Ahhhh, Twitter.  You thought Google rose quickly and then MySpace what is pulling in 230,000 users a day.  The man behind the Evolution of Dance displayed that YouTube has greater distribution power than NBC, CBC and Fox COMBINED!

For the first time in history, we as the average American can truly have a freedom of speech that is entirely uncensosed and broadcast to millions.   I mean it, millions.

Twitter is yet another hugely successful Internet idea.  It started as a concept for an internal solution at a corporation, now Barack Obama is following me, Scott Gallagher.  I know that Lance Armstrong slept well last night because he told me this morning.  My clients who follow me found out this morning that I’m visiting a large Internet Marketing conference this evening.  They see updates that I’m on the hill snowboarding.  Do they really care?  Probably not, however perception is reality.  They get value on occasion from resources that I tweet about however they also build a relationship with me, albeit virtual, that is unknown in the traditional business world.

People buy People.  They don’t want to be sold, they want to buy.  A Chiropractor, for argumentative sake, is not much different than the chiropractor down the street, in terms of their services.  However their personality is likely very different.  Their patients will buy from the first doctor because of their relationship with them.

Courier service, a not so complex service.  You pick up a package and deliver it on time.  There are 300 couriers in Chicago.  Besides branding, there is very little distinguishing factors among couriers.  Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and now Twitter allow you build those relationships online and take them offline.

If you don’t think this works, ask the Industry Guru from Hot Shot Delivery in Houston.  Past president of the Texas Courier and Logistics Association, Eric Donaldson tweets from his blackberry in his car (at red lights of course), office and maybe sometimes or places in his home.  He has followers and building a local audience to take relationships offline to make some money from a business that is one of the oldest industries ever.

The goal is to find locals that are talking about the products and services you offer.  Once you find these people, start following them on Twitter.  About half the people you follow, will follow you.  Once someone is following you, you now have permission to tweet them, friend them, drive them offline and market to them.

I’ll use the example of Eric in Houston.  Eric should go to Twitter and do a search for ‘houston’.  This will bring up all the tweets where anyone has mentioned ‘Houston’.  These might be locals, but at the least have an interest in Houston.  He’ll look at each of the 100′s of profiles and determine whether he should follow them.  If they are active, several hundred posts, and they appear to offer business dialect, a close to 50/50 split of followers and followings with more than 50 followers, Eric should friend him.   Then wait three days.

After three days, if they have not followed you, stop following them.  Unless you are really concerned about marketing to them, you don’t want too many people you follow who don’t follow you.  Oh, follow Barack Obama, then he can spy on what you are saying…   Check out this tool, Twitter Karma.  Log into this with your Twitter username and you can easily see who is following you and compare it to whether you are following them.  Then make batch updates.  So simple!

There is awesome third party tool to help.  It’s called Tweet Later.  Click on the link to check it out.  This program, which has a free no credit card trial for 3 weeks, allows you to set up auto-responders.  This means that when someone follows you, this system will automatically send them a tweet from you welcoming them.  You can also include a link to perhaps an article you wrote, a cool tool they might enjoy or your website.

With this program, you can set it up to send Tweets at a later time, or scheduled.  It is very robust for the local business to market themselves through Twitter.

A final tool I’ll discuss that I use is called Tweet Deck.  It’s a piece of software that you install on your computer that allows you manage your tweets from your desktop, rather than the web based Twitter system.  I love it, except for the annoying tweet sound every 15 minutes!

So, use keywords that are relevant to your geographical location, your service and a combination of both.  Start following.  Tweet A LOT.  Make it interesting, funny, slightly controversial.  Retweet others.  Unfollow those who aren’t following you.  Add an auto-responder.  Tweet to send people offline.  To an email list.  Do this for one month, 30 minutes a day.  You will get results.