Put your hands up if you've heard of Twitter... Exactly. Almost everyone has by now but not everyone knows how to use it or even why to use it. Lucky for us, writer and social media expert Kristen Nicole has written a A Girl's Guide to... Twitter just for all of us ladies on Girls Guide To.  

Twitter is one of those tools that's hard to comprehend until you start using it.  But Twitter can be great for individuals, especially women. Take this website, for example.  A good portion of its traffic comes as a direct result of Brette's profile on Twitter.  But there's more to Twitter than marketing and branding.  For women, Twitter can even be empowering.

Why?  Because Twitter is a blogging platform, similar to Wordpress or Vox, or even your MySpace Blog or your Facebook Notes.  But Twitter is more compact, and more adept to community-building in a public sense. Twitter is in fact a microblog, meaning that it limits your blog post into smaller (bite-size) bits that are easier for others to follow and read.  With Twitter, you're actually limited to 140 characters. This forces you to be concise, and really think about what you're putting out there.

The 140 character limit also means that a Twitter post can be sent and received via mobile text message (don't you hate when your friends send you such a long message that is broken up into 3 or 4 different texts?).  And Twitter only really cares about one thing: what are you doing? Well, depending on your life and your micro-blogging needs, you could be doing a great many things.  I've listed a few of these things below:

1.  Accountability

If your Twitter stream is public, then you can consider your updates (a.k.a. tweets) to be public proclamations.  That can actually help you hold accountability to yourself.  For instance, tweeting that you'll be starting a new diet this week or taking daily breaks from your email inbox will not only remind you of the commitment you made to yourself, but it will also help you stay committed, as you've made your goals publicly known.

There's also a built in community on Twitter, where your followers can see your proclamations and send you follow up questions or reminders, as well as join you in your goals.  Now you have a Twitter-ready buddy system that's great for encouraging each other and benefiting from a shared experience.  And that's empowering.

2.  Self-Expression

Just about everybody has a blog now, and it's typically for the purpose of having a place to share your "two cents."  Twitter is no different, but Twitter's community will enable you to gain traction faster and become part of a larger discussion.  On Twitter, you can follow other users' tweets (and vice versa) without the prerequisite of being mutual friends.  So there's huge potential to find other Twitter users that share your interests, follow them and get them to follow you as well.

3.  Validation & Credibility

As a result of the self-expression you can exhibit on Twitter, you can also become validated as a resource for any given topic.  As other users begin to follow your tweets, you'll become the go-to girl for your point of interest. From there, other Twitter users and web users outside of Twitter will seek you out as the knowledgeable resource you've established yourself as being.

4.  Marketing

If you use the web for building your business or personal brand, then you'll be quite the empowered entrepreneurial woman by the marketing power of Twitter. Feed all your other blog posts and website updates automatically through Twitter to send out alerts to your followers that will reach their desktops and their mobile phones. Get the word out about your upcoming event, tweet last-minute changes or at-the-door discount codes for tickets or sale prices.  Redirect traffic from your Twitter profile and public stream to your online catalog or primary website.  HerHotSpot has done a great job with this, and even got my attention in this way, despite the thousands of other Twitter streams I follow!

Kristen Nicole is a writer and social media expert, and has recently co-authored her first book: The Twitter Survival Guide.  Feel free to visit her personal blog for more information! 

Check out her book: http://multisocialmedia.com/?page_id=48

Her Personal Blog: http://kristennicole.com

Thanks to rocketgenius.com for the sweet pic :)