The trend with most businesses these days is to gravitate towards Facebook as a main tool for their social media and marketing needs. But have you considered all that Twitter has to offer as well?

Twitter can be a powerful resource for your business once you learn to utilize all of its functionality. By using Twitter’s advanced search function, businesses can do their own market research and be able to reach more of their ideal customers. The often under utilized “Twitter Lists” allows you to organize Twitter into streams that you can check whenever you like to see what’s going on and what people are talking about. And when it comes to advertising, Twitter is not only very inexpensive, it offers a really unique feature that isn’t offered by any other social media platform.

Mark Schaefer is a globally recognized blogger, speaker, educator, business consultant, and author. He specializes in marketing strategy and social media workshops and his clients include both startups and global brands such as IBM, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Dell and Pfizer. He is the authority on all things Twitter and has shared with us practical tips to build influence and use Twitter as a competitive advantage.

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