According to a Wall Street Journal article by Dana Mattioli, small businesses are increasingly using the social messaging utility as an online marketing tool.

She cited the example of website building firm Moonfruit, which until recently had around 400 followers on Twitter.

Bosses at the firm, which is based in London, launched a contest on the micro-blogging site and, a few days later, it had 47,000 Twitter followers and traffic to its homepage had risen by 1,300 per cent.

The competition saw the business give away ten Apple MacBook Pros over the course of a week to people who posted creative 'tweets' that included the word Moonfruit.

Social media consultant Dan Zarrella said: "People like free stuff and you can often motivate them to do a lot for it."

If you want to make the most of the online advertising opportunities that come with social media, you should let go of your inhibitions and get involved, Olivier Blanchard of brand-building firm Greenville recently said in the Spartanburg Herald Journal.

You can follow bright angels on Twitter at twitter.com/brightangels

Source: Business Womens Cafe

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