Community Interaction

• One major benefit to using Twitter is connecting with similar people in your industry, profession, craft or community. People use Twitter as a means of connecting to one another, regardless of face-to-face interaction, distant time zones or foreign cultures. Finding a community of people with similar interests, usually through blog interaction and following people you relate to, builds your social media platform into a useful and valuable tool. Your community can answer industry-related questions, provide support for personal issues and even give guidance for creative or artistic endeavors. Twitter is often used to connect people in face-to-face social interactions as well. Many communities will announce a meeting or gathering on Twitter; the people connected to the community can then coordinate and gather at the given location.
  
  

Marketing and Promotions

• Twitter also provides a powerful means of promoting your work or business endeavors with people interested in your product or service. Using Twitter for marketing should be done with positive intentions and in a natural, conversational method. People who use Twitter regularly are sensitive to "spammers" and will flag your account if you simply follow people and send them promotional information. Connect with people on a personal level; if they have a question or need your service, simply connect them to your business. Twitter also provides a means of promoting blog posts and other online media content created for your audience or customers. People use this platform to voice dissatisfaction with businesses and to inform their friends of products they like or are frustrated with, so be responsive and supportive if you receive negative feedback from customers.
  
  

Breaking News and Information Curating

• As millions of people around the world use this platform for interaction, when breaking news occurs, information is published by people on the ground and involved in the situation. Many journalists reporting from the field also update on Twitter. Following someone who is documenting a story or covering an issue will give you direct, unfiltered access to media before it enters the filtration system of editors and publishers. Many recent news events and revolutions have cited Twitter as a major means of connecting protesters, informing people of events and coordinating actions between groups of people in various geographical locations. Many Twitter users also retweet, or forward existing Tweets to their followers, when news occurs to help keep their community involved and informed on major news stories. People also post "Twitter Dailies," which automatically feed in any links from selected followers. This also serves as a mini daily newspaper of content published, retweeted and linked, all using the Twitter interface.
  
  

Creating Dialogue with New Contacts and People

• Twitter provides a means of social interaction with people you may never cross paths with in your daily personal or professional life. The platform makes reaching out to people simple, with no boundaries of permission-based following or confirmation of friend acceptance. When using Twitter to find people in areas of interest to you, use the www.Search.Twitter.com function and enter a keyword or trending topic you wish to learn more about. Follow the people who resonate with you regarding the desired topic. You can also tag your tweets using a hashtag, which is denoted with the # symbol placed directly before the keyword with no space. Adding this to your Tweet will place the entry into a search database for the term attached to the hashtag symbol. For example, if you are posting about NASA and wish to connect this to others writing about the same term, simply write "#NASA" in your Tweet and the post will be collected with everyone else who tags NASA in their Tweet. You can then search for NASA and find this community of mutual interest.