by Murray Lunn

Created on: September 17, 2010

Social media is here to stay; Twitter, being one of the driving forces behind the social media push has become one of the best services to interact and engage with other users online.

From a marketing angle, business has found Twitter to be very useful to improve their businesses, increase profits and handle every kind of customer interaction to date.

Although it will take some time to perfect Twitter for your own business, consider the following to masterfully use Twitter for your business.

Use One: Build an online brand

Building an online brand takes time but by doing so, your business will be able to command a chunk of the marketplace because of the authority you've built online.

Branding goes well beyond your business image; dealing with customers is the new driving factors online - you can use Twitter to help show others the culture behind your brand, bring additional users in and give them an experience they soon won't forget.

Use Two: Drive traffic to your site

With millions of users, Twitter is quickly becoming the defacto service to drive free traffic to websites.

With a large majority of users sending tweets (Twitter messages) included with links, a single tweet has the potential to drive thousands of visitors to an online destination.

As an online business, you could use Twitter to share helpful articles, product promotions and display your services as part of your campaign to ramp up traffic through the social media service.

Use Three: Lead generation

Twitter's search feature is like none other; Twitter search will give you real time results into what people are talking about - this becomes a powerful tool for those businesses that choose to employ a staff to find leads.

Every day, millions of people are talking about commerce. Your business could seek out these people and engage them through Twitter; this gives you an opportunity to land a new customer.

Use Four: Customer service

Many online businesses have taken Twitter to a whole new level, using the social media services as a form of customer service.

As a consumer, we all know how irritating it can be to be placed on hold; with Twitter, our message can be heard instantly without the wait (as long as the business uses the service).

Your own business could handle smaller customer support issues through Twitter. Using Twitter for customer support also keeps your business out in the open for others to follow and help their own interaction with your company (this could turn into

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