When Twitter first came out, one of the first things people were saying about it was that it was going to change how people did business. It was going to personalize client-customer relationships. It was going to humanize brands. Remember all that stuff?
Here’s the funny thing about Twitter and how it has evolved. A lot of the people who joined up so that they could do business somehow forgot along the way that they were using Twitter for business. They started to move over into the land of “How many followers can I get” and “What’s my Klout score?” Unless you are social media consultant (and even then you’re on shaky ground), these numbers do not necessarily prove that you are great at your actual paying job. If you are a plumber, people aren’t gonna really care that your company has 5,000 followers. They want to know if you can get their sinks to stop making that drip sound.
So how can we use Twitter for business? Is it actually a lost cause? I really don’t think so. We just need to get back to our roots a little bit. For example:
1. Make sure you are networking with people who may at some point buy from you. This is where the numbers game can really mislead a lot of people. In my case, a lot of the people I network with on Twitter are my peers, not my prospects. How about you?
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This post is by my friend Kaarina Dillabough. Kaarina is a business consultant, coach and strategist who helps you set and attain your goals, to be the best you can be, in business and in life. If you want to create more success in your life, grow your business and become an even more extraordinary entrepreneur join her at 
Were the items neatly folded and arranged, making maximum use of the space while maintaining minimal disruption to the contents en route? Or were things simply thrown willy-nilly into the case, with much grunting and groaning about how things just didn’t fit…there was just too much to fit into this small space…and there was just no time to re-pack it, or pack it properly in the first place.
If you hang out on Twitter for a bit, you are inevitably faced with a decision. “How many of these people following me should I follow back?” If you do research on the topic, you’ll find that there are plenty of blog posts on the subject. You’re also likely to find that many of these blog posts implore you to do everything that particular way. Many of these posts sort of deride other ways of approaching the great following/unfollowing question.
A lot has been written about the basic techniques of how to approach a Twitter chat, how to follow a Twitter chat, and things like that. In fact, this post from the BlogWorld folks 
Lately, there has been an outpouring of “best of in Social Media” lists. Maybe it’s that time of year? I don’t know. As each list comes out, I scan the names, hoping to learn about new and fabulous people. But more than that, I look for the fabulous people I see working hard every day. I look to see if other people are noticing how hard they are working. Sadly, many times they are not on these lists.
I would be remiss if I did not take time to note here that yesterday marked the end of the ABC Soap Operas One Life to Live and All My Children. If you’ve never been into soap operas, it’s sort of difficult to explain the levels of bummerism that this is creating in a lot of people. The best way I can explain it is that it’s like following a sports team, the same sports team, for years and years years. You watch all of the drama, you watch players come and go, you watch players come back as coaches or owners. Except, of course, in soap operas you also have everyone marrying each other, having kids, getting shot, and all that kind of stuff. Not so much of that in say, baseball.