If you have watched CNN lately or many other major News producing media you have probably heard the term “Twitter” being used more and more often. The news anchor will encourage you to  “tweet” on certain hot topics of the day by visiting one of their twitter web sites online. The popularity of this thing has grown extremely fast particularly in the United States but also World Wide.

“Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide by Alexa’s web traffic analysis.[5] Although estimates of the number of daily users vary because the company does not release the number of active accounts, a February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network[6] based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits.[6] In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a monthly growth of 1,382 percent, Zimbio of 240 percent, followed by Facebook with an increase of 228 percent.[7] However, only 40 percent of Twitter’s users are retained.[8]” source: Wikipedia

The numbers, although probably not completely accurate, make it pretty clear that Twitter is becoming a part of the daily function of thousands if not millions of people. So what is this all about and why does it matter for say the small restaurant business operating down the street?

Twitter is one of many free online services being used as a rapid communication platform. In a matter of seconds people can tell hundreds of their friends about anything they want in an extremely simple and functional online environment. Sites like Facebook and linked in go beyond the basic status messages of Twitter but they all share this concept of sending information to targeted people in an extremely efficient and user friendly way.

Now that you understand how it works I’m sure you are starting to see why these things have become so popular but understanding why this could be good for your business can be somewhat harder to grasp.

The most obvious reason is that it enables you to update your customers with news pertaining to your business easily. The fact is most people don’t visit your business web site on a regular basis no matter how appealing it may be. But when it comes to these free social media services the return visit rate is much much higher and therefor it is much easier to get the word out about your business event.

The next reason is something I like to call Chain Reaction Marketing. This is really what makes using these services such a huge benefit for basically any business trying to sell a product. Lets say for example someone puts their status on facebook as “Just had an amazing dinner at John Doe’s Restaurant!“. The 25 people on this persons friends list are instantly notified of this mini testimonial when they log in. Some of them read it and some of them don’t even notice. However 5 of them replied to it which then sends notifications to all the friends of these 5 individuals. The news spreads quickly and effectively to hundreds of people causing a chain reaction of events that can lead to a major increase in your business popularity within the community (with little effort or investment on your part). Your customers become the greatest salesperson you could ever have and they are doing it for free all through this social networking service!

As long as you keep your customers happy at all times and give them a reason to promote your business through these services Social Media Marketing will play a huge role in maintaining your reputation and encouraging new customers for future business.