Why twitter?

There is a huge number of social networking websites to choose from. One thing is for certain: you can’t join them all. But, even if you could, none would be effective due to luck of time spent on each. 

So, you have to make a choice. And you have to invest your energy on a few that work best for your life in general and your business in particular (if you have one).

I have FaceBook, MySpace and a few other accounts, but don’t use them due to luck of time. Instead, I concentrate on Twitter. I found that twitter fits my lifestyle better than other social networking sites. 

What are the benefits of twitter?

• Ease-of-Use: Twitter is very simple to use, update and maintain. Set-up is minimum and takes only a few minutes. Your set up mainly consists of your choice of a background image, text colors and a few other things. And I love it!
  
• Tweet-as-you-go: This is the best part of twitter. I don’t have the whole day to spend in front of my computer, so a few tweets a day when I have some time do the trick. You can also tweet from your phone or other portable device. Each tweet is only 140 characters long, so you can send your tweets fast 
  
• Instant Views: This was a surprise to me. The first time I tweeted about my new listing on etsy HJM Art Gallery I got many views. For those who luck views, this is your solution. 
  
• Big Number of followers: Compared to other sites, twitter gives you the ability to get many followers in a short period of time. For example, my blog has only 138 followers (in spite of the promotion) compared to 2,050 on Twitter.
  
• Connections: That’s what tweeter is all about! If all you want from twitter is views and followers, it won’t work for you. You need to invest your time and actually communicate with people, reply to tweets, give advice, offer help etc…follow others with similar interests. You and only you can create your own twitter community. I met the most wonderful people on tweeter! And very grateful for that! Got a few sales from it as well.
  

A Few Tips:

• Tweet Smart. Don’t constantly promote your shop. It is a spam and followers will eventually leave you. 
  
• Start looking for followers under “find people” menu. Click on “suggested users” tab. Or follow people I follow: twitter.com/hjmart
  
• Add yourself to: wefollow.com
  
• There are many third party websites related to twitter. I personally don’t use them, so no opinion there. I heard good things about TweetDeck, which you would need to download.
  

I hope this summary is helpful.