Early in the Summer, one of our pipes sprang a leak late at night. I tweeted about it and minutes later, got a reply from a local plumbing company offering to help me. When I flew to Israel a couple of months ago, I tweeted to my followers that the plane had landed. And later that day, I received a reply from a local car hire company suggesting I take a look at their online offers….I ended up booking a car with them.
The beauty of Twitter is that it enables you to track the people who need your products and services whereas in the past you had to go out and find them either by advertising or by making sales calls. And it’s so easy. By using tools such as www.tweetdeck.com or www.hootsuite.com , you can create a list of keywords related to your business and be alerted when people mention those keywords in their Tweets.
So if for example, you run a health spa, you can track tweets from people who complain that they’re “burnt out” or “could do with a break” or who mention the word “spa” or “short break” in their tweets. You can then reply to these people, suggesting they visit your Spa. You may even have a special offer you can tell them about. Even if they don’t use your services, by merely replying to your tweet or following you, they will have publicised you to all their followers. And best of all, the publicity is all free!
You don’t need a six figure budget to promote your business online, just a few minutes a day on Twitter.
