Twitter is the ultimate in social networking forums and it’s like nothing else. The free program allows you to post quick updates which are then sent to all of your “followers”. Twitter gained popularity from being used by celebrities and their followers, but now it is one of the best free business tools for any business.

Once you sign up for a free account and design a profile that suits your business, it’s time to start tweeting. A tweet is the 160-character message that can be sent online or from your cell phone. Businesses use this to list sales, special offers, and promotions that occur for their business. The best way to gain followers is by using an automated posting program like TweetSpinner or TweetAdder. Each of these programs will automatically post messages to you at timed intervals. The more tweets associated with your business, the more followers and recognition you will receive. People often search for a specific keyword on Twitter which will then lead them to a multitude of companies and people with shared interests.

To tag a keyword on your profile, you must place the # sign before a word. For example, if you wanted to tag cemeteries for your parcel sales business, you would put #cemeteries in a state. Anyone who has ever searched for “cemetery” will find your business in their Twitter business listings. The more keywords that are tagged, the more followers you will gain. The more followers, the more traffic to your business; The more traffic to your business, the more money in your pocket.

Other features with Twitter’s auto-posting programs allow businesses to automatically follow anyone who follows them, automatically approve anyone who follows them, and automatically send a welcome introduction with a link to your website to new followers. All of these features can be preset to make Twitter work as you go about your busy day. Businesses have reported 30% to 40% increases in internet sales thanks to Twitter. Twitter also helps increase a company’s SEO ranking. Each tweet associated with a business can be considered a mini article about the company. Tweets can also be forwarded from one follower to another, helping to spread the word about a company faster.

Twitter is best suited for companies or businesses that sell products or services and offer regular promotions or new items. Blogs and websites can also be shared through tweets. Once you post a link to another article on Twitter, your business gets an additional link to help build your internet ranking. All in all, Twitter is a free program that can be used to market your business and requires less work and maintenance than the other sites.