What can Twitter really do for your business?

Well because of Twitter, I've made into a national magazine......................

The use of Twitter for business always triggers a debate which is more intense than an episode of Loose Women.

In the red corner we have those who wouldn't touch Twitter with a barge pole (who actually owns a barge pole?) as they think it's a waste of time and in the blue corner (Twitter blue that is) are those who love it and will use it as part of their "marketing mix".

I'm relatively new to Twitter, signing up just a few months ago, so what has it done for me and my business?

The main business benefits of using Twitter for me are:

• The ability to easily keep tabs with what fellow businesses are up to
• Using it to find out the latest news (I found out about Michael Jacksons death of Twitter)
• Getting help or getting a question answered quickly
• Letting other businesses know what we are up to and what solutions we are using

And finally the number one benefit has been to make it into PC Pro magazine which is available up and down the UK!!

Yes, that's right, because of Twitter I've made into this widely respected magazine amongst IT Professionals.

I was catching up on my back log of reading this morning and opened up the May issue of PC Pro and found that my comments regarding the proposal to charge business to use Twitter had been printed on page 15, which was part their News Grid feature!! I couldn't believe it!!! A nice bit of free PR, all courtesy of Twitter!

Below is the snippet from the article which refers to my (I'm @lucidblog) Twitter comments (the article was spread over several pages, but I have just scanned and cropped my part!).

So there you go, used in the right way, Twitter can be good for your business. It's all about a fine balance. I'm not saying spend all day on there. What works for me is checking it out first thing in the morning and again towards the end of the day. I personally must spend about 10 minutes a day on there, just reading other Tweets, which doesn't eat away at my day.

Like I said in the article though, although it has worked for me, I still wouldn't pay to use Twitter.