Granted, the website/platform is more than three years old, and it’s been featured everywhere from the New York Times to ABC News, but a lot of people still don’t have a clue what this “microblogging” stuff is all about. So why should you check Twitter out?

Well, here are four reasons, off the top of our heads:

• It’s a great way to share your message
• It’s a great source for information and news about your industry
• It’s a great way to connect with potential customers AND potential partners
• It’s a great place to go to research your market

… and those are just a few of the benefits!

But how do you actually “dig in”? How do you find people to “follow”? How do you get “followed”? How do you interact? How do you find people who talk about stuff you’re interested in?

We started out with way more questions than answers, too!

But we found this video incredibly helpful in explaining just how Twitter works:

Now, this particular video breaks down how Twitter works very effectively — but mostly talks about how to connect with your friends on Twitter. But what if you want to connect with other people in your industry, other marketers, or your customers? How do you find them?

There are three great ways to look for people to connect with:

1. Go to Twitter Search, and enter your keywords or words related to your product or industry into the search bar. Twitter Search will then show you all the “tweets” that include those terms, and the people who wrote them. You can then click through to their Twitter profiles, and see if they are someone you’d like to follow!
2. Look through the “Follows” and “Following” lists on anyone you follow to see if you spot anyone interesting!
3. Watch the conversations in your Twitter stream (You can tell who people are talking to from the “@TheirNameHere” in each tweet) and if you see people having an interesting exchange, follow them, or get involved in the conversation by using the @ function yourself! In fact, if you see an interesting tweet, you can reply automatically by pretty the little arrow within the tweet box.

Once you have followed some people, here are four quick tips to make your Twitter experience more enjoyable — and to connect more effectively with other users!

1. Don’t ask people to follow you: People who request that others follow them usually don’t succeed at getting ANYONE to pay attention. Be interesting and engaged in each of your tweets, and be responsive to others… and people will follow you (or follow you back) because you add value to THEIR stream.
2. Focus on sharing information — not on making a pitch: As with any social media platform, you want to build credibility and relationships — instead of pushing for a sale.
3. If you see someone post a link you like, “re-tweet” it: It’s easy — just copy their whole message (including their name), paste it into a new tweet, and add RT at the beginning. This is a great way to show someone you value what they have to say enough to share it with your community.
4. Pay attention to how other people use Twitter: One of the best ways to figure out your place in a community is to follow in the footsteps of people you admire.

There — that should get you started! If you have any questions, thoughts or ideas, just leave them in the comments!

And make sure to follow the Internet Marketing Center Team at http://twitter.com/The_IMC_Team.