Why Twitter Is a Big Win for Small Businesses

Not every small business will find these results, but Chanel Huston, owner of Boutique de Bandeaux, an Etsy shop selling handmade couture-inspired hair accessories for thick, curly and kinky natural hair, says her business has tripled since she started using Twitter to find customers and promote her business.

"I noticed that between the four-month period before I started using Twitter and the four-month period after I started using it, my sales tripled," Huston says.

"I was on a message board for natural hair first, called Black Hair Media, and it turned out that a lot of the girls were on Twitter," Huston says. "Once I got on Twitter, I found out that there was a big natural hair community that would meet and give tips and secrets to each other.”

"Twitter helps me find the people who are actually going to be interested in my products, who have the disposable income to spend on them and have the hair type that’s going to be appropriate for my products," she says.

“Finding people on Twitter is actually easy, if tedious at the start, she says. "I started by making announcements on the message board that I frequented to let everybody know that they could now follow me on Twitter. After that, she went looking for Twitter users that have a target audience similar to hers and become a "follower."

Now she says she has a little over 3,000 followers, and for the most part, she responds personally to all incoming tweets.

There’s a lot of temptation to follow everyone, but avoid the temptation, she says. If you sell children’s clothes, for example, add people who are following parenting magazines or are in parenting groups.

Why Twitter Is a Big Win for Small Businesses