Previously, I told you about the benefits of Twitter as a source of information and as a means of propagating it. Twitter would work best if you have good quality contacts. Friends, associates, business contacts are the best set of followers.

This kind of audience is ready and interested. To start with, always put in your real name in your Twitter profile, just as you would in Facebook and MySpace. And always fill out your profiles, so people can easily find you and know who you are. After you set up your Twitter profile, then it’s time to pay it forward: follow people you know, or whose content interests you. Always introduce yourself to them, tell them what you do and what interests you. Think of it as networking on Twitter. If they check your profile and find out more about you, they might follow you back.

Like RSS feeds, you can promote your blog or Web site via Twitter. All you have to do is to type in the updates. Unlike RSS feeds, however, Twitter allows for more interaction, giving you the opportunity to field more feedback to your site changes or blog posts in real time.

If you are always on the go, you can give your followers important updates throughout the day using your mobile. Note that updates should be substantial and has meat in it. A lot of your followers would probably turn you off if you twit “still stuck in traffic…” every five minutes or so.

If you’re a powerblogger, you can let a third party service handle the updates for you. Sign up for twitterfeed, an update service that reads your blog’s RSS and feeds them to Twitter automatically, thereby saving you the time and effort of having to do the updates yourself. This is especially helpful if you maintain a lot of blogs, and you want to automate each one.

Remember that your Twitter account should speak about you or your business. While you may have a lot to say about the world, or about yourself, be sure to moderate your postings. Posting too much would cause your followers to abandon you, or not read your twits, posting nothing is just as bad. Further, be careful of what you post on Twitter. Twitter posts are basically archived by Google (another benefit of having Twitter is that you get inbound links so your site could rank higher in Google) so even if you have deleted your particularly embarrassing twit, it can still be found on Google search.

Lastly, learn to play it by ear. And of course, HAVE FUN!

Please read another interesting article about Twitter here: Don’t Ignore Twitter!