Twitter is the “buzzed up” social network these days, and just as with MySpace and Facebook before it, small businesses and individual entrepreneurs are trying very hard to put it to good use in the marketing of their products and services.

But how useful is it really? Well everyone and his granny is on Twitter these days, so you or your business probably should have a presence as well.  In order for it to bring you sales or web traffic though you need followers, and lots of them. Many people begin by following the followers of a business rival or someone in the same field in the hope that those who were interested enough to follow the competition will follow them too (boy that is a lot of following.)

Once you have achieved a decent number of followers like any other web page you will need to provide interesting content to ensure repeat visits. The beauty of Twitter is of course that the updates are so short, so that often a simple link to a relevant or interesting article, review or product will suffice.

Do not expect a big flood of business right away from your Twitter page. In other words do not neglect your other promotional techniques in order to devote a huge amount of time to Twittering. But with one or two interesting tweet outs a day it can be a quick and easy way to gain more than a few extra customers.