Follow @guide2pc on Twitter!

Description:

In case you haven't heard, the social media website Twitter has just become mainstream.  The simple concept of answering the question 'what are you doing?' in no more than 140 characters might seem odd to some, but the potential benefits to you and your business are far too important to overlook.

The service is not only popular with computer-users, but has become a great way of staying connected via smart-phones, such as those offered by Apple, Blackberry, HTC and others.  Creating an account is simple, and there are a plethora of tools and add-ons available that make the service stretch far beyond the Twitter.com website itself.

Once you have joined up, the first mission is to find interesting people to 'follow'.  There are a number of tools available to help you do this, such as Twollo, TwitterGrader and MrTweet, and there are a range of options to perform searches on things like key-words and location.  Once you are 'following' people, you will get to see their updates in real-time.  More often than not the person you choose to follow will follow you back, meaning that they will also see your updates in real-time.

If you have an interest in a particular industry, location, sport, arts, travel or indeed celebrity, then you are able to keep up-to-date with like-minded people, who will offer links to articles and interesting blog posts.  As a business, as well as updating your 'followers' as to your activity through the day, you can post relevant links yourself, and this can be especially useful in attracting visitors to your own website, if say you have published an interesting and relevant article.

There is some basic etiquette to be followed when 'tweeting', and the following is a brief summary:

@username - When you sign-up to the service you create a Twitter username, which will appear each time you tweet.  If you want to direct a tweet to a particular person, you put the @username at the start of your message to let them know it is intended for them.  All of your followers can read this message.

RT - If you find that somebody has posted a particularly interesting update, you can re-tweet it to your followers, but it is a matter of courtesy to put RT at the front of the message, to credit the original person with the update.

DM - In twitter it is possible to send a Direct Message where you are following someone who is also following you, and this will not be seen in the public timeline.

To give you a start, why not follow our own twitter account @guide2pc, or for a different angle @performingbear.  Rather than listing the people we have found with an interest in France here, you can check out the people and businesses we follow via our twitter account, to see if they also interest you.  Finally, if you do fancy trying out the service, heed the following wise words from @craigmcginty:

"Twitter can be used to help your business in France if used sensibly, see it just as an advertising vehicle and no one will follow you, look to offer advice and interesting links with the occasional 'plug' for what you offer and you have a far greater chance for success."

You can check out his full article here.