Twitter is the latest web-centric communications service to explode onto the scene, and businesses have moved in rapidly. However, a little discretion goes a long way, as the users of "social" sites and services have demonstrated that they will stomach only so much commercialization of what they consider their personal space. As MySpace evolved from an upstart new kid on the block where everyone let everything "hang out" to a part of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, people who'd had enough began looking for other places. This influenced the rise of Facebook. Now that Facebook has begun acting like a "regular old corporation," too, folks are on the search again.

Your company can most definitely benefit from using Twitter. The primary use for it in business is to listen, because, as every top-performing salesman knows, listening is more important than talking most of the time. You want to hear from every customer, vendor, client, industry leader, journalist, activist, colleague and competitor who has anything to say about your product, service or business. Twitter has much in common with old-style networking, like early morning meetings at diners and water-cooler chats, except it's been "virtualized" for 21st century knowledge sharing. With that brief introduction, let's look at 10 great ways to use Twitter to your business's advantage.

#1. Listen more, talk less: If you just think of Twitter as another way to "post" your messages and advertisements, you're missing the whole point and your following will probably be nonexistent. Spend more time listening to what others are "tweeting" (posting) about you and you will gather valuable information. When you do post a message, make it something people want to know, not something you want them to know.

#2. Find your niche: Twitter's uses are limited only by your imagination, or someone else's if you're fresh out of ideas. Don't think of what you can get, but what you can offer and what you can learn. You may want to share knowledge, you may want to obtain it, or you may just want to assure customers, colleagues and others that you are available to them. You will benefit to the extent that you listen and stay engaged, which means referring back to #1 a lot.

#3. Develop a personality (or a few): A number of business bloggers have commented on how well Twitter works to humanize an otherwise impersonal entity like a corporation. A fresh and interesting personality attracts followers, and some successful firms even allow numerous voices to reach out from within the company's offices and cubicles.

#4. Eavesdrop: There are several good tools for monitoring what is being said, starting with Twitter's own search field. Search for your term(s) and when the results are displayed, you will also get a list of the current most-popular searches (to the right) so you always know what's hot at the moment. The site monitter.com, as the name implies, was developed specifically for use with Twitter, to allow simultaneous multiple searches.

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