From wikipedia
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to other users – known as followers – who have subscribed to them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as the “SMS of the Internet”,[2] as it provides the functionality—via its application programming interface (API)—for other desktop and web-based applications to send and receive short text messages, often obscuring the Twitter service itself.
As a Naples twitter guy, I think we are at a really cool time in history for this type of application. Local business owners, like usual, are the last to know how to implement smart marketing tactics online. Twitter is no exception. It is THE perfect time to build a twitter following if you are a local business owner and you can do this very easily and for FREE! There are lot of applications out there you can use to help you with twitter but you can use all of them for free!
http://www.twellow.com is a good one that searches people’s bio on twitter. You can target and follow people interested or in your niche with this tool.
http://www.Tweetlater.com is a MUST have that handles automatically following people that follow you, auto-responding to new followers and you can also schedule your tweets.
http://www.twollo.com is awesome in that you can tell it to LISTEN in on conversations going through twitter and follow people you wish to target. Very, very cool and also free!
Hope these tips help you in twitter land!
Ray Higdon
Naples Twitter guy – follow me at https://twitter.com/rayhigdon
Also, if you are a local business owner, before you spend some big check on another dumb marketing shot in the dark, check out this free
local business marketing video