A short intro: Twitter is a tool that helps you add friends (follow others) and let others add you (other people following you). You can start sending and receiving (really) short SMS style messages to those who follow you. And you receive messages from those who you choose to follow. You have few terminologies to follow while addressing people and that’s about it. Ready to fly.

While this might sound frivolous, and maybe you’ve tried using it for a while but not find it significantly ground breaking. But actually, the ways in which it is being successfully utilized by businesses, and the scale it has attained, make it a force to reckon with. This is the new storm and you need to chase it if you need to be making a difference. Here is what you need to do (and some things that you do not need to) while you use this killer application:

<!–[if !supportLists]–>1. <!–[endif]–>Keep in mind that business is about people. As a business, if you engage, entertain or otherwise interact, you build a community of people who will (hopefully) listen to what you’ve got to say while you listen to them, with genuine interest

<!–[if !supportLists]–>2. <!–[endif]–>It is not what contacts can do for you – but what you can do for your contacts. You could connect them with other people, offering articles, links and info they would value, tweeting about their great articles and products. It’s a loop – you help others, they will help you and you get even more resources helping others

<!–[if !supportLists]–>3. <!–[endif]–>Relationships first:

• • There’s a reason it’s called “social” networking and not “sales” networking.
  • Be more interested in helping than making money
  • Reach out a helping hand

When businesses build relationships like the above mentioned points, the customers and money just show up. It is best not to keep score, to be generous, helpful and have fun. A good ‘twitterer’ (or twit? Web 2.0 grammar is not easy) has a good mix of personal & business tweets, quotes and observations, as well as links

<!–[if !supportLists]–>4. <!–[endif]–>Share/Give your Expertise: There a lot of folks clueless about certain things that you are a guru of. You can give the genuine and real answer to their problems (and that might not mean a plug about your company/products).You establish yourself as an expert and someone who genuinely wants to help and therefore worthy of being contacted the next time they need to be doing business. Remember there are others who might be watching this conversation and you stand to gain by establishing your expertise to the community as a whole. You can get a lot of business this way because you establish a value in the beginning.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>5. <!–[endif]–>Introduce your company at the right time and place: It’s amazing how many business owners attempt to kiss on the first meeting. Come on- in real life you work towards gaining the trust of the other person. Why not online? Follow the first few steps and who knows, the kiss might come unexpected, maybe before you ask for it!

Next post on choosing the right people to follow, some examples (few Asian examples) and some tools you can use

Meanwhile, if you want to add me on twitter,  I am at @shalabhpandey

Other posts in this series:

• http://chasingthestorm.com/using-internet-for-business/
• http://chasingthestorm.com/how-to-win-business-influence-customers-part-2-using-twitter/
• http://chasingthestorm.com/twitter-business-usage-in-asia/