As part of the presentation I'll be giving next week on the use of Twitter in business, I've been thinking about the steps a business needs to take to get the most out of Twitter. Here's a subset of what I've learned.

1 - Like any business activity, using Twitter or any other social networking tool needs some goal setting and planning. What do you want to use Twitter for? Sending special offers to followers? Informing the world of official company news? The surest way to not get to where you're going is to not identify your goal before you start.

2 - Choose the shortest Twitter ID you can that represents you. Long Twitter IDs make retweeting difficult and limit the amount of space you have for your message.

3 - Decide whether a single Twitter ID will suffice for the whole company or whether you'll want multiple IDs (per business function or target market or other target audience). If you're not sure, register as many Twitter IDs as you want (each will need its own email address).

4 - Decide who can send tweets on your company's behalf.

There's plenty more I'll be covering but to get that you'll need to come to one of the seminars. You can book in through Franklin Collins - my partner in these seminars.