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Twitter, it seems is everywhere at the moment. You can’t listen to a radio show or turn on the TV without hearing something about it – and you’d be forgiven for believing that everyone is using it at the moment. 

But in the world of small businesses, it seems that people are falling into three camps – those that are using Twitter and other social networking sites to promote their business; those that have heard about Twitter, haven’t used it yet, but feel under pressure to do so and those who haven’t heard of it, have no intention of using it and think it’s a waste of time.

So, just what is Twitter and should you be using it to promote your business?

Let’s start with the “what is it?” question which is hard enough in itself to answer. Twitter is a new social networking site (like Facebook, Myspace etc) that was launched a while ago. However, in the last three months or so, it has really picked up in popularity to the extent that celebrities have a Twitter page as do most radio stations etc. The press are also now monitoring Twitter to pick up interesting trends and news stories – it seems that the media has gone Twitter mad.

You can set up an account for free at www.twitter.com and the aim of it is to quickly update people on what you’re up to. So, you could tell them you’ve just visited an interesting site; been out to lunch with friends; are involved in a new project and so on. The space you get is very short – just 140 characters, so it really will be a quick post. Someone recently for instance used Twitter to tell everyone he was in Paris and asked where the best places to eat were – he got over 100 replies in 10 minutes telling him where to go.

OK, you are forgiven for asking “what’s the point of that?” and “does anyone really want to know what I had for lunch today?” And, yes these are really good questions. So, let’s look at the pros and cons of using Twitter to promote your business.

The pros – these days more than ever it seems that people want to know the person behind your company. Going back to the age old saying of “you do business with people you like and trust”, Twitter is a good way of showing people what you’re like – and what you’re like as a person rather than just a business owner.

So, yes if you Tweet (what you do when you put something on Twitter) often and the content is useful, valuable, funny or tells people about the sort of person you are, the more people will get to know you. You’ll get people following your Tweets and you’ll be able to build a relationship with hundreds if not thousands of people at a time.

The other good thing about it is that if you’re looking to target specific groups of potential customers very quickly, it’s possible to do this using Twitter.

The cons – well, firstly there is the time element. Again, like anything else Twitter will take time. Not only the time to regularly go on there and post something useful; but the time of getting to know how Twitter works and making it useful for your business. Twitter is very new so very few people are experts in it yet.

Secondly, there’s the fad aspect. Although Twitter has been around for a while, it’s only really being used by lots of people in the last two or three months, so there’s a danger of spending a lot of time and effort using and finding out about Twitter to find that six months down the line, everyone’s moved onto the next thing.

Thirdly, there’s the pressure thing. It’s easy to believe that because everyone’s talking about it and the media have got hold of it that you have to be on there too. Not so. There are lots and lots of other ways to show your personality to the world and to build a relationship with your target customers. Remember, marketing is all about finding the methods that work for YOU, not for anyone else.

So, weighing up the pros and cons of Twitter, should you use it for your business? My answer is this – if you’re interested in it and want to give it a go – go for it. Let me know how you get on. And if you don’t – don’t – and certainly don’t feel pressured into joining just because the media says you have to. As long as you’re doing marketing in other places (and that’s key), you should be fine.