Throughout the day at mediacampnottingham various session leaders took straw polls around who was on Twitter - pretty much everyone was.  And yet, talking afterwards with Martin Wright of Web 2.0 Surgery, he observed that at the previous medicamp, last May, far fewer people would have been tweeting.

Twitter inevitably cropped up in discussion at my session on Social Media and Marketing and a couple of comments were made about "doing Twitter properly".  The excellent Margaret Burrell (@margaretburrell) of Annesley Business Consulting (if you need assistance with commercial contracts, don't mess about, go straight here) raised the question of what "properly" means - how do you do Twitter "properly"?

I said I'd post some thoughts and welcome any expansion on or argument about these ideas so please comment.

In fact, I've done a brief post about Twitter back in October but here are some further musings...

Firstly, I'd say it's important to know what you want to use Twitter for - if you don't have a purpose, how can you do it properly?

Strategically, you might be aiming to:

• Build awareness of you/your brand;
• Ensure your contacts are always aware of what you're about/doing even when you're not out and about in person;
• Convey your expertise by commenting on industry issues on your own web site and/or by linking to others;
• Position yourself against other industry professionals;
• Listen to your customer base as well as talk to them;
• Monitor your competition (on Twitter you can follow as well as be followed so don't forget how valuable that can be).

Tactically, you might think about:

• Using Twitter to drive people to your web site to take specific actions (buy something? download something?);
• Gathering a specific following for offering discounts, etc.;
• Keeping up with your networking contacts between real world meet-ups;
• Asking questions of your network as a short cut to information.

There is also the question of how much personal stuff do you disclose if you are using Twitter (or any other social media for that matter) for business.

Those of us who can get easily bored by regular posts on someone's caffeine addiction or pressing need for cake can readily come to the conclusion that the personal stuff should be kept well away from business. However' I'd argue in favour of some selected personal disclosure - not all personal stuff is trivial, after all. 

Occasional mention of personal interests and activities can help to give insights into what sort of person you are to do business with.  Your values and concerns beyond a business transaction can speak volumes about whether you will be a pleasure to work with.  It has, after all, been amply demonstrated people buy from people they like so give people something to go on.

Doing Twitter "properly" also involves some etiquette, especially of the sort that underlines rather than undermines your authenticity online.  Here's a few tips:

• Use an avatar so people know you're a real person and will recognise you when hey meet you;
• Likewise, make sure you have a decent biography and include a link to a relevant web site so would-be followers can check you out;
• Join in - re-tweet and reply to tweets from your community; participate in things like #followfriday (where you recommend people to follow on a Friday);
• Follow people that you trust, find interesting and can learn from;
• Remember that Twitter is public and picked up by search engines - think before you tweet;
• Don't follow me if you're a spammy porn-peddler or woo-monger - otherwise find fmpickering ;) (winkyface).

I'm sure there are plenty of other views on what doing Twitter "properly" means so do share your views.