The stories on how twitter has successfully stayed in business without making any money never end. Nor do the conversations we have with clients about why they should bother with twitter ever seem to end as well. We were glad to come across an article at The Register on Dell raking in $3 million through their @DellOutlet Twitter feed.
The stories on how twitter has successfully stayed in business without making any money never end. Nor do the conversations we have with clients about why they should bother with twitter ever seem to end as well. We were glad to come across an article at The Register on Dell raking in $3 million through their @DellOutlet Twitter feed.

Obviously $3 million is not even a drop in the bucket compared to Dell's global operations, but that isn't the point. If you look at the resources needed for Dell run its twitter feed, you're looking at close to a $3 million profit. How? Quite simply because all it takes is an intern to make the posts and link it to specials Dell already offers.

To bring things closer to home we see a few ways for smaller/local businesses to leverage twitter for profit

1.  Honey I shrunk the blog: If you already have a corporate blog, take the best parts an post it to twitter. It will help build brand, but more people will read the content you spent so much time to create. Think Reduce / Reuse / Recycle when it comes to content.
2. Special du Jour: People are tuned into twitter multiple times a day. It's place to post fast paced info such as daily specials for your follower to take advantage of
3. Seach the Messenger : Twitter is filled with diamonds in the rough for businesses of all types. All you need to do is search for the problem you solve. A close friend of Evo Networks uses twitter to search for people posting about their website problems. Once he finds the posts that relate to products he sells he replies to all the posts with a link to his website for more information. It's simple, free, and takes about 10 min a day. No a bad way for highly targeted lead generation.

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