MOSS BEACH (CBS 5) – Marketing a business can be costly, but a tweet can cost next to nothing. A small Bay Area boutique has seen more website traffic by using the social networking service.

Debbie Icide who tried to promote her business Gaia Essentials, said she found herself priced out of the traditional advertising game. “Some of the health magazines that I would fit in pretty good cost 5 to 6 grand for a small ad,” she said. “I can’t afford that.”

That’s when Icide along with several other Bay Area business owners decide to promote their products on Twitter with the help of Jason Sutherland. “A majority of people are in front of there computers as we speak at this moment,” he said. “What I wanted to do was leverage that digital power.”

Sutherland’s marketing company Peninsula Shops gets Twitter users to answer trivia questions about local companies for a chance to win free goodies.

“I said there has to be some sort of gimmick or stunt or PR twist that Peninsula Shops brings to the merchants and the consumers,” Sutherland said. He found it by creating a Twitter treasure hunt. In Icide’s case, users were asked to guess the third ingredient in one of her popular soaps.

To find the answer they had to go to her website. “I get somewhere between 300 or 400 hits a day and when he did that it jumped to 1,200 that day,” That’s nearly a 400 percent increase.

Icide is not the only one using social media to boost sales. A recent American Express survey found nearly 50 percent of small business owners are using social network sites to promote their business. In Icide’s case, she paid Sutherland $180 a year to do her social networking. But for tech savvy business owners, this type of marketing can come free.

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