Be a Microblogger with Twitter

With microblogging, you communicate with other users of the microblogging platform via very short messages using your computer or a mobile device. The people who receive your messages can be a select private group or public Internet users, depending on your needs and the purpose of the microblog. Microblog posts can contain text as well as video, audio, or pictures, and they can be submitted via email as well as the Web.

The microblog content differs from a traditional blog in that of actual size and aggregate file size. Just like a regular blog, however, a microblog contain multimedia elements. Text posts normally consist of around a couple hundred characters or less.

The undisputed king of microblogging is Twitter. Twitter is the name most people use when referring to microblogging in general. There are other microblogging options, but Twitter gives you access to the most potential customers.

Microblogging is an excellent way to distribute short, frequent bursts of information. New products or upcoming events are great subjects for posts. It's also very useful for communicating and keeping in touch with friends or business partners about industry news or whatever you want it to be. Placing links to content on your web site or main blog is a good way to drive traffic to those properties from people already interested in your business. One additional benefit of a microblog is that the content can be streamed to your web site or main blog.

Now that you understand what microblogging is, you may wonder if this is something that will really help your business. Well, let's see…would it be of any benefit to you to be able to provide information, along with your brand and marketing message, to thousands of potential customers or referral sources? Most of you should be saying “Absolutely!" You could argue that this is a medium better suited for service businesses than retailers of products, but I do not agree with that line of thinking.

One of the clients for whom I recently started managing a Twitter campaign is an online hardwood flooring dealer. To get the most leverage on my time, I preconfigured his account to automatically make posts to Twitter over time. The preconfigured Twitter posts are a combination of direct sales messages as well as information messages about wood flooring. I spent about two hours configuring the account to run itself (I will tell you how I did that shortly), and a few minutes searching for relevant people to follow to get that process started. Then I turned it loose.

In a few days' time, the account had a few dozen followers from relevant people (those involved in things like interior design, contracting, architecture, etc.). This is a great start for the little amount of time I invested in the campaign. All I will need to do to keep up the momentum is search for a few relevant people to follow each week, and occasionally update the content on which his posts are based.

The secret to this kind of Twitter automation is a service called Tweet Later, which you can learn more about in this article's resource box.

Tweet Later is the ultimate platform for managing your Twitter accounts. It lets you schedule dynamic Twitter posts in advance, as well as automating the act of following users who follow you and sending your new followers a personal message. To try it out for free (no credit card needed!), visit http://www.trytweetlater.com. To learn more Twitter marketing strategies, visit http://twitterforbusiness.blogspot.com.

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