The following is a description of how to effectively use Twitter for your business.

1. Pick a short and descriptive name for your account. The name should be as close as possible to your business’ name. Keep in mind though that there is a 140 character limit. When people retweet one of your posts or reply to you they will need to include your account name in there. Try to keep it as short as possible.
2. Understand why you should be using Twitter.
3. Stick to your area of expertize. If you business is in the legal industry, try to tweet about legal topics as much as possible. Don’t deviate much from your business’ main focus. It dilutes the overall value of your profile.
   
4. Have a designer create a custom Twitter background for you. This will make your account stand out and look more professional.
5. Use an URL shortener such as http://bit.ly when posting links.
6. Whenever you post a new article to your site, tweet about it on Twitter. Keep your tweet short and simple by describing the article and then posting a link, e.g. “Using Twitter for business http://mylink.com”
7. Only follow people that are truly interesting. They should ideally be involved in the same line of business as you. It’s perfectly acceptable to follow industry leaders, entrepreneurs and famous people, but try to stick to a specific theme (rather follow celebrities from a personal Twitter account). There’s nothing wrong with having a few celebs on your Business account, but make sure it’s appropriate and in good taste.
8. Retweet interesting tweets that your followers may find useful. Not everything has to be original. Retweeting also shows that you are actually reading and absorbing other people’s tweets.
9. Post a link to your Twitter account on your site/blog, LinkedIn account and even your Facebook page. Remember that your Twitter account gives people an impression of your business. If it looks professional and is updated frequently with interesting links and resources then potential clients will get a good feel for you and your company. Many people will carry out a search for your company on Google before doing business with you and a Twitter profile stands a good chance of ranking very high on Google for your company name.
10. Carry out regular searches on Twitter for people posting about your company and topics related to your business. This is one of the most powerful features of Twitter when used correctly. It will give you a good sense of what people think and gives you the opportunity to respond to them. Many successful business owners reply directly to people tweeting about their business and/or related topics. This is incredibly powerful and shows that your business is in touch with its target demographic.

If you follow these steps and keep your profile fresh and relevant, you will find Twitter to be an invaluable tool for your business.

As you can see from the image above, this can become a serious problem. Fortunately there is a very simple solution to this problem. All you have to do is to utilize one of the URL shortening services that are freely available on the Web. There are many to choose from, but the one I recommend is bit.ly which has several other features once you create a free account including the ability to view click statistics over time.

So lets head on over to http://bit.ly and create an account. Once you’ve done that, log in to your account and paste in the long URL you want to share. This site is also useful for sharing links in other forms as well, for example link sharing in your e-mails and blogs. It’s especially useful for Twitter though because of the above-mentioned character count limitations.

Once you enter the URL, bit.ly gives you a cool shortened version to share with others. In truth you don’t even need to register an account, but then you will have no way of tracking the statistics of how many people clicked on the link and some other useful features that are only available to registered users of the site.

You’ll end up with a cool abbreviated version of the URL as you can see in the image above. This URL can be used in your Twitter tweets. It will not only save valuable character real-estate, but you’ll also be able to get invaluable statistics such as the ones shown below:

Nice and simple and you get the extra benefits on top of the core URL shortening feature.

The concept is simple: you get a maximum of 140 characters to get your message across. You can post as many messages (called tweets in Twitter lingo) as you want and people can read your tweets and even “follow” you on Twitter so they get all of your tweets conveniently displayed for them. The point is to get the message across in a short and simple manner. Efficient and unobtrusive.

Tweets can be grouped into lists so that you can aggregate messages of a similar nature into groups. Tweets and profiles can be viewed directly on the Twitter website, but you can also use one of any number of applications (installed on your computer or mobile device) to enjoy the Twitter experience.

Here’s an example of a Twitter profile being viewed directly via the website:

Twitter can also be viewed on mobile devices using any number of Twitter mobile applications so you can enjoy the experience while on the move.

So what is the point of all of this? Why should you be using Twitter? The answer is that it can benefit you in several different ways, both as a broadcaster and as a consumer. We live in a digital age. We all need to embrace this, geeks or non geeks. If you want to be “with it” or simply to appear to be “with it”, you NEED to start using Twitter. Recruiters and employers use it on a regular basis to get a read on candidates and employees. Clients and business folk use it to get a good sense of who you are. Even celebrities (Ashton Kutcher is the most popular celebrity on Twitter to date) are using it to promote themselves, their products and their enterprises.

There’s more to Twitter though than just being “with it”. It’s an excellent tool for learning and staying up to date with the latest news and trends. By following industry leaders, entrepreneurs, entertainers and friends, you can easily scan the latest tweets and get a feel for what’s going on. One second you’re learning about technology and the next you’re discovering a new movie. It’s a fun and trendy approach to staying ahead of the curve.

There’s no question that Twitter is abused by some who like to shamelessly self-promote themselves, but if you avoid them and stick to the important and interesting people and companies on Twitter and you’ll be in great shape. Head on over to Twitter.com today and get started.