With the economy already squeezing small businesses one underutilized tool is an advertising and marketing equalizer. Even the smallest entrepreneur can compete with the corporate giants on Twitters fair playing field. Everyone starts on Twitter with zero followers, zero tweets and generic background to build from. A Free tool with almost twenty-five million daily visitors can promote your product or service.

Twibs the Twitter business directory is a great place to start to size up your competition and learn from their failure or success in garnering followers. You can search the business index either alphabetically or by keywords to find relevant information. Look at Twitter bios and their following statistics then go to their profile page to see what is working or not working for those in your field of business. From @Oprah with 1,019,191 followers to @bead4you with 173 followers a wide range of celebrity brands and businesses can be found in the directory.

After you have completed your research there are several basic rules you will want to follow when getting started. Do not begin by tweeting a hard sales pitch 42% of Twitterers polled said it was the main reason to unfollow. If you are unsure how to get started review other businesses for ideas for a tweet stream that will work for you. Next have a custom background designed to display your business logo and carry your branding in to a social media forum. Your Template can contain both text and images so consider adding your URL, email and product images.

Insure your first are tweets conversational with video links, news links, humor or famous quotes. If you sell travel packages provide links to hotel reviews or links to growing tips if you sell plants. By following twitterers that follow your competition they will already have an interest in products or services you are marketing. Start slowly inserting sales tweets into your daily conversation and monitor changes in your following totals then adjust your Tweets to encourage follower grow.

Begin researching your competition, brand your background, Tweet and interact with your following. Create tweets with information that will encourage your following to check your postings daily. Give your followers coupons, discounts, promotion alerts and links to items. Your impact on Twitter will be directly proportional to the time you invest on building and keeping your following interested.