Michael Stelzner offers one of the best articles I've seen on why you'd want to use Twitter to help grow your business, aptly named, "How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business."
I believe learning to use Twitter and contribute is an important skill for any business, brand or person to develop. As more people begin to use it, it will become an increasingly effective marketing strategy and business development tool for businesses, especially if they are looking to attract the Twitterati and stay connected to customers -- which pretty quickly now, includes everyone (thanks Oprah!).
Early on, people visit Twitter and see a handful of random posts from a handful of people you follow. If the people you are connected to are not contributors, you will likely become a casualty, too.
Twitter is like visiting the water cooler - where people share information. You can attract people by sharing quality information that helps people out - that's contributing. If you just talk about how you're staring at your navel, where are the paper cups, or how the fuzz got on the leftovers in the fridge, that's not contributing. You want to be the one handing out the good stuff -- information about what's going on that might be helpful.
First, get an account on Twitter.
Two, connect to people you know through email addresses.
Three, install Tweetdeck. I don't see this in Michael's list. TweetDeck is a free application to help you send, read, and search for tweets. Also has a nifty way to shorten URLs and see what the world is buzzing about right now in TweetScan. Like many, I didn't "get" Twitter until I tried TweetDeck. And until you are following 100 contributors, you might not either.
Four, search for keywords that reflect your interests to find kindred souls. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, you have access to all Twitter users. For me, I searched for "product management", "innovation", "culture", "Web 2.0", "startups", "consciousness", "leadership", "strategy", "alumni groups", "alliances" (with apologies to my dorkiness - your interests are different, no doubt) -- and with each, I find some contributors on each topic that offer awesome information that enriches my own knowledge. From around the world. Real-time. Then I can share what I'm learning by "retweeting" or "RT"ing other people's tweets, contributing more to others around me. When I started following these people and got above 100 people I was following is when Twitter became interesting to me.
Five - notice and follow hashtags related to your interests. These can be a goldmine -- think of it as a "tag" or identifier for specific conversations around a topic, product or event. Hashtags start with a "#" sign. When a contributor includes a hashtag (e.g., #leadership, #w2e for Web 2.0 Expo, etc.), click on it, and you're likely to find a goldmine of other kindred spirits and contributors on that topic. Follow those who appear to be contributors, and you're likely to find they probably have other similar interests.
Six -- become a better Twitter contributor yourself. Initially, use Tweetdeck to retweet things you find interested. Create your own content (like this blog entry) to augment on someone else's ideas. Keep the people visiting your water cooler happy.
Once you have this in place, Mike talks about other ways to use Twitter to support business development, customer support, innovation, etc.
Of course, there are easily avoidable pitfalls too.
Good luck growing your business with Twitter -- oh, to follow me, I'm SteveTennant. Click on my page, then click "Follow".
