This week I wanted to talk to you about a simple yet effective way to spread your promotional messages to thousands of new prospects…Twitter!

In case you havenʼt heard about Twitter or donʼt know much about it yet, Twitter is a microblogging site that allows you to send short messages of 140 characters to less out to everyone who follows you.

On Twitter, you follow people of interest to you and they follow you. If you are going to use Twitter to gain business, I suggest you follow people in your area — start with clients but then move on from there to other local businesses.

Think of Twitter as a party. You donʼt show up at a party and only talk about yourself or your business, right? No, you engage in conversation. Ask leading questions to find out what people are doing. You also give information – a book your read or are reading, an article, a blog post your wrote or read, etc. that can help the person you are talking to with their problem. Same thing with Twitter.

Then mixed in with that line of conversation, you promote your business: post last minute cancelations, promotions/specials, blog posts, classes, etc.

Just to give you an example on how I have used Twitter — one week, I had several openings, so on Monday morning I posted this: “Openings this week: Tues at 5, Wed at 2 & Thurs at 10, need a massage call 703-851-6922, email or DM me.” I did all that in 103 characters and I was completely booked by the end of Monday.

So get tweetinʼ! If you havenʼt started a Twitter account yet, this video walks you through the steps.