Twitter is described as a micro blogging service. Twitter asks just one question: What’s happening? You can, of course, interpret that question any way you will (but in under 140 characters please!).

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You can keep updated with breaking news - all the big news providers tweet.  You can keep in contact with friends - instead of texting all your contact list about something, you could tweet it. You can find friends you’d lost touch with.  And so much more.

It’s said that Twitter is a great marketing tool - but, like all marketing tools, it can annoy your potential customers too!  Who hasn’t been annoyed by a direct sales call (or even worse, a recorded message) when they’re in the middle of something important?  While sales messages on Twitter aren’t quite that bad, bombarding your followers with sales messages can cause them to become fed up and unfollow you (now there’s a new word for the next dictionary upate: unfollow!).  Not the result you were hoping for!

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So how does Twitter work for business?  I had some very early success which gave me an indicator: businesses found me via Twitter and asked me to supply them. People found me and bought items.  I don’t think any of it was through an overt sales message.  This article about marketing on Twitter is a good one: http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2009/ca2009106_370257.htm. The best uses for Twitter seem to be all about connecting and communicating.  The people who are best at this face-to-face will often be the best online too.  Businesses are, after all, run by real people.  Twitter can help to show the human side to a business.

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If you, like me, work from home, you may find Twitter is useful for a much more basic reason: it helps you feel connected with other people.  Those mini-conversations serve a purpose for all of us.  Sometimes these conversations will help you sell or promote too, sometimes they won’t. Often, they will just help ease the day along a little for you or for someone else.  Don’t knock it - that in itself is sometimes a big plus.

What do I love about Twitter?  You can dip in and out of it in a couple of minutes, you get a glimpse of other people’s lives, you can chat to anyone and everyone, it’s a leveller, it’s all about “now”, it’s easy - oh, and it definitely hones my editing skills.  Getting a message down to 140 characters but still readable is a challenge - and one I admit I sometimes fail as some messages are two or three tweets long!! (Oh, there’s a surprise!)

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/1stUniqueGifts

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