Over the past few years, Twitter has emerged as a leading medium for businesses to utilise social media. The acceptance of Twitter by individuals and businesses demonstrates its power, with over 200 million users sending 1 billion tweets per week. This has created an amazing platform for businesses and acts a critical aspect of online business development. Firstly, let's look at Twitter in more detail...

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging website that was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey. Twitter enables users to send and read text-based posts composed of up to 140 characters, called tweets, which are displayed on the user's profile page. Users can subscribe to other users' tweets, – known as following and by default, tweets are publicly visible. Users can tweet via the Twitter website, compatible external applications, such as via Smartphones, or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries.

Twitter is used for a variety of purposes in many different industries and scenarios. A study concluded that 40% of the content of tweets involved Social grooming, 38% Conversation, 9% Pass-along value, 6% Self-promotion, 4% Spam and 4% News. Another study revealed interesting results about usage. It has been used as widely as to organise protests, sometimes referred to as "Twitter Revolutions" and which include the 2011 Egyptian protests, 2010-2011 Tunisian protests, 2009-2010 Iranian election protests, and 2009 Moldova civil unrest.

The service has also been used in emergencies and political campaigning. It is also used for direct communication among social groups and organisations, with the use of "hashtags." For instance, #SmallBiz, used at the end of a tweet, means that the communication will be viewed by all users who follow the topic which refers to an ongoing chat among educators.

In business context, this is huge. Businesses can utilise Twitter in almost every area of their business including; brand development, custom generation, customer retention, marketing etc etc but on a mass scale. It is one of the fastest ways to engage with your customers or other companies and is invaluable in building relationships both inside and outside of your industry. Lets discuss some reasons why Twitter is such an essential tool for businesses...

Twitter is about conversations. In a real world analogy, Twitter is sort of like a giant dinner party. There are tons of conversations going on and you can easily join one, or you can start a new one. If you start a new one, others can easily join in. You can even carry on multiple conversations at once.

It's total conversational freedom. As a business, you are able to gather real insight into what customers are saying and thinking about your product or service, which in turn can give you perfect information on how best to adapt to or serve their needs. Not only are you able to gather direct feedback from your customers but you are also able to communicate with them and alleviate any concerns or worries they may have. One bad comment which could have spread to many other potential customers can be directly solved and turned into a positive.

You can use Twitter to promote your social bookmarking submissions. If you spend time on Twitter you will see people asking for help voting up a submission at a variety of othe sites. With Twitter, you can get a feel for who uses which sites, you can keep tabs on who tends to respond when you ask for votes and you can pitch in to help other people's submissions do better. Twitter can be a great way to promote your activity and accounts with social bookmarking sites.

Twitter can boost your blog and other social media platforms. You can send out a tweet with a link to your latest blog post or Linkedin update, which many Twitter users now claim they rely more heavily on tweets than RSS feeds for finding good content. Nearly all social media platforms can be somewhat linked to interconnect all the relationships you have on each site.

Twitter is also a great source of blog topics, picking up other posts and expanding on them or getting ideas from the conversations you are having and discovering new authors to add to your feed reader. If you find someone new you like on Twitter, you can quickly look them on up Facebook or LinkedIn, add them to your network and learn even more about them or their connections.

Networking with Twitter. Creating connections with individuals and businesses can create relationships that can add value to businesses or enhance portfolios. Since most Twitter users share a combo of business and personal information, it can be a great way to learn a little something about your pitch target. You have access to a customer pool which no other marketing activity can deliver.

The amount of traffic and attention given to Twitter is so massive that social media done correctly for businesses can add such significant value its almost unbelievable. One of my previous blog posts included an example which demonstrates this so effectively: “We’re still in the process of picking ourselves up off the floor after witnessing first hand the fact that a sixteen-year-old YouTuber can deliver us three times the traffic in a couple of days that some excellent traditional media coverage has over five months...” - Michael Fox, CEO, Shoes of Prey.

ReTweeting. It's been said that blogs can take an idea and spread it from New York to Tokyo in minutes. If that's true, then it's also true Twitter can do it in seconds. It takes very little time to blog something. It takes less time to email something. It takes even less time to tweet it. Send something interesting out into Twitter and people will pick it up and repost to their own list of followers in seconds.

Suddenly your own network grows infinitely. Time and time again, I've seen breaking news come across Twitter before I saw it anywhere else. I don't have to check my feed reader, don't have to wait for the news to break in on television, don't even have to wait for a phone call. The second one person on Twitter hears the news, it spreads like wild fire. Imagine this concept in your particular business terms. You run a hairdressing businesses and are lucky enough to have a celebrity of sorts come in and have you cut their hair. They loved your service and tweeted about it the next day. Within seconds of their tweet, the news has spread to all their connections, and all their connections connections. Soon your phone won't stop ringing as everyone has heard about your amazing hairdressing service and wants to try it themselves.

Now I wouldn't suggest a business is to rely solely on Twitter in terms of social media activities, but I do think there is immense value in dedicating time to it. I have accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and a range of other social media and bookmarking sites, but Twitter is my most widely used services. In fact, Twitter is generally what prompts me to go and use the other ones.

Are you using Twitter but not convinced of the value? Have you got any business success stories or Twitter tips?