Twitter can be used for so many different reasons it boggles the mind, so it’s important to understand the fine distinctions and purpose of this tool, for you personally. I think Twitter’s use falls into  one of three categories:

Personal: A Stay-in-Contact Tool for Friends & Family
Like Facebook, instant messaging or texting a dear one on the phone, your purpose is to stay in touch with people intimately and you are not really looking to “grow a network” or find more people to follow. Your updates may be protected and this article is probably not of interest to you.

Functional: A Productivity or Utility Tool
You can use Twitter as a tool for doing business, as opposed to building business, in a number of ways:

1. Public Use: Customer Service
2. Public Use: Broadcast Information, such as blog feeds, job openings, PR feeds, news feeds, political information, stock & financial reports, etc. Many users are benefitting from the instant updating and like to follow broadcast-only accounts if the content is relevant to them.
3. Private Use: Inner-office communications, police or medical department communications, etc. (usually this necessitates protected updates and random followers are not sought out or approved)
4. Public or Private Use: Members only updates or business-to-consumer information such as using Twitter pings to look up information in a database (checking to see if the video store has the movie you want to see, placing to-go orders at a local restaurant, etc.)
5. Pulse: Information about real-time breaking news, weather events, global issues and hot topics.

Social: A Promotional & Networking Expansion Tool
Some folks love the companionship and chance to meet folks from around the world, so while they aren’t necessarily limiting themselves only to friends or family members, they really don’t have an agenda for using Twitter other than to meet new people and have a great time. Other meeting local friends, meeting someone to romance (more casual than match.com!) or finding people who share your interests, beliefs or hobbies.

One of the most powerful and popular ways to use Twitter is as a self-promotional vehicle, whether an individual, celebrity or company representative. The price is right, for all – it’s free! The learning curve is not steep, the only real downside seems to be the time it takes to add this into an already busy workday. Though a lot of individuals and companies are hearing about Twitter and setting up accounts (including celebrities of all types, politicians, athletes, news outlets and more), HOW to promote oneself in a way that attracts people rather than repels them, seems not to be understood by many, many people on Twitter.

When it’s not understood, any number of unattractive things can occur that can hurt your efforts:

• You offend people immediately after they follow you, by sending automated direct messages with self-interest-serving links (single easiest way to make a bad impression.)
• You annoy new followers with automated off-the-shelf promo messages created by the software you’re using (Join me on ping.fm, it’s like twitter for music!)
• You’re a celebrity who appears overly self-indulgent and non-friendly because though thousands of fans follow you (some of them more interested or genuinely fond of you than you know) the number of people you follow are in the single or double digits and you rarely @reply to people by name.
• You’re a company who only seems to care about promoting your products, your services, your press, or retweets information in which you are mentioned.
• You’re a company who thinks Twitter should be used as a broadcast tool, but don’t understand the circumstances in which people care about that, and mistakenly expect people on Twitter to jump on and follow you so you can blast them with self-promotion. When they don’t, you think Twitter is not all it’s cracked up to be.
• You actually think that putting up a photo of a hot babe wearing a skimpy outfit, and putting in a few updates of a link to something you are trying to sell is going to work to make you millions of dollars. When you get blocked or banned as a spammer, you don’t get what the problem is.
• You see the thousands upon millions of Twitter users as live targets for your sales pitches, and follow people simply to send them some great link for them to try out, check out or that will bring them great benefits. But because people can see through your self-serving interests, you come off as lame and there are a fair amount of outspoken people that bash you and try to get you thrown off Twitter.

Using Twitter as a promotional tool effectively can be challenging, but very rewarding. In my next post, I’ll show you how the Law of Reciprocity can change the way people perceive you, and help you create more openings to talk about your business with an ever-growing number of followers.