Karen Paiyo

I have had many of my small business clients come to me recently saying that they were interested in using twitter to interact with their customers and to grow their customer base. Their only problem was that they didn't know how to use it and had no idea where to start. So off I went, in search of a really useful and easy to understand resource they could use that could help them launch themselves into the twitterverse and found Twitter for Dummies.

As with most of the '... for Dummies' range of books, Twitter for Dummies is an excellent way for beginners to get their feet wet. It's informal, light-hearted approach makes for easy-to-read, easy to digest portions that allows you to step through the process without too much hassle.

Twitter for Dummies explains exactly what Twitter is and does, demystifying Twitter jargon along the way. You will be confidently discussing tweets, mentions, retweets and tweeps before you know it. It starts out by explaining how to open a Twitter account and how to navigate the twitter interface and to make connections.

The power of Twitter for businesses, big and small, is in the ability to interact with customers and to grow your customer base through one of the most efficient social networking services on the internet. This book teaches you how to find people and topics of interest and how to follow them. It also shows you how to establish your own network of followers and how to make that network grow.

Tweets are short messages limited to using just 140 characters that are published for all to see. At first, it may seem impossible to make any kind of message impressionable with such a severe limitation, but trust me, people have become quite clever in how they use twitter and are able to capture the attention, engage and call customers to action.

While twitter, unlike facebook, does not allow advertising, you are able to link to photos, websites and documents enabling you to share information with potential clients quite readily. A full explanation as to how you do this is provided including how to shorten your link URL's (yes, they have to fit within the 140 character limitation as well!)

To ensure tweeps are not confined to their desks when sending tweets, Twitter for Dummies, delves into the options available to enable you to manage twitter from your smartphone. This extends twitter access to wherever you have mobile phone coverage which means you can make your out-of-office downtime productive by building relationships with your clients.

This handy resource also discusses the various third-party applications, such as clients, polls, metrics all available to help your business to operate efficiently with twitter.

If you are about to take your first, tentative steps into twitter, I highly recommend this as your first-up resource. It will ensure that you become familiar and confident in the use of twitter, whilst highlighting and introducing possible networking possibilities for your small business. It will establish a solid foundation on which to base your business building next steps.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR