If you want to start a business, have you wondered how to find niche markets?

With twitter, you can find trends, hot topics, and gaps in the current market which can give you insight about the next great niches.

Twitter is a interesting marketing tool because it gives you access to what people really talk about when they are not holding back. Any marketing survey is bound to get a canned response. On twitter, people are talking naturally, but they are doing it publicly, and allowing you to listen in.

Twitter is also a good tool to see what people care about, and what their concerns and questions are. All of this adds up to finding niche market material.

Step 1: To find niche markets on twitter, first you need to discover out what conversations people are having.

Go to hashtags.org and find out what which keywords are common in conversations. Hashtags are ways that people mark their tweets as part of a bigger conversation.

Look for trends and conversations that interest you or that seem new and exciting. Use your intuition. Twitter changes quickly, so a trend one day may be gone the next. This is just to brainstorm ideas.

If your enjoy using this tool, there are many other tools to watch the trends in twitter. The article "15 Fascinating Ways to Track Twitter Trends" has a very useful list of other twitter trend tracking tools.

Step 2: Once you have niche ideas, the next step to find niche markets with twitter, is to get a targeted twitter following.

If you follow someone, many times they will follow you back. As you start to get followers, you will begin to see their twitter conversations.

Sign up for a twitter account and start following people. If you have a particular interest you are researching, concentrate on getting followers who share your interest.

For example, let's say that you are interested in something having to do with horses. Develop your following with people who are also interested in horses.

• Go to search.twitter.com and put in your key word "horses" and find out who is having a conversation about horses. If their profiles seem interesting, follow them.
• Look for people who really promote their interest in horses, and check out who is following them. Follow their follower-ers.
• Go to "find people" on twitter, and put in your key word "horses". Find people with horses in their twitter name.
• Use Google to find businesses that sell supplies or services to your niche market and see if they have a twitter account. For example, google "horse supplies" and find horse gear stores. If any have a twitter account, follow them and then follow their follower-ers.
• Go to Google Blogsearch and search with your keyword for blogs. Find ones that twitter and follow them.

Step 3. To continue researching how to find niche markets with twitter, you become zen. The next step is watching.

At least once/day and more if you can, check into your twitter account and see what people are talking about. Follow conversations.

• Keep your eyes open for gaps, difficulties, problems. Watch for things that people need and can't find. Do they need a special tool to care for their horses.
• Watch for questions people ask. What are their concerns? What information do they most request?

In our example, let's say that people really worry about their horse's hooves. If there is a lot of discussion about that, this is a place for you to start to find a niche.

Step 4: Take the information about niche markets you have learned in twitter and use other niche market tools to confirm your hunch.

In our example, just because people talk about horse hooves in twitter, does not mean that this would work for your business. Use the free Google Keyword research tool to find out if your niche has good keywords. Make sure that you have a good way to monetize your idea.

And be sure to keep watching the twitter conversations about your niche market to really get to know your customers.

Twitter is like listening in on the conversations of hundreds of people.

Finding a niche market with twitter is exciting because twitter is very current and gives us a "fly on the wall" vantage on what people are saying. If you watch and listen, you will learn about your customers and their needs and desires.

With so much information about so many people, it's easy to see how to find niche markets with twitter.

Now that you have twitter followers who are interested in your niche, now what do you do?  What do you talk about?  How do you engage them?

While twitter isn't hard to do, learning how to use twitter effectively can be challenging.

First you must get a sense of the social etiquette on twitter.  What is considered polite?  How do you start a conversation?  What annoys twitter users?

And after you learn the social rules, you must learn how to integrate it into your business plan.

Twitter can be a fun way to find leads.  I invite you to contact me if you want more information about engaging your prospects through twitter.