When you want to start a business, it is really important to find niche markets which are profitable.

Twitter is a great way to find profitable niche markets.

There are many guidelines for finding niches, and of course, many times people make considered choices to disregard those guidelines.  But in general, to find niche markets you will look for:

• High demand.  You want to find a niche which has many searches for the service or product you are supplying.  Find out what people want. What are they looking for?  What do they need? Low demand can make building your business slow.
• Low supply.  The fastest way to profit is to find niches which are under-supplied.  If there is a lot of supply, this may indicate that a niche is particularly profitable and worthy of your business–or it may mean its over saturated.  Research a lot and make a considered decision.  You want a niche where people are desperate for a solution.
• Good monetization potential. You’re in business to make money and you want to be sure your niche is profitable.  Find a niche were people are willing to pay for their solutions.

How do you find these elusive perfect niches?

Twitter.

Twitter is a great way to find out what people are talking about.  It’s like listening in to hundreds of conversations at once.  You learn what people need, what they hate and what they love.

Twitter is a perfect tool to find niche markets.

To learn how to use twitter to find niche markets, read my hubpage “How to Find Niche Markets with Twitter“.  You will discover how to find the people talking about what you want to hear, and what to listen to.

Social Networking is the new thing.  Everyone has a is Facebooking, Twittering, and Linking-In.

What is social networking?

Here is quick video which explains it:

Social networking hold particular power for building your business when it is used to build a pool of people who share an interest in your product or service.  It’s a bit like a giant, e-expo with everyone who loves what you have.

The best explanation I have heard in using social networking, specifically Twitter, to build your business is Mike Klingler’s “How I Built my First Email List“.

Mike’s course is a 3 part course.  It explains why you want to build an email list, and what potential this holds for your business.

In the third video, Mike hits his stride and gives some amazing insights about how social networking holds huge potential for your business.  He explains tips and tricks to create a personable yet business-like presence on the net.  And most revealing, he shows how social networking can move beyond “what you had for dinner” to building a group of people interested in getting updates about your business.

If you have wondered about social networking and how it can help your business, this is the best explanation I have found.  With this video, you will be twittering and facebooking and watching your list of followers and friends grow.

Twitter is big.

The numbers are growing quickly and it seems like everyone has followers in the hundreds or thousands.

How did they get there?  How do you build your following when you may not even know anyone who twitters?

If you’re lucky enough to already have a client list that follows you on your website, then you’re golden.  Make a few posts about your new twitter account, and they’ll follow you.  Often the rich or famous can build a following quickly just by announcing it.  And often, they can be quite choosy about who they follow–only picking their dearest friends.

But if you’re like many people starting out and you are using twitter to build that following, you’ll need a different strategy.  You’ll need the “if I follow you, then you’ll follow me” plan.

I’ll Follow You and Hopefully You’ll Follow Me

To build your Twitter following, you’ll have to make the first move and join in some conversations with people you don’t know.  It’s a bit like being at a party, and standing in a circle of close friends listening in.  You smile at the right places and try to find an opening where you can contribute to the conversation.

Start by searching for the topic of your business at search.twitter.com For my site www.stress-free-mama.com I might start with “stress”, or “mothering” or the topic of a particular page.   This will find conversations people are having about that topic.

When you find results, click on the profile of the people tweeting, and see if they seem like someone you would like to know.

When I choose who to follow, I try to pick people that I may want to start a conversation with at a party.  For my stress site, I’d pick women, mothers, working mothers, or people juggling lots of activities.

When you find someone you want to follow, follow them. After following them, click on their followers in their profile.  You will have a group of people who are interested in the same person who interest you.  This will build your following in a more directed way.

For example, to build for www.compostheaven.com, I pick people interested in gardening conversations.  When I find a person with a big following who specializes in gardening, I usually check out their followers.

Make it your goal to follow 25 new people every night for 2 weeks.  At the end, you will be following 350 people.

Now the magic of twitter begins.

Many of those 350 people will follow you back.  And when they do, their followers will start to check you out.

Start tweeting right away.  If you are making good, friendly, business-like tweets during that time, both promoting yourself and providing helpful content, you will also get attention.  It feels funny to tweet to no one, but it’s good practice and when people click on your profile later, they will see what you have to offer.

Once people start following you, once a week check on your new followers.

Use the same criteria to choose if you want to follow back–are these people who are related to your business niche and who you would want to meet at a party?  If they are, follow them back.  If not, don’t.  There is no rule that says you must follow back, and you want to build a focused pool of followers for your business.

Local Businesses

If your business is a local one, try using Twitteraholic.com to find people in your city.

Twitteraholic.com gives your ranking on twitter.  Look up your twitter ranking, and when you find it, there is a link that compares you to others in your city.  Follow the people in your city and they may follow you back.

Who’s Really Moving and Shaking?

If your niche is looking for people who already have businesses, you may want to see if your followers are active with their business.  Sometimes a person’s website can show how developed their marketing plan is.

All twitter profiles have a website link.  I always click on that link to see who is doing what.

I use Firefox, and I have installed a handy extension which tells me the page rank and Alexa ranking of every page I visit.  Download SearchStatus for free, and you will get a tiny bar on the bottom of your browser with the page rank information.  I check this to quickly asses if a website is new or developed.  It’s not a fool-proof assesment, but it gives you an idea of what the person is doing.

Helping Your Business Friends and Associates

Not everyone uses Twitter for business, so when you know someone is building their business niche, help them out.  If you have a downline, let them know that you will always follow them.  This makes your followers available to them.

If you are reading this, send me a Direct Message and I’ll be sure to follow you.  We can all help each other get started.

Tweeting is big and using it for your marketing has huge potential.  Getting started is easy.  Go follow some people and start tweeting.

Twitterers don’t stay.  They tweet and then skedaddle.

According to Nielsen Online, the twitter retention rate is low, often below 30%.  This means that of the people that open a twitter account, 60%–and sometimes 70%–are not twittering the next month.  So far, twitter may be big, but the glow is gone quickly.

Unless twitter finds a way to keep its members, its phenomenal growth won’t be sustained.  Eventually, twitter will run out of new users to replace the old.

What Can Twitter Teach You in Your Business?

There are a couple of lessons that twitter can teach you for your business.

First, if you use twitter in your business for marketing, know that you are communicating with a changing crowd.  Know that the person who reads your tweets today, may not be reading them tomorrow.

And know that tomorrow, you may need to find a different way to communicate with your customers.  Twitter is big now, but the Internet changes quickly.  Watch, listen and stay flexible.  Be prepared to change with whatever the future brings.

The second lesson is even more important.

The only way for twitter, your business, or any business to truly grow is with a devoted, long-term audience.  Even a mega-star like twitter will not create block-busters if it can’t create loyalty.

To build a reliable, long term business, you must find your audience and speak to them in an authentic way.  If you really offer them something useful, and really tell a story they can relate to, you will be rewarded with their loyalty.  They will tell their friends and your business will grow in a sustainable way.   You may have a blockbuster, or you may not.  But either way, you will be around for a long time, and you will have been useful to your customers along the way.