Twitter can be a great tool to use to build your online audience. Twitter can also be an incredible black hole for your time. How can you make Twitter work for you?

Of course the first step is to sign up for an account. You can go to http://twitter.com and get started. This is the easy part. There are only a few requirements to include – after all the concept is based on micro-blogging where you only send out messages of 140 characters or less.

You can personalize your Twitter profile and you should do this to make yourself stand out. When visitors see a plain page, it shows a lack of interest in making this powerful internet tool work for you. Be creative and personal. People want to interact with people, not impersonal companies or worse yet spammers. Upload a good photo, one that gets people’s attention so they know who they are talking with.

The Twitter internet interface provides you with all of the functions that you need to start you out on your Twitter journey. Try it out. See what works for you.

Then if you want to use a more powerful platform, check these out:

• HootSuite – http://hootsuite.com where you can organize your Twitter life in an amazing format. It may take awhile to figure it all out, but it is worth the effort if you are serious.
• Tweetdeck – http://tweetdeck.com which is similar to HootSuite in the functions offered. Either one can work out for you.
• Twillow – http://twellow.com can also provide you with a similar set of tools. But this platform is great for finding others with similar interests as you. Twillow also allows you to provide a much longer biography and that can be useful to present yourself to the Twitter world.

There are many other programs that can useful and over time you will want to check them out. One hint is to check out the source mentioned on other Tweeters Tweets showing what they are using. If one is showing up a lot in your communications it is a good sign that it is worthwhile.

After you become familiar with what you are doing, a great tool is the e-book titled “How to Become a Twitter Expert in 24 Hours 3.0” which you can find at http://leftmark2.dsmpub1.hop.clickbank.net. This resource gives you so much information that it will take more than 24 hours, trust me. But in the first day after starting to use this handy report my I gained almost 50 followers! And they were well qualified, not just spamming bots. I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

I also found the Klout score showing up on HootSuite to be an interesting measure of how others are measured in the Twitter world. You can see more information at http://klout.com. See how you measure up.

Now time to get busy. No free lunch here, but judging by the success of others Twitter can be a good tool for you to use to build any online business. Internet marketing can be fun!

Good luck.