Twitter is micro - blogging service and social network rolled into one. It enable its users to send and read each other's updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of upto 140 characters, displayed on author's page and delivered to other users - known as followers.

According to www.twitdir.com, there are more than 3.3 million Twitter users (also known as Twitterers) and this number is continuously growing.

What Twitter has to do with your business?

A lot! It lets you build the relationship with your customers. It provides you an opportunity to tell world about yourself, your business, your products / services, offers (if any), get customers feedback etc. Many companies including some big brands like Dell, Samsung etc have understood the power of Twitter and have started using it to their advantage.

How you can promote your business on Twitter?

Twitter can help you a lot in promoting your business, but on condition, that you do it rightly. Below I am discussing some points on how you can promote your business using Twitter -

• Complete your profile
• Make sure your profile is complete and include a link to your website. Add "http" at the end of it to make it clickable
• Choose a name which is related to your business brand. Your profile URL should include your brand name
  (Example - http://twitter.com/RedAlkemi)
• Your profile page should be personalized. Choose the color and logo of your brand name on your profile page.
• Make yourself easily searchable by using keywords in your profile.
• Create your Audience
  Invite people to follow you on Twitter. You can do this by putting your profile URL at the bottom of your email / forum signature, websites etc. You can even put "Follow me on Twitter" link at the end of each blog post you create.
• Keep your customers updated
• Talk about your product / business. If some sale or business promotion offer is going on, notify your customer by putting it on Twitter along with the link to the site, where they can see the detail about it.
• If your company is launching new product, tweet about it.
• Engage yourself in conversation
  Join the conversation. Be active in community, always reply to tweets, share your knowledge with others. If you liked some site or person recommend it to others, some event is coming or new product is launching talk about it. Twitter is all about conversation, so keep talking. Remember its not for advertisement, so if you want people to know about you or your product, do it smartly.
• Promote your submission of Digg, Mixx etc.
  Submitted something on sites like Digg, Mixx, Reddit? Tweet about it on Twitter with link to your story. If people like your story they might vote for you, making your submission popular and you may also have new followers.
• Twitter can draw heavy traffic to your blog
  You can use Twitter to promote your blog. How? Its simple, all you have to do is send out a tweet to the link to your blog post.
• Follow your industry leaders
  By following your industry leaders on Twitter, you can see what they are doing. You can learn lot about them and make sure that you are not missing on some important information. You can keep track of what they are doing and what they consider important.

Tips on promoting business on Twitter

• Build relationship
  Interact with people who follow you or whom you follow. Talk to them, answer their questions, listen to what they have to say, if you want to ask something - ask don't shy, tell them about yourself, if you have read some book and liked it. Recommend that book to others. This way you will build relationship and building relationship plays an important role in business promotion.
• Don't Spam
  Don't keep on sending same message again and again. One of the common mistake people do is keep sending same message again and again, thinking it will make them popular and get sales. But just opposite happens, people get irritated and stop following them.
• Keep your status updated
  Its important to keep your status updated with latest happenings in your company. Your customers would like to be updated about the company. But it doesn't mean if new product is coming in market, you keep on twitting about it after every 10 minutes.
• Don't talk only about your product
  Don't keep on talking only about your product. Talk about other things also, no one will be interested in listening only about your product. People use twitter to talk and interact with others. Don't start telling about your product as soon as someone comes and say hi to you. Be polite, say hi, learn about them, build relationship, tell them about yourself and then you can talk about your product.
• Be interesting
  Keep posting interesting stuff. Post things which will be of interest to other users whether its your company's news, some general topic talk or advice on something.
• Reply back
  If someone has asked you something, retweet i.e. reply back. Answer their question and respect the feedback you get from others.
• Find prospects
  You can find potential customers online by using Twitter Search. Do keyword search to find potential clients, customers and people from your industry and follow them.