Business cards are important, very important. They represent you when you’re not around to represent yourself. If you think about them this way, you need to make sure that you choose the right business card to hand out to prospects. Select a design, color and style that best reflects your business. For instance, if your business deals with the avant-garde set, use radical elements in them. If your business takes pride in being traditional, choose the old-fashioned white ones with standard block lettering. Include a call-to-action or special offer on the back side of your card, so people actually use your card, instead of setting it aside and forgetting all about it.

One of the worst things you can do when marketing is to throw advertising in the air and hope it will stick. Nothing gets accomplished that way. For example, if you plan to advertise on a specific website or in a trade publication, make sure your advertising speaks directly to the target audience of that particularly publication. Never use the same generic ad across the board and expect stellar results.

Crowd-sourcing is a unique form of outsourcing. It works by calling on your friends, fans, followers, email subscribers, etc. to contribute ideas and solutions. Basically, it is a form of “group intelligence”.

By listening to the crowd, marketers and business owners can figure out the exact thoughts, needs, and wants of their customer base. In this way, innovative new ideas and strategies are born that are guaranteed to fall in line with the desires of the consumer.

By directly asking your followers what type of new software they’d like to see developed, or what their biggest setbacks are, or what they liked/disliked most about your last ebook, you can gain an incredibly amount of insight about your business!

Twitter provides a perfect platform for crowd-sourcing.

Just like with an email list, Twitter can be used to build up excitement about an upcoming service and/or service and/or product launch. It can start with occasional Tweets about your “new project”, and by keeping your followers up to date and offering freebies and cool stuff that they’ll appreciate, you’ll build trust and anticipation. When your service and/or service and/or product launches, a well-timed Tweet may likely be just as effective as a blast to your email list.

“BUILD A LIST!” As a marketer, I’m sure you’ve heard this refrain many times over. Building a list is one of the most vital steps you can take in the advancement of your online business. Twitter is pretty much the same as building a list – although it might be even more effective in the long run.

When it comes to an email list, a large portion of your subscribers won’t even glance at the emails you send. Their eyes will glaze over and they may even send it to the trash. With Twitter, your followers will see all of your Tweets. They’ll digest its information in about half a second and if you include a link, they probably won’t get offended.

Chances are, if you included an eye-catching description, they’ll probably click it! Additionally, it won’t SEEM like you are marketing to them, because you’re just another Twitter user tweeting about random stuff!

Don’t forget to integrate your Twitter activities into your other marketing tactics. Include a link to your Twitter profile on your website, in your email signature and also in any relevant communications and marketing messages. Twitter is about building a community and that happens when your marketing tactics are designed to support each other and ultimately provide value to your audience.

Twitter is a great tool for identifying potential partnerships. You will find when you’re interacting that you connect well with some people. If they work in a complimentary business, consider approaching them with a partnership offer. Likewise as you establish credibility and attract attention on Twitter, expect that others will contact you with potential partnerships and opportunities.

We’ve just covered several effective and actually quite straightforward ways to use Twitter to drive both traffic and profits. That being said, you’re a busy entrepreneur. You want to make the most of your time, money and energy. You want to optimize your Twitter efforts for the most traffic and profits possible. That’s what this next and final section addresses.

There’s a strategy many internet marketers use. It involves publishing content that offers part of a solution to a problem and includes a call to action that leads to a complete solution. The call to action is subtle and not aggressive. Merely a “Visit LINK to learn more about…” type of link.

The link then leads to a sales page for a service and/or service and/or product or service. You can use Twitter to promote the content and drive traffic to that content and thus ultimately to your sales page.

Use Twitter to build your opt in list before you launch a new service and/or service and/or product or service. You can accomplish this by offering a free giveaway and teasing it on Twitter with a link to the opt-in page. You can also publish a blog post or article with a call to action in the article that sends readers to an opt-in page. Tease and link to the content on Twitter and watch your list grow.

Consider making a special offer to your Twitter followers. For example, if you’re releasing a new service you can give your Twitter follower 10% off if they send you a direct message or a reply with the word #yourbusinessname in the message. Not only do you generate more awareness for your offer you’ll also generate sales for that new service and ultimately profits.

You can limit the offer to add scarcity to it as well. For example, limit the promotion to the first 100 who reply or retweet.