SmallBusinessNewz

Hopefully you're not thinking, "Oh no, not another Twitter article." Frankly, I wouldn't blame you, because we are all certainly bombarded with everything Twitter. But when you're running a small business, it's not really something that should be ignored.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone posted on the Twitter blog about how a lot of restaurants are using Twitter to get business. He points to an article from his hometown newspaper that discusses this topic.

"Small businesses—in this case restaurants—using Twitter as a low cost way to connect with patrons and ultimately improve profits," says Stone. "This quote is awesome, 'You don’t need technology to be spreading your message on Twitter.' Well, you do need a bit of technology but not that much, it's true. With a chalkboard and a mobile phone you can boost business."

The article Stone references talks about restaurants using Twitter to post daily specials, lure customers with free appetizers, etc.

Marketing through Twitter has not always been viewed as an especially positive thing by users. This is especially true, once you get into paid Tweeting, but the fact that Twitter the company is openly condoning what these restaurants are doing makes the concept of marketing through Twitter seem all the more acceptable. It is important to remember that receiving tweets is totally opt-in, so it's not like sending unsolicited spam email. Consumers are essentially subscribing to the messages you want to give them.

Restaurants are of course, only an example of a type of business that can use Twitter to put out special offers and what have you, but they do seem to make for good examples. Remember this pizza place we talked about a while back?

Or this baker?

Beyond marketing, Twitter is also an effective reputation management tool, and has even been shown as a way to save money. And we know it can be a tremendous source of web traffic. However, you might even be getting more traffic than you realize. Search engine marketing guru Danny Sullivan explains why in this video we recently ran on WebProNews:

More WebProNews Videos

When it comes down to it, Twitter is a free tool that can serve multiple purposes for a small business, and the more tools the better. On top of that, Twitter is a medium that is growing in popularity.