There are around 3.2 million active users on Twitter in the UK alone, reaching 6.3 percent of the total online population. And with the average time of just 11 minutes spent on the site per session* it is no surprise that so many people are choosing to market their business in this way.

However, with millions jumping on the ‘join Twitter’ bandwagon, just having a presence on Twitter isn’t enough to differentiate your company from all the others. The success of a Twitter account relies on how it is managed and more importantly the added value a company can give its followers to ensure retention.

Here are just some of the tips I recommend in a recent article on Fourth Source, a Digital Media website, when implementing a Twitter campaign for your business...

Egypt authorities have blocked many social networking sites – including Twitter, Facebook – in an effort to contain any news coming out of the country, as riots escalate. Meanwhile, the group Anonymous have threatened denial-of-service attacks on the Egyptian government over its censorship.

While Twitter has confirmed that its site has been blocked, other sites have been periodically blocked as Australia slept. The Next Web is claiming that YouTube, Facebook and Google are now accessible, but their connections slowed down – possibly in an effort to stop or slow-down protesters from uploading content to the West.

The pro-democracy movements in the Arab World have been using social media websites as a way to reach out during the protests – the most famous ones in Tunisia earlier in the year and in Iran over the disputed elections in 2009. This shows the effect that Social Media now has on many political issues and demonstrates the ease to communicate through the social networking sites.

The web vigilante group has started “recruiting” people to conduct these attacks. Sites targeted, according to the International Business Times, include the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Communications and Technology. It appears that the sites mentioned have been taken down.

The Pew Research Centre has released the findings of their first study focused exclusively on Twitter According to the report, Twitter is still a niche product used by 8% of U.S. Internet users.

The platform’s relevance as a marketing tool may depend on your audience — it is relatively popular with urban and minority teens, but less popular among 30-something white, non-hispanics living in the suburbs. But with a reported 370,000 new users signing up daily, it could be just a matter of time before your customers catch on.

According to the report, some of the demographic groups who demonstrate relatively high levels of Twitter use include:

Women and the college-educated are also slightly more likely than average to use the platform
Overall, observations related to users’ personal or professional lives are the most popular types of updates, while location-based tweets and links to videos are the least commonly mentioned.

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