Can Twitter really help your business? Or is it just another place on the web to waste time.

This is something I get asked all the time by clients, prospective clients and just about anyone else I meet and chat with. Heck, my mom called me a few weeks ago just to ask me, “what is Twitter?” So if it’s reaching my mom, who is somewhat computer savvy, it’s probably something we all want to figure out how to interact with.

But the question still remains – can Twitter help your business?

The answer…well, yes…and…no.

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The internet is almost magical. 

Think about it…you put up a few pages of text on a website and you have the potential for a business. People can view your site, read your copy and decide if they want to work with you. And blogs make it even more magical. You can easily write more content and your visitors can engage you and create conversation – increasing the possibilities that they might work with you.

Yet while the internet is magical, for many it provides false hope. So many business owners and service providers believe that simply having a website or blog alone will generate more clients. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Launching a blog or website – on its own – may not change your business at all.

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Most of the the small business owners I work focus an abundant of time on their marketing. They put tons of effort into crafting their marketing message, polishing their marketing funnel and fine-tuning how they generate leads. And often, they do so before any of this produces new clients.

Marketing your business is a really good idea, don’t get me wrong. However you choose to do it, marketing is a vital part of your business. As a matter of fact, marketing your services is something I teach my clients to do more effectively every day.

Yet I find that there’s a hole in the thinking that “all you need to do is effectively market your business.”

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Susan is a life coach. She’s been working with clients ever since she received her certification. First with a few friends and later with the referrals her friends sent her. Of course one of those referrals taught her about marketing and helped her get a website up. Everything seemed to be going great.

Now, three years later, she’s struggling to get enough clients. She seems to get just enough clients to keep afloat. However she’s not fully replaced what she made at her day job.

Yet, she’s self-employed. She runs her own business. Or does she?

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Yesterday I had an interesting, but short, conversation on Twitter where I said, “The key to a successful small business – find a highly specific, targeted niche and dominate it!” And I meant every word.

I work with business owners all the time who aren’t sure about what they want, what they’re doing or where they’re going. Nothing wrong with that at all. After all, unless your expertise is in small business development or marketing, there’s little reason to think you’d have a solid understanding of how to structure and grow a business.

Yet one thing that thatseems to set successful small business owners apart from those who aren’t is their mindset.

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Niche market is one of those buzz terms that gets thrown around a lot. Just about any marketing book, article or blog post worth its weight talks about niche marketing. It’s so prevalent that most small business owners would say they’ve heard the term.

But just knowing about the term niche marketing doesn’t mean you know what niche marketing really is. Or how it applies to your business.

Most service-based business professionals I work with and talk to have some idea of niche market. Often, they think of it as the group of people their business serves or the market they target their services for. And while it’s true that your market is who you sell your products and services too, it doesn’t mean you’re selling to a niche market.

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A few days back I asked the question, is email marketing dead? The conversation that sparked had a range of opinions. Some felt it is dead, some that it’s very much alive. Others agreed that it’s evolving. Read the comments and add your two cents, if you like.

One side conversation that developed from ask whether email marketing is dead was whether email marketing is a form of interruption marketing.

Personally, I think it is. So let’s begin on the same foot by defining interruption marketing. Basically, interruption marketing is any tactic used to market anything that works only if they (the marketers) interrupt your life to get� your attention. In other words, interruption marketing is just that – it interrupts you and what you’re doing and steals away your time.

If we consider email marketing in that light, how is it not a form of interruption marketing?

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