As a small-business owner, it’s up to you to find inspiration and stay informed on what’s going on in the working world beyond your doors. That’s where Twitter can be useful. Follow the right people and your feed will become a bounty of important news and sage advice condensed into easily digestible 140-character hits.
To get you started, here are seven great feeds to follow.
Entrepreneur Magazine has been covering go-getters for four decades, and its Twitter feed is loaded with links to its articles and breaking entrepreneurial news. You’ll find inspiring success stories, smart business tips, and valuable research broken down by experts. It’s a one-stop shop for small business ideas, advice and information.
This is the guy who gave us the One Minute Manager back in the early 1980s. He’s since updated it and published plenty of other smart business books, too. His Tweets tend to revolve around concepts focused on leadership, including employee motivation, setting goals, and tips for first-time managers. These are interspersed with rousing Tweets about the power of positive thinking and maintaining a good attitude.
A former venture capitalist, this Toronto-based thought leader now gives business talks and works with the Future Design School to help develop young entrepreneurs. On any given day, you’ll likely find her Twitter feed filled with provocative ideas ranging from the concept of creativity being a teachable skill, to multiculturalism serving as a powerful and positive force in growing a business.
Serial innovator Nilofer Merchant writes for publications including Time and the Harvard Business Review, and gave a popular TED talk about how turning short one-on-one meetings into walking meetings is the best way to let ideas flow. Her Twitter feed is loaded with condensed nuggets of wisdom, such as: “No original ‘big idea’ ever starts out that way. It starts out with one person seeing something only they see.”
The respected business site’s Twitter feed is updated every few minutes with information about all things business, from retail trends to the reasons employees are quitting their jobs today more quickly than ever. Some Tweets won’t apply to your particular company, but the sheer volume of entrepreneurial information the feed generates on a daily bases means you can be sure many will.
This best-selling author, and expert on social media and marketing, loves to connect with and help entrepreneurs. Try contacting him and you’ll almost certainly get a response. His feed is packed with tips, both his own and those of others he thinks worth sharing. Follow him to learn his rules for making the most of influencer marketing, find out what “part time abundance” means and discover some leadership lessons from a UPS driver.
The official Twitter account for Startup Canada – an organization dedicated to creating entrepreneurial networks and providing opportunities for people starting businesses – is chalk full of important information that SMB owners need to know, such as what to do about business insurance and why you should think big but start small. It also hosts regular startup chats on Twitter, during which anyone can ask business questions and get prompt, knowledgeable answers.
This article was original posted on Rogers Business Forum.
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