Whilst a specialist will no doubt help direct the social campaign of a company, the rewards of effective use of social media can only be achieved when said businesses are using social accounts on a daily basis to engage with their audiences. I will now explain further using the example of Twitter to illustrate why this is the case.

So what can be done?  What steps can you take to make sure that your social network profiles are safe and secure? 

But that doesn't mean that your business can't benefit from it if you're able to use it correctly.

A fad? Let me explain. Recent studies have been producing statistics that severely undercut the media hype around Twitter. I'll first present the data and then dissect it in a way that's meaningful to your business. Some of the data will vary depending on the date, the methodology, and the sample size of each study, but it should provide a clear picture in aggregate.

Twitter is growing, with an estimated 44.5 million unique visitors in June 2009, up 19% from the previous month. 45% of those visitors are from the United States. According to Alexa, a web stats company, Twitter is the 20th most popular site on the internet and Compete ranks it as the third most popular social network. It also ranks third behind Facebook and email as a way to share links.

Track Individual Twitter Accounts

First we'll look at ways to track individual accounts. You can look up statistics for your own account, but that's not the only way you can use these services. You can also use them to track your competition or people you'd like to emulate to see how they use Twitter.