Should you be on Twitter? Here are seven reasons why...

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Many businesses simply don't know if they should be on Twitter. They know about the buzz and get excited about followers but they are unable to justify whether they should be on Twitter or if they are, they are having some interesting challenges with engagement.

Here are seven simple ways you could use Twitter for your business.

1. Provide updates from your brand. The goal here is to make people aware of things that you have going on. The key is to keep the updates short, and make sure that they are relevant. Don't put traditional press release out via Twitter.

2. Announce special events or promotions. If you are hosting an open house, or you have a special speaker coming in - you can use Twitter to make an announcement to those that follow you. You can also use Twitter if you have a special offer. Crisp, clear, & concise - this is what Twitter feeds can be leveraged into.

3. Offer some basic tips about your product or service. One suggestion is to take some of your frequently asked questions from your site and make them available to those that follow you via Twitter (with a link to the page with more information). They important thing to do here is to use a little intrigue to get the dialogue going - engage with a question and then offer an answer that is relevant.

4. Offering 'deeper' information about your brand. You can use Twitter to schedule a special online event - some have done well by scheduling power hours where people tweet about a particular topic. This is also used effectively while covering real events.

5. Effective on-boarding. Most people who work with your brand may not realize all that you provide. The best way to make them aware is to get to know them better. You can use Twitter as part of an engagement cycle where you can introduce them to the different things you do (set up timed welcome tweets). Additionally, you can use Twitter for consumer surveys and do a little aspirational marketing. Take a look at Live Solid, they have done a good job with 'aspirational engagement.'

6. Get more mileage out of print. Start with something you may just mailed to your list and highlight parts of an interesting article. Refer to something specific within the article and try to engage people with a question online. Once you get the hang of doing this, do this for upcoming mailers. Eventually, look to reduce or stop the distribution of a specific direct mail piece. The ROI gained could help you do more with Twitter.

7. Now, try to be cool. Three simple contests work well here. You could put up a picture and ask people to vote on a caption. You could post a question on Twitter and may the first correct answer win. You could also run a scavenger hunt on Twitter - driving people from one spot to another.

A few things to think about - you can use Twitter for customer service, for FAQ's, to engage people, & yes sometimes be cool. The thing to remember is that you have to be careful about being too cool as you may not be able to sustain it or your brand may not stand up to it. Twitter is also very powerful in getting people engaged on both mobile and the web.

The important thing to remember is not go be an 'Illtwitterate' or a 'Twammer' but 'Twengage' 'Tweeple' with 'Tweets' that 'Twexpound' 'Twisdom.'