City Hall Workshop Helps Entrepreneurs Boost Business With Twitter
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Small business owners packed a city-run class Friday morning on using Twitter to help their companies thrive.
WBBM Newsradio Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports it was like "Tweeting 101."
The "Twitter for the Technologically Challenged" workshop at City Hall showed Mark Gray how he can better showcase electricity-saving products from his energy-auditing business.
"Putting those products onto a site that makes it very accessible, and easy for someone to understand, then that helps out a lot," he said.
City Helps Small Businesses Profit From Twitter
Ayanna Harris, a former math teacher, runs Ms. Harris' Math Class, a website where she sells math curriculum to current teachers. She came looking for ways social media can help her business and expand her client base.
"I would like to be able to broaden my customer base, by not just addressing the needs of teachers, but addressing the needs of parents and students," she said.
Workshop instructor Brandon Lewin, a vice president at Image Perspective, said Twitter can do just that.
"It can take a business from nowhere to everywhere in such a small period of time," he said.
He said businesses need to get up and tweeting to help themselves get noticed.
"If you're consistent, if go with the right approach, you have a strategy and a good plan behind you, it can do phenomenal things for businesses," Lewin said.
Penny Chelios, sister of retired Blackhawks star Chris Chelios, is a licensed massage therapist with a new Twitter account. She came into the workshop without a clue what to do with Twitter, but a desire to find customers.
"It's great, because it's a casual setting and you can ask all the questions you want. The instructors have been great," she said.
She was one of the most inquisitive participants at Friday's workshop.
"I don't know a whole lot about social media, so I'm investigating that now, because … I'm a clinical massage therapist. I work at the Union League Club downtown," she said. She learned ways Twitter might help her strike out on her own.
Gray said he learned his Twitter contacts need a website to visit to learn more about his energy audit business.
"What I realize is you have different customers. Some, they're more visual … and some, they just read a lot, so that helps out a lot."
The city's Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection runs a variety of workshops every week.
