A lot of people do not like Twitter and a few months back I could understand their reasoning. For those that are unfamiliar with the Twittersphere, it could seem like a bunch of hopefuls posting pointless comments about what they had for supper or how they want a new motorbike in a vain attempt that someone might listen.

But when our marketing team told me Twitter could be used for increasing the take-up of my stories on the web, it suddenly became a bit more appealing.

I started pushing my own news out and even began a bit of Twittering (or is it Tweeting?) about my daily chores. I admit that for quite a while I still thought I was wasting my time. I only had a handful of followers and no one seemed to notice me.

It did not take long for the whole experience to become more positive. The value of Twitter became clear when the plane that landed in the Hudson River was first captured on camera by a Twitter user. The photo was immediately distributed all over the world, showing the potential of Twitter users as a source for generating news.

In order to source stories for vnunet.com and to find contacts who would want to read my news, I had the (now obvious) idea to start searching for IT people. I typed in big name vendors, such as Oracle, IBM, SAP, Microsoft and started stalking a random mix of people. I then started following their followers and I was thrilled to find I was getting a good number of followers back.

I started to become pickier, deleting those who were twittering irrelevant posts and searching for particular executives I had met at briefings. I searched for like-minded journalists and analysts, and I added a few contacts from Twitter's most respected community.

My first story I sourced from Twitter came from an analyst tweeting criticism at a recent move by a company and that was satisfying. But then when people started to directly message me with ideas for stories or just that they liked particular content, I started checking in with Twitter more than I do my Facebook account for story tips.

I have since downloaded some Twitter applications to make the following of Twitter users easier. The application I find most user-friendly is Tweetdeck, which I wrote in detail about yesterday.

My tips for using Twitter for business purposes include starting the experience by following people in your community and by searching for individuals you find interesting to see if they are part of the micro-blogging world.

Apart from offering a good tool to source information, Twitter offers a great avenue to promote oneself. Rather than just dumping pointless ramblings on the site, valuable Twitter members tend to ask questions and engage with what other people are saying.

People will probably not seem to care right away about your Tweets but when your name keeps popping up with interesting comments or good links, they might start looking out for you, reading you posts, clicking on your links and engaging in conversation.

13 Feb 2009