips if you sell plants. By following twitterers that follow your competition they will already have an interest in products or services you are marketing. Start slowly inserting sales tweets into your daily conversation and monitor changes in your following totals then adjust your Tweets to encourage follower grow.

Research your competition, brand your background, Tweet and interact with your following. Tweet information that will encourage your following to seek you out each day. Provide your followers with coupons, discounts, promotions and links to items on your website. Your impact on Twitter will be directly proportional to the time you invest on building and keeping your following.

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