Recent estimates place the number of Twitter users between 5 and 10 million. Twitter is growing at a rate of 2,565 percent. In the U.S., 1 in 20 people use Twitter.

Why you should care.

While you may neither be on nor interested in Twitter, be assured, your competitors are. Through social media (like Twitter), they are slowly gaining that elusive edge.

How does something with an adorable little name with the connotation of fluffy jabbering provide an edge? Because it allows its participants to:

1. Stay on the forefront of current knowledge in their field.
2. Increase brand exposure.
3. Drive traffic to their site.
4. Access information from a large group of people with shared interests.
5. Test opinions on new ideas and products.
6. Improve organic SEO.
   

Sounds good, doesn't it? Will these things magically happen when you open your Twitter account? Not at all. It depends on how you conduct yourself. To learn more about that I turned to social media guide, Emily Carpenter of Whiz Bang Web Design. Emily recently partnered up with Mike Krause of Sales Sense Solutions and their recent seminar, Social Media Means Business, sold out.

I'll get to Emily in a moment. First, you need four Twitter term basics.

Twitterers are people participate on Twitter.
Tweets are the posts on Twitter. Each tweet must be 140 characters or less. Shorthand is rampant but try and use clear, correct phrases.
Tweeting describes the general act of posting tweets.
Retweet is indicated with "RT" and it's what you do when you want to pass along good tweets from someone else.

When you join Twitter you'll be prompted with the question, "What are you doing?" In reality, Emily says this sort of selfish tweeting is not what you want to do.

Emily describes Twitter as, "a continual conversation with your customers, colleagues, and peers." So if you want to reap the rewards listed above you need to know how to conduct yourself in the exchange.

"You must provide value to your information," Emily explains. She says people read tweets to:

1) learn,
2) be inspired, or
3) laugh and be entertained.

So, if you're on Twitter for business then post links to interesting articles, videos, and studies. You'll attract people interested in this information and you'll benefit by having access to the research they post. It's like a daily dose of professional education! But stay focused. Post information that supports and reinforces your brand (don't confuse reinforcing with advertising). 

Post successes, announcements, and inspirational quotes. Retweet information liberally and answer questions in a helpful manner posed by other twitterers.

Once you have established yourself as a genuine contributor to the conversation then your followers will accept and expect the occasional self-promotional tweet.

For example, my Twitter account is posted as Karen_Marley. About 80 percent of my tweets are focused on content marketing and business writing. About 15 percent are divided into my two hobbies, and about 5 percent are self-promotional and random fun stuff. 

"Blogs are an exception to this," says Emily. "If you blog then definitely post the titles to your blog entries on Twitter. Synchronize your tweets with your blog. If you blog once a week, then once a week tweet the link back to your blog."

Having even a modest following is a great resource. You can ask for their opinion on a new product, service, or Web site.

Over time your links and contributions will be noticed by the search engines. Your rankings will improve and if you treat your followers with respect (remember it's a conversation not a spotlight). You'll also notice increases in your Web site traffic.

However, like anything of quality, Twitter takes time over the long haul. Despite its electronic interface you are dealing with people. As Emily puts it, "jumping in and immediately following 2000 people will just turn everyone off."  Enter the conversation politely, start slow, learn along the way and you'll be fine.

Oh yeah, in the spirit of Twitter let me ask you: If you are interested in more information about Twitter (research capabilities, linking it to your content, Twitter's dark side) then let me know. I'll happily dedicate more articles to the topic. Or perhaps they'd be called "Twarticles"? 

Want to use this article in your e-zine, newsletter or Web site?You can as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Karen Marley is an independent business writer who helps businesses communicate their value to their prospects and customers.