Using social media for business marketing is a relatively inexpensive but very effective method of spreading the word about your work. If you manage to get the right connections on Twitter, you can actually have these connections do the advertising for you. At the very least, you will have a cheap means of communicating a few updates to your customers.

Whatever your aims are, here are a few but simple tips to help maximize Twitter for your business:

Getting a little informal

Using twitter for businesses rarely works if you are overly intent on marketing alone. People rarely read tweets that so blatantly aim to advertise or promote something or someone. While it is unavoidable to get into tweeting good things about yourself or your company, it helps to blunt such an obvious method by getting a little personal in your tweets. If you want to tweet about something, hang back a bit and read it all over again. If you comes across as gimmicky or something a salesman would say, drop the whole tweet and rewrite it from scratch.

Tweet something useful

While getting a little informal helps to draw readership, posting about useless personal stuff will turn off the readers. Nobody will read anything that they consider a waste of time, so make sure your tweets are relevant, informative or helpful to the readers who follow you on Twitter.

Balancing responses

Replying to comments is a double edged sword. You can either strike up a very interesting conversation and use social media for business, or you can rile up your readers against you and use twitter for arguments. Think carefully before you respond to a comment if you do not want to end up damaging the reputation of your business.

Keeping track

Internet search tools keep track of what people say about your company, and these are powerful tools to help you gauge just where your business stands in the wider world. www.search.twitter.com is a good place to start if you want to keep track of your company’s reputation around the world. There are other sites and applications that let you check your company’s standing, just look and ask around for them.

Indirect tweeting

Indirect tweeting, or having others tweet for your company, is another double edged sword when you use Twitter for business. They can paint a pretty picture of your company, or they can blast your reputation to bits if left unchecked. This is particularly true of employees, whose posts about their company could not only affect reputation but internal security as well.

Be careful

The last but definitely not the least tip is to be very, very careful when making an official post on any social media like Twitter. Most everybody can follow up on your Twitter profile, including competitors, and can use the information you provide in ways you would not like it to be used.

Keep these hints and tips in mind, and you’ll be able to use Twitter for business marketing that is cheap, effective and fun as well. Just try not to get addicted to tweeting, okay?

So go get tweeting now!  Cheers, Maria Gudelis