Everyone (well mainly the press) is raving about twitter and it's uses. If you have an on line business and you are not on twitter, it's an option you seriously need to consider.

If Dell have increased their sales by £2 million in a quarter, it must be worth small businesses who can adapt faster, taking a look.

If you have a twitter account and are not sure what to do with it, then read on and I'll share some tips on how to get the best from it.

Have you set up an account with Hootsuite yet? If you haven't, go and take a look. Hotsuite is used for managing multiple accounts and one you have navigated around it a few time, it's really quite easy.

Set up a profile to Hootsuite and confirm your details are correct. In the columns you can see your updates, replies and direct messages. You can use this to add other twitter profiles if you have them. Lots of profiles are not essential, but if you have them then this tool will make them easier to manage.

Add the feed from your blog to your Hootsuite account. You can add 5 feeds to your account and you can suggest which profile tweets which feed.

The great thing about Hootsuite is in the detail, a few days after starting with it, go back and check your stats. You can see from the statistics page how many people have clicked through on each of your links that have been tweeted out. This gives you an idea of the content that your followers are liking enough to click on.

Monitor this for a few days and see what your followers are liking and tailor your content with this in mind.

Ask you existing customers who are on twitter to tweet about you and include a link to your web page, offer them a discount if they do so. Publicly thank them for doing so when they do. Tell them you are emailing them a discount code as a thank you.

ReTweet other people that say interesting things. It can be work related and it can be life related. If you ReTweet often, people may start to RT you back and that can be pages from your blog or your special offers.

Be positive in your outlook and you will attract one of the many journalists on twitter and asked your thoughts which can lead to to increased exposure.

Most importantly, if you are not there and interacting - how can you be sure your competitor isn't?