The following is a guest post by Justin Nassiri, Stanford MBA Grad and Internet Start-Up entrepreneur.  He makes some great points. Mr. Nassiri’s internet company will be launching in a few days, you can follow it here, and see Mr. Nassiri’s profile here:

If you’re anything like me, the thought of posting anything on Twitter for the world to see is as unappealing as it comes. However, I’ve come to view Twitter as the best free marketing tool available to any company of any size. So for those of you still on the fence, here’s a quick run down on why you should join Twitter and how you can use it.

Twitter is great for 3 things:
(1) hearing what your customers are saying about you and your competitors,
(2) learning about trending topics in your industry,
(3) providing information in a Facebook newsfeed-esque way in a (potentially more) professional manner than FB

For both (1) and (2) very little is required:

• Download “TweetDeck” – it will allow you to set up searches for up to 12 categories (examples: BlueTree, Design, Outsourced Help, 99Designs)
• Any time anyone (regardless of whether you know them) mentions these words on twitter, they will show up in individual search feeds
• You can respond to them privately (if they are “following you”) or publicly
• You don’t HAVE to be that active on Twitter to assist with (1) or (2), but there is a certain amount of credibility you can develop by growing a following of users (more about this below)

For (3) you will need to gain “followers”, which are similar to Facebook friends but are not necessarily people you know. Here’s a few tips on how to get started:

• When you join Twitter it’ll pull info from your address book that’ll get you started. As you search around you can start following more people you know, who will follow you back (out of common courtesy)
• The best way to gain “followers” is by posting useful information on Twitter (people are more likely to “Retweet” what you say, and thus boost your exposure, if you share an interesting article on a relevant topic rather than if you Tweet what you had for lunch)
• Since Twitter allows a max of 140 characters, people use URL shortening websites to save space. I use www.shorturl.com to create a unique url. (An advantage here is that most sites like this have URL counters so you can track how many people view the unique URL you post – this is a good way to see what type of information your followers ReTweet and find interesting)

There’s a lot of different analysis of the most effective way to gain followers…you’d be surprised at how much research goes into this. In general, I’d recommend:

• Tweet 3 times a day at different times
• Websites like www.twuffer.com are great, as you can queue tweets to go out at certain times. The best advice I’ve gotten here is to spend about an hour on Monday morning queueing up Tweets for the rest of the week, and then don’t worry about it after that.
• Put your best/most important Tweets between 11am-1pm ( The number of RTs at this time are the highest, probably since people are checking at lunch)
• The highest ReTweet topics I see are Top 10 style topics on increasing your efficiency, best online marketing practices, best [insert entrepreneur topic] practices, etc

It may not fit your ideal for personal privacy or socializing, but when it comes to online marketing you’re missing a big opportunity if you don’t use it.

Great points, thanks for the information Justin.