Twitter has over 200 million active users creating over 400 million Tweets per day. That’s a lot of people and a lot of tweets.

For business owners, Twitter has become an important tool for distributing content, providing support to existing customers and proactively reaching out to potential customers.

To make its platform more attractive to businesses and brands, In 2012 Twitter began slowly rolling out its paid ads platform, however it was only made available to certain partners on an invite-only basis. This past April that all changed when Twitter announced that they would be making Twitter Ads available to all users in the U.S.

That means no matter how big or small your business is, and no matter how many followers you have, you can now start leveraging Twitter's paid service to amplify your Twitter presence, gain new followers, create more awareness about your business and drive more traffic to your website.

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Search engines and customers are smarter and savvier than ever before at sniffing out low-quality and spammy marketing techniques. Yet many companies still use antiquated marketing methods that are ineffective at best and downright dangerous at worst.  

Below are three of the worst marketing techniques for today's online environment – and what you should be doing instead.

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Right now your ecommerce store could have 5 deadly sales-killers you didn't even know existed. Fortunately, there's a lot of literature in the UX and eye-tracking space, and today you're going to get these insightful studies served up in laymen's terms, allowing you to incorporate their findings into your site's design and interface.

You'll see how seemingly minor aspects of your website can be huge determinants of how well your business performs. Let's get into the research by diving in to problem #1 with your online store:

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ABC's Shark Tank is currently one of the most popular shows on television.

Its premise is simple. Hopeful entrepreneurs go on the program and present their business idea to a panel of self-made millionaire investors (Sharks) in the hopes of getting an investment in exchange for a stake in their company.

Typically that interest comes in the form of an equity stake or royalty scenario, or sometimes both.

The demand to get on the show has never been higher due to the dramatic impact it can have on sales - a phenomenon that's become known as 'The Shark Tank Effect'.

It's not unusual for products featured on the show to experience up to a 700% increase in sales.

For example BuggyBeds went from being in 60 stores to being in 600 hundred stores with sales going from $150,000 to over $1,200,000 in the two months following their appearance on the show.

In other words, simply getting in front of over seven million weekly viewers can be all your business needs to reach its tipping point.

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Today we’re thrilled to announce the five winners of our Build-A-Business competition.

During the 8 months of the competition period, over 10,000 entrepreneurs created new online businesses that sold more than $55 million in products. The five new businesses that sold the most over any two months of the competition each win a $50,000 US investment.

We’re also sending each of the winners on a VIP trip to New York City to meet with the industry experts who served as mentors to the participants throughout the competition (Timothy Ferriss, Daymond John, Tina Roth Eisenberg and Eric Ries).

In addition to the grand prize investment and NYC trip, each winner gets a special one-hour media strategy training session with editors at Fast Company Magazine, and $20,000 toward digital advertising for their business.

Here’s a visual overview of the competition, including our five amazing winners. You can click on the image to view in full-screen.

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Online shoppers love going on Facebook to contact merchants about orders, or even complain about a bad experience.

But having a complaint appear on a Facebook page for all of the world to see can be pretty scary for ecommere store owners. The good news is there's a huge upside - responding and resolving the issue properly and quickly can create loyal fans who trust that the business will take care of any problems that arise.

Here are 4 examples of excellent customer service on Facebook. Adopt these smart strategies to your own social media customer service plan and you'll turn complainers into brand champions. 

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Marketing is undoubtedly one of the most crucial success factors for new online businesses and should be a primary emphasis early on. But if you only focus on traditional traffic generation strategies like link building you're missing out on lots of potential customers.

The following strategies can easily help you increase your website's traffic - even double it - without having to do an ounce of marketing.  Here's how:

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Life can be pretty intimidating for small ecommerce stores. There's a lot of tough competition out there. Sites like Amazon generate crazy money every day and have better brand recognition than you could ever dream of – how exactly can you compete with that?

Well the beauty of the Internet is that you can compete. You just need to know how to stand out from the crowd. 

The first step is to understand your weaknesses. We’ll use Amazon as our example, but this applies to any giant retailer who happens to be dominating a market you would like a share of. So what does Amazon have that you don’t? 

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When it comes to online sales and customer conversion, connecting with your potential customers and describing your products persuasively is one of the most important parts of selling online.

That’s because after your product photo, your product description is the information people turn to when trying to make a buying decision. And with Amazon a click away, the story you tell about your products (and your business) is your best chance at convincing people to buy from you.

In fact it's a mission critical piece of the online sales puzzle.

Here are five techniques to make sure your product descriptions (and business story) get people clicking the 'add to cart' button.

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By Leo Widrich, Co-Founder, Buffer

The last year has been absolutely crazy year for us here at Buffer. We’ve turned a lot of things upside down and learnt a huge amount about scaling and building out our business.

When it comes to our social media presence, we’ve made a lot of drastic changes too, a lot of which have had a surprisingly huge impact on our business. Here are the top 5 things we’ve changed that helped us reach and interact with more awesome people:

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