In business, Twitter is pretty ubiquitous nowadays. There aren't many new start-ups who don’t use social media to spread the word, and existing businesses and organisations are starting to cotton on to the power of the social web. And it is just that – power. The power to get your message out to a wide audience very quickly in a way in which traditional forms of media just can’t match. Twitter is particularly good for this. Quick, easy to understand, with short snappy 140 character messages needing lots of focus on the message they contain, with the added benefit of pretty instant feedback and a chance to engage with your followers in conversation. All good so far. But beware the common pitfalls. The main problem is caused by the “Scattergun” approach which results in lots of followers who turn out to be mainly spammers and those who aren’t.

If you want followers who will be receptive to your message and likely to engage with you, you need to qualify each and every one. As far as possible, anyway. Weed out the spammers,  unrealistic geographical locations, anyone else who you don’t think fits your follower/user profile. Here’s how we do it when setting up client accounts..

1. First of all, look for users in your area. Your town, county, state or country. They are usually good to follow. Use the Twitter search box to input your search terms.

2. Do the same with businesses in your chosen locations. They’ll be good for networking, referrals and opportunities. Even your competitors are good to follow. Keep an eye on what the competition is up to.

3. Use Twitter search tools. There are quite a few about. The Mashable website has a good article comparing a few of the more widely used sites. Enter your keywords into the search box  (for example, art, glass, London) and see who comes up. You can use quite specific search terms and keywords to qualify your prospective twitterers and follow those who fit your target profile.

4. Engage with those you follow. Join in their conversations, answer their questions. Make your tweets interesting, informative, humorous even. Give them a reason to follow you back. Thank them for their help/interest/answers etc. Whatever you do, don’t just broadcast your product or service. Nothing will get you unfollowed faster !

5. Go through the follower/following lists of those you follow for similar people. There may be many for you to get to know.

6. Use #ff (follow Friday) recommendations to gain additional tweeps to follow. If you follow this advice, they may well start to follow you back. Try to give your followers a reason to recommend you on #ff.

7. Your followers will compile sub-lists of their followers, with sub-list headings ( for example, Glasgow business, Rock Music, Social Media etc). These will be full of good, and more importantly, qualified tweeps to follow. So go explore !

8. Once a week, cull your followers list and those you follow. Weed out the spammers, pornographers, and MLM-ers. Unfollow those who do not tweet any more (look at the date of their last tweet to help you here). This will help to keep your lists up to date and more importantly, live to tweets and conversation.

There’s no cast-iron guaranteed way to get ahead on Twitter, and unless you use it sensibly, it won’t get you oodles more business. For making contacts and increasing your networks, its a great and highly effective tool to use. And of course, more contacts and a bigger professional network will pay dividends in the medium to long term. Follow these eight tips and see how well you can do…