Many business owners and business professionals are trying out Twitter, Facebookand LinkedIn (to name a few of the big boys) for the first time. Many of the questions that I receive on a regular basis are from those who are new to social media and are wanting to know the basics on how to market their business through Twitter.

So I have put together my part 2 of “Can Twitter help my business?“

This is a quick list of 5 things you have to do to use Twitter effectively for business. This list assumes that you have gotten past the sign up stage

1. Use a Twitter Management tool – I recommendCoTweet. You can manage multiple twitter accounts, assign users to manage individual or all accounts. The “on duty” function allows you to receive email alerts of replies and direct messages. Plus, I love that it is web based. If you are wanting to play, use Tweet Deck, if you mean business you need to use CoTweet (or similar).
2. Fill out your Twitter profile – Put your name, bio, website and location. I rarely follow anyone who doesn’t have this basic information. There are enough spammers out there to keep even the most wild user from following you if you don’t have this filled out. Make it real. People like following real people, not robots.
3. Schedule your Tweets – Create tweets that are resourceful and informative and schedule them out 1 or 2 weeks inadvance (more if you’re feeling froggy). Find blog articles related to your industry, copy the title (or customize it a little) then copy the link and create scheduled posts. This doesn’t mean you should give up on posting normally or that you should schedule all of your tweets, but that you should have a steady stream of tweets scheduled out a week or two so that you don’t have to constantly be on twitter.
4. Follow good tweeple – Do a little research and search twitter for followers posting stuff related to your industry or in your area (or both). If you are using CoTweet, use the search pad for this. Follow these tweeple and then look at who they are following and also who is following them. It is likely that you will find they are following other valuable tweeple. Look at their Lists if they have them.
5. Create conversation – Once you have a solid foundation of posts and a good follower base,  you need to start interacting and conversing with tweeples. It’s ok, they won’t bite (Ok, some will so be careful). But seriously. One great way to make friends is to retweet what others have posted. Many times they will say “thanks for the RT!” Keep this up.

Follow these five simple steps and you will be able to create a strong follower base, good brand awareness and driven traffic to your website using Twitter. I hope this helps. Follow me @38wes.