Hashtag This

Social media is a good way to promote yourself and your shop. There are tons of different sites out there. Which one should you spend the time and effort cultivating?

(Previous posts: Pinterest. Blogging.)

Twitter seems to get all the press lately. Hashtag this. Live tweet that. But what is Twitter?

Twitter is a place where you have 140 characters to express a thought, idea, or link to an audience. Tweets (that thing you express in those 140 characters) are all public, so anyone with a Twitter account (and even those without) can see any tweet you write.

Tweets are easy. You just input them into the site or your smartphone, hit "Tweet" and you're good to go.

But tweets are also short and quick, so they're easily lost in the general noise of the internet. You can look at the best times to tweet, but even then your tweet won't get a lot of views for more than a few minutes.

Twitter is best used for things other than promoting your shop, anyway. While it's good to link to it, I find that people who only tweet self-promoting links soon get dropped from my following list. I prefer people who tweet thoughts and things that are going on with them.

Twitter is also for interactions. It's great to respond to someone who posts a random tweet and then get a conversation going.

If I had planned this post a bit more, I would have asked you all to send me your Twitter handles to include here. But I can include the team Twitter: @CCCOE. And I ask you all to include your Twitter handle in the comments, so I can follow you.

Are you on Twitter? What's your Twitter name? Do you find that Twitter helps promote your shop?

This post contributed by Liz A. from Zizi Rho Designs who does "have a Twitter" @ZiziRho, but uses it more for random student quotes than for promoting the shop.