A great point of view was expressed by Becky McCray at Small Business Survival in her entry on Twitter. Two points stand out:

1. Start with your fans, even if you only have 15 to 20 they are more valuable than 500 people you don’t know. We agree with that premise. Use your email list from events, mailing list, etc. to find out who is on Twitter and follow them. They will most likely follow you because they already have a relationship with you.

2. Use Twitter to learn. Follow thought leaders in your industry or town or for small business. These folks will have lots of followers and will post content and links to interesting articles that will help you with your business. This is one of the tactics that many people forget, but it is a great way to stay current in your industry.

Comments following the entry are great, from folks who use Twitter successfully to even the vendor selling his service for localized tweets. Becky does a nice job replying to everyone as well. If you are a small business in a rural area, this is a good blog for you to follow due to its good writing and more importantly, good tips and tactics!

We recently read another great article on how social media is helping small businesses gain customers. In CNN Money’s article”Tweeting for Profit” by Jennifer Alsever (6/15/2009), several businesses provided examples of how using tools like Twitter helped their business.

Twitter success is on the minds of several small retail businesses in Wichita, Kansas. In particular, the 52 Teas @52 Teas gained bragging rights of doubling sales of its handcrafted teas of the week since it started tweeting. Upon announcing on Twitter, its weekly new blends, the company now boasts 3,403 user followers. Frank Horbelt, 38, founder of the company says that in 2007, he shipped only one or two packages every two or three weeks, presently the company sends 52 packages a week.

Ashley Cole, Operations Manager, of Mission Pie Bakery @Mission Pie, in San Francisco reports, “If there’s a special and I tweet about it, it’s pretty common that we sell out.” Sending tempting tweets about its seasonal organic pies reinforced and expanded @Mission’s Personal Brand. The business gained a lot from the exposure and continues to do so.

We have learned that the use of  social media can help you outpace any well-established competitor and strengthen your relationship with your customers. If you would like to learn more, please contact us.

Do you believe that social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, and others are for kids? Many small business owners do and think that they should stay away. But a recent Neilsen study of Twitter uncovered:

Twitterers (a.k.a. Tweeters) are not primarily teens or college students as you might expect. In fact, in February the largest age group on Twitter was 35-49; with nearly 3 million unique visitors, comprising almost 42 percent of the site’s audience. We found that the majority of people visit Twitter.com while at work, with 62 percent of the combo unique audience accessing the site from work only versus 35 percent that accessed it from home only.

Here is a chart included in their study with the data:

So if you are selling to adults, Twitter just might make sense for you to use as a channel. With the rapid growth in use of Twitter (even Oprah uses it), it’s a channel you shouldn’t ignore…

We’ve been actively searching for success stories for small businesses using social media. As part of our search, we found this great story on activerain.com, a real estate blog! What attracted us initially was the focus on a wine show in Boston… but we were pleasantly surprised to read how the author and a small business owner both benefited by using Twitter!

Here’s the story: A Fun Twitter Success Story! Gary Vaynerchuk Comes to Boston.

We especially liked this part of the story:

This just goes to show the power of Twitter and how it goes beyond people seeing that you’re currently eating a cheeseburger. The true power of Twitter has yet to be uncovered. I mean in this case I got $350 in free passes and Gary saved $1,500. This all started with one simple tweet.

Twitter is quickly becoming a place where business gets done. Don’t miss the opportunity to use this resource before it becomes a pay-per-account service for businesses.