By this point in time, if you haven’t heard about Twitter… you must be living a very sheltered life.

Obama used it as part of his election campaign, Oprah is on there and Ashton Kutcher has 1.3 million followers as of today. This microblogging platform is gaining popularity ridiculously fast and some experts estimate that by 2010, Twitter will reach over 18 Million users.

Let’s have a look at who the average Twitter user is. This recent report released by comScore points out that… *gasp* it’s mostly 45-54 year olds, followed closely by 25-34 year olds.

Pretty good demographic base for most businesses.

So, what are some practical steps to take if you plan to use Twitter for business?

First of all, register a name for yourself and/or your business. Some of you may recall the domain squatter days when some savvy users bought up domains large organizations would eventually want (whitehouse.com anyone?). In any case, this is starting to happen on Twitter as well, so even if you don’t plan on utilizing it at this time, at least reserve your name.

While there, write up a compelling profile that describes what you do, who you are and how you could be of value to others (if this is to be a business account).

Look around,  see if your competition is already there. Have a look at some of the most popular twitter-ers and take note of their strategies before crafting your own.

If you do plan on using this medium as part of a campaign or ongoing efforts be prepared to post about once a day.

Overall, Twitter will certainly make sense for some businesses, and for others it will be a complete waste of time and resources. From our experience and observation, retail or direct to consumer businesses offering a lower or medium price point will benefit most from this medium, although there are always exceptions. We encourage you to think through what your objectives are first and then craft a campaign rather then just jumping into it and hoping for… something?

If you wish to see a very successful example of how a major company leverages Twitter for business, research Dell at: http://www.dell.com/twitter

Next time we’ll talk about how to measure success with social media campaigns.

- Ernest.