1. Sharing Links to Items of Interest

As soon as you read something online that you think is interesting, it is easy to share it on Twitter with all of your followers. Twitter is highly effective in this manner because it is such a quick way to be able to reach a large group of people. You can also get a lot of great ideas for blog posts from Twitter since many new ideas and stories are floating around that haven’t even made it to the blogosphere and definitely not to mainstream media.

2. Building Your Network

Using Twitter is a great way to build your network because it allows you to find and follow people with similar interests. You can use Steeple to find people who live in your geographical area. You can also use other tools that help you find new people to follow based upon who your Twitter friends follow.

3. Build Relationships within Your Current Network

People in different networks often use Twitter to connect with their contacts instantly rather than using instant messaging for that purpose. Furthermore, many people use Twitter to connect with their network during events like conferences.

4. Re-Distributing Content from Your Blog or Website

Twitter can be used to redistribute content from your blog or website. However, you should take care to do this thoughtfully since many of your Twitter followers may already read your blog. For that reason, you may want to avoid using a blog plug-in that automatically Tweets your posts. Your best bet is to Tweet your content manually and customize each Tweet so it doesn’t get old.

5. Get Involved in Live Tweeting Events

Twitter launched at SXSW last year, catapulting microblogging conferences to fame. Live Tweeting events are great because they are a form of citizen journalism that allow you to connect with several new people in your niche while making active and valuable contributions to current discussions in your community.

6. Pitching Stories to Journalists on Twitter

You can send a direct message to a journalist who is following you on Twitter to pitch a story idea.

7. Communicating with Your Team

You can use Twitter as a company intranet that connects all of your employees. Twitter can be particularly useful in this regard if you have a virtual business with employees in different geographical locations. You can set your updates to private for security reasons. Anytime you are working on group projects, you can stay in touch with your team members using Twitter.

8. Brand Monitoring

Stay up to date with any mentions of your business on Twitter. If there is anything negative, you will be able to counter it quickly. You can also use Twitter as a way to receive feedback from your customers and improve your business. Just ask your followers to give their opinion on something. For example, if you designed a new website, ask your followers what they think about it and get their constructive criticisms so you can make your site design even better.

9. Acquire More Votes on Social Media Websites

If you have submitted a story to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, or any other social voting website, tweet a link to that submission to try to score more votes from your followers. If your followers like what they see, they are sure to vote for your content.

10. Hiring People

Looking for a programmer, designer, or writer? Whatever type of professional you seek, try finding them on Twitter. Simply send your followers a tweet telling them you are looking for someone for a job. They can either recommend someone to you or offer themselves for the job. Using Twitter in this way is ideal for finding qualified freelancers. It is much more convenient than putting out a classified ad.

11. Build Your Personal Brand

When you use Twitter to talk about things as mundane as what you ate for breakfast or how you are going to sleep early tonight, you make your followers feel like you are casual and approachable. Even those with running a company that has a cold, corporate brand image could create more appeal and build a unique personal brand using Twitter.

12. Streamline Electronic Communications

When you use Twitter, you’re likely to find yourself using IM, email, and other electronic communication methods less. Twitter not only provides public chatting through Tweets, it also allows you to send direct messages. Twitter will help you streamline your electronic communications, allowing you to scale back online.

So you’ve set up your Twitter account and followed my notes from ‘Making an Income from Twitter‘ and you are now hopefully building a continuously growing base of followers to your Twitter account.

But how do you catch up to the Twitterers that have thousands, even tens of thousands of followers quickly?

Well, I would like to share a few of my favourite Twitter Tools and online Twitter directories that you can add your Twitter account to, attracting many new followers faster than you can say Tweet!

My first and favourite Twitter directory is Twellow. Twellow is a Twitter Directory which is free to join and grabs your details from your existing TWitter accounts, so getting started on it is easy and set up in a couple of minutes. Twellow is basically a Yellow Pages of TWitter, allowing you to search for users with similar interests or similar products, or may be located around you. Twellow is the perfect companion if you use Twitter for online marketing.

Just Tweet It is another great easy to use Twitter directory service which helps you find other users just like you. This directory is great for business as it has a huge selection of pre-categorized sections to add your business, or to search from.

Another very popular Twitter directory on the rise is We Follow. We follow breaks the categories up into the most popular Tags (eg, Celebrities, TV, SocialMedia, News, Music), and then sub-categorizes into the most popular of each section. Once you add yourself to We Follow you will quickly see arise in followers, plus it is easy to search for other people you would also like to follow. You will have thousands of followers in no time!

GeoFollow is a Twitter directory with a difference. Geofollow is a location-based Twitter directory, allowing you to search by City and State, as well as the usual Tags, Username and Keyword. Another very easy to join and use directory service, and quickly gathering momentum as one of the most popular Twitter Directories

Remember, you don’t have to understand the Twitter phenomenon, but you have to be part of it! Adding your Twitter account to these directories is a great start to really benefit from Twitter.

Next week I will be chatting about Mashable Tweets.
It might sound tasty, but it’s not..but it is very interesting!

Author: Chris Bourke from Devision.
Chris is a graphic design/ web developer specializing in search engine optimization & online affiliate marketing. Chris is also co-mananager of Devision Design based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia