Twitter can be a great marketing tool if you are in the local B2B niche. That's because there are heaps of "bricks and mortar businesses" on Twitter, with more joining all the time. And they're very easy to find.

If you're new to the site, the first thing you should do after filling in your profile, adding a good photo and racking up some actual tweets, is to follow some good local accounts. 

You can get cracking on this simply by using Twitter as a search engine, and defining the location. This will get the ball rolling. 

Eventually you'll have to turn to your actual network for more accounts to follow. Because tweeps often follow businesses and individuals in their city, you just have to look at the lists of those who follow them and you'll find heaps. 

A good place to start is with accounts like Tweet Perth, and Freo Cookster. They have a lot of local followers, many of whom are businesses. Another way is to find big government organizations and corporate accounts that are based in this city. Examples include Transperth and Perth Zoo.

You can flip that approach on its head and look at the lists that local business related accounts are following. An example might be Pamphlets1. 

If you're in the hospitality and entertainment niches, you'll have a very long list before you know it. After all, there are an awful lot of cafes, restaurants and bars on Twitter. If you supplied this industry you'd be crazy not to join the site and get active. 

You'll find that about a third of the ones you follow will follow you back. (Actually, you can see this ratio in action on this very account.)

Then you just have to get on their radar. Retweet, follow, and mention them occasionally and they're sure to see you. Gradually the followers will come. Many tweeps still look at your website, regardless of whether they end up following you. And even if they don't do that they still know your business name and what you do. 

And remember that these people are usually the decision makers for those businesses. So one day when they are thinking about purchasing products and services in your niche they may well consider you. Now this wouldn't be happening if you weren't on Twitter. 

Sure, you could do this on other social sites. But I think Twitter is best for this because it's so fast and direct.

I have found that posting photos on Twitter works well (as it does on all social media sites). So consistently adding them is a good idea. You'll see that the cafes and restaurants are always posting mouth-watering shots of latest creations. But you could do this in any field.

Asking questions is also recommended. Maybe post a shot of something you're fixing, then ask your following on their thoughts on whether they've had the same problem. The key is to get them replying. And you should of course reply to their replies. 

Say you have a pest control business. You could ask other businesses what their most persistent problem is. 

And remember: Don't sell. Just ask.

Tips are always good. They help you build authority. And people like to retweet them too. Maybe you could offer tips from a local angle. There must be many things you'd do differently in Perth's dry climate for example ... 

Having this website and using it to generating my own income has been a challenging but very worthwhile experience. I've noticed is that if you go from being an employee for most of your life to having your own business, you will almost certainly change your attitude to the way workplaces are run. You tend to have a lot more sympathy for employers than beforehand. 

For example, up until a few months ago, I had a part time job in an office, as a back up more than anything else. As is the case in pretty much every workplace, this one had some shocking time wasters who would spend half their time chatting loudly to each other and giggling stupidly.

These people had always annoyed me. But since starting my own little business their behaviour got to me even more. I'm not an aggressive person by any means, but I even reached the point of snarking curtly at them a couple of times.

Maybe I've been going overboard with this feeling, but I've even noticed it in other contexts. For example, I was in a cafe recently. One of the waitresses spent ages talking to some customers she knew personally, even sitting down with them for a few minutes at a time. I was in there for at least an hour (actually working on one of my blogs). And she must have been loudly yammering away for half of that time at least. Sure, the venue wasn't super busy. But there was certainly work to be done.

I didn't say anything, of course. But I was annoyed by the fact that the other cafe staff were working hard, yet getting paid no more than this talkative waitress. It's not fair on them, I thought. It was also not fair on the employer. He was wasting money on this employee, and others like her. He would have been working hard, coping with a lot of stress to keep the whole show on the road.

I've really noticed this change because even though I've always frowned on people who were lazy, I've never found myself sympathizing with eeevil capitalists before. Like so many people I tended to fall back on the old "workers are always the victims" line. Not anymore. 

Obviously there are many cases in which the boss is the greedy bad guy. But most business people are not like that at all, I think. Just as they want to make a profit, they take pride in creating work and income for their employees and treating them well.

Still, I can understand why they are generally so misunderstood. Few people make the leap of starting their own business. Most are lifelong employees as opposed to employers. They have no investment -- economic or emotional -- in the companies they work for. They just show up to put in the hours and then go home. Sure, that's calming in one way because they can just shut off emotionally after leaving. But it can make for a boring life, in my opinion. 

I think it's much better to be committed to something and creating your own work. If you do, you wake up in the morning knowing that it's up to you to deliver a service. That's invigorating. It's daunting in one way because you can easily wind up working too hard. If you become over committed you can become a kind of slave. But in the end you do call the shots. And you can cut back on the work if you like. It's a much better position to be in.

While their are huge potential pitfalls, I think that having your own business just better for you all round emotionally. You feel much more a master of your own destiny. It gives you a greater sense of purpose; a stronger sense of who you are. Also, you keep coming up against your own inner barriers. If you just work for someone else for ages that tends not to happen. You don't actually develop as much. For this reason I wish I'd discovered this way of earning a living much earlier in life.  

There's a widely held belief that if you offer internet-related products and/or services then you should do all your advertising online. Common sense dictates that this medium should be your main focus. But I wouldn't forget the old methods. There are some situations in which offline promotion is just as good as online, and sometimes even better.

For example, if you want highly geo-targeted traffic, then offline easily equals organic SEO and paid search marketing. You can even make it more laser targeted if you like. Even the best PPC programs usually only get you down to city level -- at least in Australia. But with a local flyer run, you can go street by street. Sure, you'll be paying more for each click. But if being super-local increases the odds that you'll make sales (and it often does) then this extra cost is worth it.

There's another scenario in which offline promotion of a website can be excellent: That's if you offer internet-related services, but you want to target people who are not heavily into the net. 

This site is an example. I show Perth locals how to use social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. Of course it's worth sharing details of my classes on these very sites because the more people who know about them the better. And someone who's learned about me this way might tell a friend or colleague. 

Still, its extremely unlikely that I'm going to get leads directly from, say, Twitter. That's because if they're on that site already they don't need to be taught how to use it. 

There must be lots of other net-centric products and services in which this same situation applies. Technical trouble shooting and PC hardware repair come to mind. After all, if someone's computer is broken they won't be able to surf the net for someone to repair it! But if they receive a flyer in their letterbox at such a time they'll be very pleased to get it and highly likely to call the number provided. 

Other services that are heavily used by business and industry such as web hosting, cloud computing and business management software can also be effectively promoted offline. Flyer drops focusing on industrial areas can be very effective. 

In this computer dominated society, our reliance on technology inevitably presents a huge range of business opportunities. Helping others with their technical troubles is one of the most obvious ones, and many people already make a good living offering such services in this city. As well as the many sole operators and small outfits there are several mid-sized companies that offer call out technical assistance. 

But there's one sub-section of this market that I think is not well catered to (if not largely untapped). And this is to offer one on one tuition to people struggling with their devices, or to those who have bought brand new ones but simply don't know where to start. 

There is definitely a substantial and constant demand for this kind of help. I am sure of this because I know someone who used to offer such services. He said he never had trouble getting leads -- quite often just a few pull-tab ads on shopping centre noticeboards would do the trick. Also, he got much of his business from referrals.

Then there's my own experience: I distribute flyers for the services included on this site. Even though they are specifically for lessons in social media and SEO, a surprising number of people call asking for hardware and software help, or just wanting to know how to perform basic computer skills. These people tend to be in the older age bracket.

Clearly there are a lot of desperate people out there. And they want expert helpers to come to see them in their homes a lot of the time. Yes, there are workshops that seniors and others can go to at libraries and businesses (I think Officeworks offers such classes from time to time). But some older people have mobility issues. And others just don't like that group class structure. They much prefer one on one assistance. 

This phenomenon is clearly related to our ageing population. While youngsters have never known what life was like without the internet, smart phones, and Facebook, there are still millions of people for whom all this stuff is still comparatively new, and therefore somewhat intimidating. 

And helping such people with their tech issues is not as straightforward as it might seem. That's because there's often a lot of emotion involved. As we all know, computers can be exasperating. And for an older person who's quite emotionally delicate, such frustration can be deeply stressful.

Being a guide for these people is not a job that just anyone can do well. After all, there are many people who can fix a PC. But teaching a stressed out senior how to use their computer -- or smart phone, for that matter -- requires patience and understanding. You have to be a bit like a social worker. 

This is something I would focus on myself if I were more of a tech-head. But while I certainly know my way around most desktops, laptops, social networks and some blogging and website building platforms I am definitely not a "geek". And quite frankly I find a lot of that stuff really boring. I much prefer teaching people the tactical skills of producing good content, and promoting it on social media. 

But if you are super confident with hardware, software, and technical issues, as well as having a good "bedside manner" then there's certainly an endless amount of work out there for you. You should really go for it, in my opinion. 

Needless to say, many of the people you'll be helping won't be rich, so charging top dollar would be a bad tactic. But once you solve their problems for them you're sure to get a lot of repeat and referral business as a result. So, after you've been at it a while, I doubt you'll have to spend an awful lot on advertising to keep going. That's certainly not the case with a lot of other business models. 

I have really been getting into Google Plus lately. It's an awesome social network with many great features.

I've spoken to a few webmasters here who have said they're yet to join it. They say this is because even though it looks good there are hardly any other Perth people on it.

True, it hasn't really taken off yet in Australia. But it certainly has done so globally. So, slowly but surely more and more people in this country will sign up and get involved. 

This is one of the reasons why it's a good idea to get into it now. You'll be on the ground floor, so to speak. You'll benefit from the momentum as people keep joining.

I've noticed this with my own personal account. Over 600 hundred people have me in circles already. And every day, new people are circling me. While some of these are returning the favour after I have circled them, most have not. They're just finding me from my activity on the site -- particularly in the communities.

On that aspect of Google+: People are very engaged in these discussions. The quality of information exchanged is high, certainly better than in Facebook groups and even on the same section of Linkedin.

If you intend signing up, that's where I would put most of my energy at the beginning. Discussions are a great way of getting seen by lots of other users. You can participate in them as yourself, or as your business. (This is a real advantage over Facebook. On that site, business pages are not allowed to join the groups.) 

Unfortunately there are only a couple of locally oriented Google Plus communities now. But there will surely be more in time. And there are numerous globally oriented ones that are immense and going gangbusters. Participating in them will help you grow your network quickly.

With lots of quality people and businesses circling you and receiving your updates you'll rack up those valuable "plus ones" at a faster rate than you would normally. Your engagement with them will hugely increase the odds of getting voluntary one way links from relevant websites, too. Both these things improve SEO. 

There are other search benefits that this network can bestow, particularly when it comes to local optimization. Then there are the many advantages of authorship markup. 

If you're in this city and have a business, taking in active part in this brilliant social network is highly recommended.