Though I created my Twitter account back in January, I never used Twitter except to send one tweet a month (which is basically nothing in the Twitter world).

Recently, I started to look seriously at Twitter and how to use it to market PowerHomeBiz.com. Maybe it’s all the hoopla surrounding Ashton Kutcher’s millionth follower, or a friend using Twitter to promote his organization. But in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been actively tweeting — and now I’m hooked.

Sending about 3 tweets a day, I have thus far gotten about 375+ followers. I am happy with my numbers, though there are folks who were able to get thousands of followers in just one week. My target at the end of May is to have 500 followers.

Here are some things I’ve learned thus far in terms of using Twitter to market the business:

• Twitter users are information junkies — and that means feeding them with quality information.
• Drop your links, but only sparingly. Twitters are easily turned off by what they perceive as spammers. Unless you talking about an excellent article from your site, resist the urge to tweet about your website again and again. That’s the fastest way to lose followers.
• If people “unfollow” you, don’t take it personally. Some will even come back to follow you again.
• Follow other users. Search for their names or by keywords (“home business” or “branding”) then follow the users that interest you. If you follow them, there is a high likelihood that will follow you back — and increase your follower numbers.
• Twitter is a great mechanism to check what others are saying about your business. Create saved searches of your business name or products and track what others are tweeting about your site. Then thank them for tweeting about your business (or “retweet” in Twitter parlance)
• Use hash tags # of your post’s topic. This will enable your posts to become visible when users search for those topics, thus increasing your visibility.
• Use tools such as Tweetdeck to organize your preferred columns
• Track the number of users who click on your link. The URL shortening service Bit.ly http://www.bitly.com/ allows you to track the number of clicks your shortened link gets, and even show the geolocation of those who clicked.

I am still learning how to use Twitter. But I am very happy with the results thus far. It is so much easier to get traffic from Twitter (compared to Digg for example). Referrals from Twitter have increased by more than 100%, and the audiences actually are more engaged. Plus, I get to see what types of info they like by tracking retweets and mentions of our websites.

I will write more tips on how to use Twitter based on my experiences with this fast growing social media site.