If you haven’t already done so, register your name and your company name within Twitter.

What is Twitter?
It is a ‘micro blogging’ website. The idea is to answer the question ‘What are you doing’ in 140 characters or less.

Messages can be sent via mobile texting, instant message or the web.

Notice that the messages are not delivered by email. They appear online / on your phone etc.

Once you have registered, people can choose to ‘Follow’ you, which simply means that they will receive your messages.

How does this help my marketing, then?

* It is another way of ‘getting the word out’ about your enterprise.
* Followers can get to know you and what you do.
* You can alert your Followers about new articles, blog postings, events etc.
* As networkers know, relationships lead to paying customers.

Your Twitter profile allows you to put a line or two of information about yourself. For example, ‘Small business marketing specialist’. You can let people know whereabouts in the world you are based and include a link to your website, if they want to find out more.

When you have a reasonable number of followers, you can manage everything by using http://www.tweetdeck.com TweetDeck extends the functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces.

There are numerous other applications available, which help you to get more out of Twitter / social networking.

If you are technically inclined, Twitter’s core technology is a device agnostic message routing system with rudimentary social networking features. There. Now you know. You can really impress people at parties, can’t you!

Follow The Marketing Compass on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/marketingcmpass
Also follow founder, Nigel Temple on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/nigeltemple