I recently met a small business owner who proudly described his marketing strategy to me: “I’m focusing entirely on social media because it’s free.”

“What do you mean by free?” I asked.

“Well…” he said, “I don’t have to pay for postage or advertising or email software or anything like that. I just set up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and go from there.”

“How are you updating those accounts? Who’s posting the updates? Who’s devising the strategy?” I asked.

“We all chip in when we have time,” he said.

“How’s it going? Are you seeing good results?” I asked.

Long pause…”Hard to tell,” he said. “I’m not sure.”

When it comes to social media — or any form of marketing for that matter — there is no such thing as a free lunch. Executing a social media strategy requires good planning, lots of time and effort, and careful analysis to determine return on investment. None of the above is free.

You have to calculate the cost of your employees’ and your time. Sure, you don’t pay to set up a Facebook account. But you pay your employees. And, if you’re thinking you can run a successful social media campaign with an unpaid intern (or your teenage son when he’s not doing his homework or playing video games),  you’re setting yourself up for failure.

I understand the need for businesses to control costs. And I understand the benefits of lower-cost digital marketing channels. Indeed, email marketing is a great medium, in part, because it costs less than other mediums.

But free is not really free when it comes to social media or any other marketing channel.

When devising a marketing strategy, you have to consider the return, not just the cost. I’d rather spend $500 to make $600 than spend $10 to make $11.

Social media should be part of your marketing mix, but not because it’s “free.” You should integrate social media with other marketing channels — email, your web site, offline media, etc. And you should be prepared to invest some resources to make it work — either dedicated employees who can generate positive return from the effort or third-party consultants who can do it for you.

As you drive to work tomorrow, consider this idea: Get rid of your car and walk to work each day. If you walked from your home to your workplace each day, you would save huge sums of money. No gas. No car repairs. No insurance. Getting to work would be free! But would your business be better for the cost savings? Would you accomplish as much each day?

While eating breakfast this morning, I was browsing through my online news reader on my computer when I came across the following headline: “Among Affluent Americans, Print Media Is Tops; Death of Traditional Outlets Has Been Greatly Exaggerated”

Print is number one!? That’s enough to make an online marketer choke on his Cocoa Puffs. Then, out of nowhere, the song started playing in my head, the old ’70s hit: “Torn between two lovers. Feelin’ like a fool. Lovin’ both of you is breakin’ all the rules.”

“I love online marketing,” I thought. “I can’t love print media, too!!!”

Or can I?

My wife will be pleased to know that I prefer monogamy when it comes to my love life. But when it comes to marketing, I have to spread the love.

So does that mean I use print advertising for affluent Americans and online media for others? No. It means I use print and online together for all audiences.

Affluent Americans may prefer print media, but they also have email accounts, browse the web, and use social media. So I might advertise in a print publication they read, but use that print advertisement to build my online subscriber or friends lists.

In previous posts, we’ve stressed the importance of marketing to the maybes. Your print advertising should do more than merely promote your brand. It should entice people to join your email list or follow you on Twitter or friend you on Facebook. That affluent American who reads your print advertisement will be a better prospect if you can also connect with her through online media.

So live it up, marketers. Have lots a lovers. You’d be foolish if you committed to only one.

After lots of false starts and failed attempts, Google has returned to the social networking space with its Google+ project. Google+ combines some of the best features of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, and it adds innovative features the others don’t have.

But instead of celebrating , many small business people are moaning, “Just when we thought we had this social networking thing figured out, Google has crashed the party and complicated the game.”

It is a dilemma. Should you add Google+ to your social media mix?

I wish I could tell you to ignore Google+ and forge ahead just with your existing social networking platforms. That might make your life simpler. But you cannot ignore Google+.

Google announced on July 14 that it had more than 10 million Google+ users. That’s still far-fewer than Facebook’s 750 million. But Google’s growth rate is staggering. It reached 10 million in just a few weeks, with an invitation-only release strategy. Facebook launched in February 2004 and took more than two years to reach 10 million users. 

Two years ago I wrote about Twitter in this newspaper: “Ignore social media at your own peril.” I offer the same advice today. Ignore Google+ at your own peril.

Start slowly. Join Google+ and simply observe. See how others are using it. Discover the possibilities. Then begin to consider how you can provide value to your prospects and customers through the content you post.

If you’d like a Google+ invitation, please send me an email (tom@marketvolt.com) with the subject line “Please invite me to Google+.” I’ll be happy to oblige. 

This article first appeared in St. Louis Small Business Monthly for which Tom Ruwitch writes a monthly marketing column.

If you’re launching a social media program that includes twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (among others), you should consider a social media dashboard application to help you manage the effort.

There are many available, including TweetDeck, Seesmic, and HootSuite. I prefer HootSuite. Here are five reasons why:

• Browser-Based — You run HootSuite through your web browser. No need to install software on your computer. No worries if you’re out of the office, using someone else’s computer. Just go to HootSuite.com, log in, and get busy!
• Simple, Smart Interface — HootSuite’s tabbed interface is great. You can easily manage multiple twitter accounts, plus Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare and other social media accounts with very little hassle. You can see the activity for multiple accounts all in one view.
• Great Mobile Version — Monitoring and posting to my accounts is simple with the HootSuite app on my iPhone. HootSuite also has apps for Android and Blackberry smartphones.
• Incredible Tips and Support — HootSuite has great online resources to help its clients, including the HootSuite University, a subscription service for professionals who want to get a social media edge. Worth every penny.
• Built-in Tracking — HootSuite has a custom link-shortener that allows you to shorten any URL with one click and then track clicks on that link. That’s just part of HootSuite’s analytics. The built-in reports are simple to generate and very useful.

HootSuite’s free, ad-supported account allows you to monitor and post to five separate accounts. A professional account costs $5.99/month and includes enhanced stats and tracking, integration with Google Analytics, unlimited social media accounts, and no advertisements.

Learn more about HootSuite here.

If you want to sell your business, one of the questions your suitor will undoubtedly ask is:

What is the size and quality of your “list?”

The buyer is not asking about your grocery list here, they want to know if you have a “house list” of existing customers and prospects that you are actively marketing to.

They want to know this because having an engaged, active list is equivalent to cash in the bank.  You might call them “Permission Assets.”

As a business owner, your definition of a list should be expanded to go beyond a list of customer addresses and phone numbers.

Today, we can build lists of “Permission Assets” in many low cost channels.

What Permission Means

When someone raises their hand and knowingly opts-in to a marketing channel that you control, they have become a Permission Asset.

Examples of the low-cost channels where permission assets can be built are:

• Email (using a system like MarketVolt)
• Social Media (using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc)
• Physical Meetings (using a system like MeetUp or Eventbrite)

When someone willingly opts-in to your email campaign, Facebook page or joins your meet up, they have become an asset to your company.  An asset that, if cultivated properly, is equivalent to money in the bank.

You are now able to easily and inexpensively reach them through these channels.

How To Grow Permission Assets

The consumer has wrested control over the messages that they receive via the Internet over the past decade.  Now, more than ever, the consumer is exercising the WIIFM rule.

What’s in it for me?

Sure, we can send spammy or “hard sell” messages via email, Twitter or Facebook.  We can disguise in-person meetings as informational and then hit the attendees with a pitch.

But these tactics don’t work twice.

To build a growing, sustainable set of permission assets that produce sales, we must provide an answer to the WIIFM question.

We must provide value.

Your market is asking for value in many forms including:

• Entertain Me
• Inform Me
• Inspire Me
• Protect Me (or things I love)
• Educate Me

Pop quiz:  Which email topic sent by a CPA gets opened and which gets deleted?

1. Check Out My New Tax Preparation Services
2. 10 Ways To Legally Avoid A Painfully High Tax Bill

If you answered #1, you haven’t been paying attention.

The Hub

As seen in the image above, the center of a “permission asset” strategy is usually a business blog.

The valuable content that you are creating should be “housed” on the hub and then distributed via email and social media.

A good website or blogging platform, like WordPress, will make the content that you are creating:

• Discoverable – Search engines (like Google) can easily find your content and send traffic to your site
• Interactive – Your market wants to comment, vote, rate or otherwise interact with your message.
• Shareable – Your market wants to easily share your content via email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. with their social networks
• Automated - Your content can be automatically “pushed” out and shared with your social networks

Growing a list of permission assets is as simple as building valuable content on your website and distributing that content through various channels.  Then, providing the methods for the consumers of that content to opt-in to further messages and share those messages with their network.

Finding The Right Mix

I know what you are thinking.  My mortgage company doesn’t take “permission assets” — just cash.

Forming lists of permission assets leads to growing the bottom line.  The next time you are launching a new product or service, doing a membership drive or rounding up sponsors for an event — leverage your lists.

Assuming you have been cultivating these lists through a series of valuable messages, they will respond to an offer.

Understand that the response to your offer will be directly proportionate to the amount of value that you have been providing through these channels in the days, weeks and months past.

My likelihood to make an offer to my “list” is similar to my likelihood to withdraw money from my bank account.  In this analogy:

Communicating Valuable Content = Deposit

Communicating an Offer = Withdrawal

As you manage your permission assets and the messages you are sending the data will tell you, much like your bank statement, whether you can make a withdrawal or not.

Your open and click rates will rise and fall based on the number of deposits and withdrawals you are making via your email list.  As will the number of “likes” and “retweets” you are getting on Facebook and Twitter respectively.

If you are paying attention, you will know when your balance is in the red or black.

Guest Blogger Russ Henneberry provides marketing training for businesses that don’t have Chief Marketing Officers.  You can join Russ’s community by clicking here.

John Reese, one of the world’s top internet marketers, quit twitter yesterday.  He left behind 25,000 followers! In a note to his email list, Reese said, “About a year ago, I really loved Twitter.  It was a lot of fun and it was great for communicating with people and for getting into all sorts of discussions. But as Twitter has grown, it’s become full of NOISE. Even, though, my follower count has risen, the response to my tweets has been on a steady decline.”

In his final Twitter posts on March 1, Reese said the response rate to his tweets has declined 75% from its peak. He checked with other marketers who reported similar declines. He said he will focus his social media efforts on Facebook (I happen to agree that you should focus most of your social media energy on Facebook).

So…should we all quit Twitter? Reese is a master of traffic generation. He knows how to drive traffic to his site and convert that traffic to sales. I trust his judgment…

But I don’t think “quit Twitter now” is the lesson to be learned from Reese’s actions. The key takeaway for me: Measure your results! Reese walks away with confidence because he knows his conversion rate has declined by 75%. When he posts a link to Twitter, he measures the number of clicks. He measures the number of people who click then register for his email list. He measures the number of people who click and then purchase his products. He measures the time he spends on Twitter (and thus the cost). So he can calculate his investment against the return. The numbers simply don’t work for him.

Does Twitter work for you? How do you know? What are you trying to accomplish with your tweets?

Reese is right about the noise on Twitter. Many tweeters spend countless hours posting trivial stuff…for what? What are your business goals? How do your tweets serve those goals? How do you measure your success?

At the very least, you should use a URL shortening program such as bit.ly that lets you measure click-throughs. Better yet, include tracking software on your site (such as Google analytics) that tracks where your Twitter traffic goes once it reaches your site. Don’t guess. Measure.

In a previous post, I said businesses ignore social media at their own peril. I still believe that. But then and now, I cautioned that you should engage in social media only if you have a purpose.

My goal is to strengthen my company’s reputation as a leading resource for interactive marketing solutions and tools. Occasionally, I’ll link to pages on my web site, where visitors download tips. This serves the same goal, plus people who visit that page can sign up for my email list. That helps me achieve my goal to identify, acquire and convert new leads. The bottom line: Begin by familiarizing yourself with Twitter and having some fun. As you continue with Twitter, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” If your answer is not in line with specific business goals, you probably can find better ways to kill time.

Do I plan to quit Twitter? Not yet. But I know that if I stick with Twitter, I’ll be able to justify the decision, and if I eventually quit, I’ll know exactly why.

While Snickers, Doritos, Go Daddy, Budweiser and the other usual suspects get props for their entertaining Super Bowl ads, I award my top prize to an ad that few are discussing: Honda’s “Everybody Knows Somebody…”

In case you missed it:  The spot opened with a still shot of a couple leaning against a Honda vehicle, parked beside a lake. A women’s voice says, “My boyfriend has one.” As the image slides to the left, a man’s voice (presumably the “boyfriend”) says, “My older sister has one.” A new image slides into the screen with a young woman (the “older sister” and two young children). A child’s voice says, “She has two kids.” A woman’s voice (the older sister with the two children) says, “My college roommate…” as a new photo of a different woman with kids slides into view. Then a photo of an older couple appears as another woman (the college roommate) says, “Our neighbors…”

And on it goes…A scrolling film strip of different people — different ages, various races, appearing in front of different size homes, standing next to their Hondas — naming people they know who “have one.”

“Our neighbors…My daughter…My husband has one…The fella I work with…on so on…”

As the filmstrip ends, the spokesperson declares: “Everybody knows somebody who loves a Honda. Who do you know?”

Then the address for Honda’s Facebook page appears on the screen: facebook.com/honda

Go there and you’ll see a page with more than 300,000 fans (as of Feb. 10)!

I love this ad for several reasons. First, in a simple but brilliant way, it uses social proof to persuade people to choose Honda. “Social proof” is the persuasion principle that says people tend to follow the crowd — even those who like to think of themselves as rebels.

Everybody knows somebody who loves a Honda. And the ad represents the enormous range of Honda-lovers — young, old, rich, poor, black, white. Marketing that effectively employs social proof  dares the target to make a choice: Are you with us or are you going to stand outside the social norm? The tug is strong, and Honda applies it subtly but forcefully in this ad.

Secondly, the ad has a great call to action: Go to our facebook page and share your story with us. I didn’t check Honda’s fan page after the game, but I’m sure there were far fewer than the 300,000+ fans Honda has today.

Honda practiced what we so often preach: Your marketing should not be solely about extending your brand or enhancing your image. With interactive technology, you can make targets act immediately with simple, low-risk calls to action.

People aren’t running from their houses after the Super Bowl to buy a Honda, and the company knows that. But Honda also knows that people who might eventually buy — the people we call the “maybes” — will be warmer prospects if the company can interact with them. So Honda asked them to do a simple thing that didn’t require people to sit with a car salesman or take much risk — visit our facebook page.

Now Honda can communicate with those 300,000+ fans. Without that call to action, Honda would have had no connection with these people until and unless they chose to act.

That’s a great example of using social proof to persuade people to act, and using a simple call-to-action to connect with and market to the maybes

Want to know more about social proof and other persuasion principles? Check out 7 Proven Ways to Make Your Marketing Messages More Persuasive, available for download at www.marketvolt.com/persuasion.

Have you seen the cool video on my web site about internet marketing? If not, you can watch it at www.marketvolt.com/video.

Many people who read that opening paragraph will follow my suggestion and watch the video. In fact, some who read this column at a computer may have jumped to the video before even reading this far.

How do I know? Because video works. The promise of video drives people to web sites, and the presence of video converts prospects to customers. If you want to drive traffic and convert prospects (what business doesn’t?), it’s time for you to join the video revolution.

“But, Tom, I can barely get text and pictures on my web site. How can you expect me to create and post online videos?” cry the naysayers.

It’s far easier than you may think to produce and distribute effective online video. To demonstrate this, I’ll share a story about my son, the budding rock star.

Jacob, 12, has spent most of his summer at Dave Simon’s Rock School. Roughly 15 kids attend each summer camp session, and they are split into three bands that receive private and group instruction. On the final day of each camp session the bands perform live for adoring audiences (a.k.a. parents and other relatives).

One week before Jacob’s concert, I bought an iPhone, the new model with a built-in video camera. When Jacob and his mates took the stage, I pulled the iPhone from my pocket, tapped once to open the video camera application, tapped again to start recording, and pointed the phone at the band.

Fifteen minutes and three songs later, I had a phone full of ear-splitting, bone-jarring, rock-and-roll video. I then clicked the “Send Video to YouTube” button on the iPhone. Five minutes later the videos were on YouTube, ready for the world to see. Twenty minutes later, the videos were on my web site (see http://marketvolt.com/rockvideo). I would have had the videos on my site sooner, but I had to drive 10 minutes from the camp to my office.

In well under one hour (including a 10-minute drive), I shot 15 minutes of video, posted it on YouTube, and embedded it in a page on my web site.

If you still think this is too hard for you, if you would prefer to wait, consider these facts: Apple sold 5.2 million iPhones in the last quarter. In 2008, pocket-sized video cameras—led by Pure Digital’s Flip camera—accounted for more than 20 percent of all video cameras sold. The Flip costs about $125. And while it can’t transmit video to YouTube wirelessly, it plugs directly into the USB port of your computer (no cables required) and comes with software that makes it easy to edit and post your videos online.

Rest assured, many of your competitors are walking around town with video-enabled iPhones or another tiny video camera in their pockets—ready to shoot and post traffic-generating, sales-converting video.

The day after I bought the iPhone, I met with a prospect who had attended an internet marketing seminar I hosted the previous week. He told me he enjoyed the seminar and learned a lot.

My response: “We’re planning to have more seminars in the months ahead. Would you mind repeating what you said and elaborating on video so I can have a video testimonial when I market future events.”

“Sure,” he said. “When do you want to do that?”

“How about now?” I said, pulling the iPhone from my pocket.

His testimonial and others I collect will be part of a video I post to promote the seminars. Go to www.marketvolt.com/seminars for more information.

What should you know before hopping aboard the iPhone bandwagon or buying a pocket-sized video camera? Here are some guiding principles:

You don’t need to be Spielberg—Don’t fret over the quality of your videos. If you can hold the camera with a steady hand, be concise, and get to the point, your video will work. You’re not competing for an Oscar. You’re promoting your business.

Promote your videos in emails by linking to them, not embedding them. Insert a picture (a screen shot from the video) in the email and link that to a web page where the video will play. It is technically feasible to embed a video inside an email so it will play immediately inside the recipient’s email software. But this is ill-advised. Many people have email software that will not properly display videos.

Include direct calls to action in your video. Your videos should have a purpose tied to specific business goals. We see countless television ads that build brand awareness without having specific calls to action. That’s OK for big corporations with multi-million dollar ad budgets. But in your videos, you need to ask viewers to act—now! Register for the event. Visit our site to download the coupon. Visit our store today—the first 100 people to respond to this offer will get a special bonus. You have their attention. Take advantage of the opportunity.

Distribute your video to multiple sites and link back to your web site from the video. YouTube is the big one, but there are many other sites where you can post your videos. TubeMogul (www.tubemogul.com) is on online service that will distribute your video to multiple sites with one click. By doing this, you will expose the video to a wider audience, drive more traffic to your site, and improve your site’s rankings with the search engines.

Track who watches your videos. My company, MarketVolt, has partnered with Flimp, a company that hosts your videos and can track who watches them. Send an email that links to your video on the Flimp site. When a recipient clicks through, Flimp records that person’s email address and tracks how long that person viewed the video. Imagine sending 1000 prospects an email promoting your new product or service, and then being able to tell which prospects watched the video from start to finish versus which ones quit watching after 15 seconds. That takes prospecting to a new level.

***********************

This article originally appeared in St. Louis Small Business Monthly. Tom Ruwitch writes a monthly column called High-Voltage Marketing. You can read these columns and other great content for small businesses at www.sbmon.com.

The following article appeared in the May 2009 issue of St. Louis Small Business Monthly

By Tom Ruwitch

Last month, I wrote about Domino’s and how it cornered the pizza delivery business with its outstanding unique selling proposition (if you missed it, you can find the column by searching for “pizza” on www.sbmon.com. Here are more lessons from the pizza parlor, but in this case we’re learning from the Domino’s mistakes.

Domino’s was in the news a few weeks ago. If you believe the PR mantra “all news is good news,” you didn’t see the YouTube video in which a Domino’s employee stuck cheese up his nose, and then put the cheese on sandwiches that he was preparing for delivery.

The video found its way to YouTube (exactly how is unclear) and more than 1 million people viewed it. Discussions about it filled the blogosphere, Twitter, and other social media. If you searched on google for “Domino’s” a day or two after the video appeared, you wouldn’t have missed it. Five of the top 12 search results had references and links to the video.

According to various media reports, Domino’s executives learned about the video on Monday, April 13. On Tuesday, Dominos chose not to respond aggressively, hoping the frenzy would end quietly.

Domino’s first mistake: Hiring morons who do such things. (the employees later claimed it was a hoax, which isn’t the point, of course). But this isn’t an HR column, so I’ll let that issue rest.

Domino’s second (and BIG) mistake: underestimating the frenzy and assuming it would end quietly.

“What we missed was the perpetual mushroom effect of viral sensations,” Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre told the New York Times.

Whether we call it “viral sensations,” Web 2.0, social media, or something else, it’s real.

Of course, the frenzy didn’t end quietly. Domino’s acted on Wednesday, April 15, posting its own video on YouTube and creating a Twitter account. After waiting for two days while the others controlled the conversation, Domino’s joined the crowd. Time will tell how much damage Domino’s suffered.

The lesson: Never underestimate the power of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or any of the other social media sites where your customers can create content, and it can spread like a wildfire.

Sure, you’re a small business, not a global pizza delivery chain. But the principle still applies. Ignore social media at your own peril.

Some Praise for the Pizza Place

In Domino’s defense, the company has used Twitter effectively since hopping aboard last month. For those new to social media, Twitter is a free micro-blogging service whose users post and read short messages (up to 140 characters) known as tweets.

Twitter automatically creates a profile page for each user that displays all of that user’s tweets. Domino’s profile page is twitter.com/dpzinfo. If you visit that page, you’ll see hundreds of tweets, displayed in reverse chronological order.

Most of Domino’s tweets begin with the “@” symbol. In Twitter-ease that means Domino’s has replied to another Twitter user.

Here’s an example, on my Twitter page (twitter.com/marketvolt), I could post a message that says, “I think Domino’s has great pizza.” Domino’s might read that post and tweet the following: “@marketvolt, I’m glad you like our pizza; which toppings do you like best?” That tweet would appear on Domino’s profile page, and I would get a copy.

You might wonder how Domino’s corporate tweeter would stumble upon my little post about pizza. It’s simple: Twitter has a search engine that allows you to search the entire collection of tweets (all posts ever) for any keyword. It’s clear that Domino’s searches consistently (in fact, there are tools that automate this) for any tweets that contain “Domino’s”, and that it replies directly to the user.

After losing control of the conversation about the YouTube video, the company now actively participates in Twitter conversations. Domino’s learned its lesson.

Social Media and Your Business

So what does this mean for you? Should you use Twitter and other social media, and if so, how? Remember, I said you ignore social media at your own peril. You don’t have to employ a full-fledged social media strategy immediately, but you should learn how it works, how your competitors are using it, and how you might use it.

For this column, I’ll focus on Twitter. I’ll discuss Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media in a future column. Here are some suggestions:

Set up a Twitter account and explore. Go towww.twitter.com and set up an account. It’s easy and it’s free.

Find people to follow. When you follow another user, that user’s posts will automatically appear on your Twitter homepage when you log in. Your home page will have all the posts from everyone you follow, listed in reverse chronological order. There are several ways to find people to follow.

Click the “find people” link at the top of the page and follow instructions to find suggested users or people you know. Another option: Go to search.twitter.com and enter a term related to your business (or perhaps a hobby). Read the posts that appear. When you find one that’s interesting or pertinent, click on the name of the user who posted it. That will take you to that user’s profile page. Read more of the user’s posts. If you like them, you can follow that user by clicking a button on that user’s page.

As you find people to follow, go to their profile pages and click (on the right side of the page) to see the lists of people they follow and others who follow them. You may find others in those list worth following.

Observe how businesses use Twitter. Follow various businesses. Especially ones in your field. Watch how they’re using Twitter. Are they entertaining? Do they have calls to action that seem to serve clear business goals (such as list building, public relations, or selling products online)? Don’t assume that you should emulate them all, but make note of those who entertain you, leave you wanting more, and seem to tie their tweets to real business goals.

Give tweeting a try. Post a few tweets. It’s easier than you think. If you find an article that you like, tweet about it (with a link to the article). If you have a suggestion or a tip about your hobby or industry, post it. Favorite quotes? Bring ‘em on. Get in the habit of tweeting regularly without worrying much about why. Then…

Think about how your tweets might serve your business goals. On my Twitter account (twitter.com/marketvolt), I offer interactive marketing tips, observations about industry events and trends, and links to other posts and articles that my followers might find helpful. My goal is to strengthen my company’s reputation as a leading resource for interactive marketing solutions and tools. Occasionally, I’ll link to pages on my web site, where visitors download tips. This serves the same goal, plus people who visit that page can sign up for my email list. That helps me achieve my goal to identify, acquire and convert new leads.

The bottom line: Begin by familiarizing yourself with Twitter and having some fun. As you continue with Twitter, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” If your answer is not in line with specific business goals, you probably can find better ways to kill time.