It all depends on what your goals are for trying to communicate online with others. If you are updating your status during dinner you might have a slight problem but if you are a business owner and each potential person you communicate with could lead into a potential client or business relationship than you do what you have to. At some point you might want to ask yourself just how many visitors and sales inquiries you are getting from spending 5 hours on Facebook each day. It is very important as a business owner to be visible on all these sites. Your audience is there, plain and simple so it is important for you to be there also. Even if you think Twitter is just a fad it could be a fad that sticks around for a few years and could potentially generate a great deal of traffic and potential for your growing business. You have to ask yourself how you are using your time. If you are a florist in Boston why are you spending half your day communicating and speaking with people in Alabama> Nothing against Alabama but the chances of a resident there landing in your shop to buy flowers is very slim. You might be able to spend half that time searching for people locally and trying to trigger conversations that way. Just make sure you are corresponding with the right people so you don’t find out down the road that you have been communicating with the wrong people.

1. Following People: Research and find your competition on Twitter. Take a look at the type of people that are following them. Chances are it is your audience so start following them. Over time some of these followers will see and and check out your profile. Some will visit your site and some will just click and follow you. You now have the attention of that potential customer or client.

2. Promote Your Blog: Do you have a blog you write in everyday but are not sure exactly how to promote it. Try taking your blog posts and posting them in your Twitter account for everyone to see. This is a sure way to generate new traffic to your blog especially once you have built up a decent amount of qualified followers you will quickly see the amount of traffic to your blog build as well.

3. Twitter Directories: There are many Twitter directories out there since the birth of this giant social platform. Twitter directories are a great way for others to find your Twitter profile. Promotion will be important for others to find.

3. Real Time Search: Are you a service based business? With Twitters real time search ability you can attempt to track down other people talking about what you offer.

4. Conversation: Once you start generating conversations with people their list of followers will see who they are talking to and eventually make it to your profile. Once they are in your profile that could potentially be a new customer or client.

5. Link Building: At the bare minimum the act of building a profile for your business and filling out the profile areas completely is a form of link building for your business, even if you don’t use it that much.