Over the past few weeks I have been using a well known service known as Twitter (twitter.com). The service allows you to post a message for all to see. Specifically it is intended to be used as a status updater where you can share with the world what you are doing in real-time with short messages. Each post is limited to 140 characters. You can choose to “follow” specific people as can other people choose to “follow” you. What this means is that when you login in you see all of their recent activities. Now this whole concept seems very basic, in fact it is a function that is built into numerous other social platforms such as Facebook.com and Linked.com. Yet Twitter works on so many levels, despite its seemingly simple idea and despite numerous stability issues (thats another matter).

I use the service as a way to maintain relationships both business and personal. Its also a great way to expand your contacts and to stay informed in industry news or to receive help in whatever topics you can think of. Additionally you can setup your updates in Twitter to automatically update third party solutions such as Facebook. Now there are undoubtedly numerous other sites who have written about Twitter and they likely go into great detail. That is not what I am looking to do. I want to touch upon other topics relating to the service. Specifically the idea that Twitter is in many ways the equivalent to a blog. Secondly, Twitter is a quick an easy way to increase both your site traffic and potentially revenues.

1. Is Twitter a blog? A blog is defined as “a website usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.” I can tell you that this sounds exactly like what Twitter allows me to do. The difference being that I am limited to 140 characters. But at the end of the day I manage my profile page, people come to it and follow what I have to say. Likewise I visit what other people have to say and share.

These days most business are toying around with the idea of starting a blog and are being held back by the thought of not having enough to write about or being technical enough to manage it. Well with Twitter, the fact that you are limited to 140 characters immediately gets you off the hook for lengthy post, and as far as managing its just as easy as changing your status in Facebook. Add on top of that, you can add a widget to your existing website that will automatically share your posts from Twitter with your site visitors. Doing so makes your otherwise static website a little more dynamic and potentially drives users to come back to your site again and again to see the latest post. Not to mention you will get plenty of people see your posts on Twitter itself and that will result in them following through to your website. All in all Twitter is a fantastic companion to any website or blog.

2. Twitter as a marketing medium? Most everyone on the web or in business is looking to increase traffic and increase the amount of money they make. Can Twitter be a helpful tool in that? You bet it can. Once you get started on Twitter you will see a lot of activity by other users who post. You will also see a lot of activity when you post. You will have complete strangers who begin to follow your posts, reply to your posts, even ask you for advice on topics you seem to excel at. If you are a business, your loyal customers will follow you, compliment you, and further promote you to their Twitter friends. Soon enough you will have an entire network of potential customers, existing customers, and evangelist customers. Once that network is built you have opened yourself up to a whole new way to sell yourself. This is a good chance to maybe create custom promo code just for your Twitter followers!

Just last week, as a result of Twitter I changed hosting providers. One of my followers who is behind BlueFur.com and whom I have followed as well helped me out with some items and was an interesting read on a daily basis. Without ever having met him or used his company, I felt compelled to give his company a try based purely on the relationship built on Twitter. This is something that likely under any other circumstances would have been hard to pull off. But that is a perfect example of Twitter working to increase your customer base.

And now I am a BlueFur.com evangelist as well. The result, you can save 10% if you sign up for any package by using promo code “dropthemike” - without the quotes. Yes I know, shameless plug :)

Shameless plug aside, Twitter is a marketing tool for you to consider!