I just wanted first to say thanks to Nikki for the invite to show how I use Twitter in my business and how it helps me keep on top of what is going on in Spain.

Recently I put up my twitter mosaic on my blog so you could admire all of those beautiful people who I follow. Now there are some people on there who I shouldn’t be following because I started using Twitter a long time ago and used something called autofollow (Forgive me for I have sinned). One shortened word, “Don’t!!!”. It allows spammers to send you rubbish all the time. Twitter is a broadcast medium and a conversation at the same time. If you are just broadcasting then you are not listening and you need to listen to your market.

Social media is now the best way to get up to date with relevant information about what you are interested in. If you are reading this then in theory you are interested in Spain because you have a desire to come to the country either to live or visit. So what do you get from my Twitter acounts @grahunt and the more corporate and businesslike @valprop? Well news and views about Spain and you get to discover how others are living their lives here for good, bad or indifferent. However I get a lot more from Twitter.

I live here and, as I said, I follow my market and keep on top of what is going on so that if anyone asks me a question I can answer it from a position of knowledge rather than guesswork. I use various tools to do this, one of which is the rather wonderful Google Reader (If used right) but another is Twitter.

When you go to www.twitter.com it seems a rather empty thing, this is why the majority of people go there, think to themselves “This is Useless” and leave never to return. Twitter depends on what you are doing with it and in order to do something with it you need to get inside it. This is done by using Twitter tools rather than just Twitter itself. Personally I use Tweetdeck to follow and send messages (Although others prefer tools such as Seismic or Mixero) and I use Google Reader to follow RSS feeds on terms mentioned in Twitter. Let me explain more.

Let’s say you are interested in Valencia where I am. You can set up a Twitter Search at http://search.twitter.com

Now the actual results are nothing to write home about. There are flights to Valencia, Valencia in the States and other Valencia stuff in Spanish. You probably wouldn’t want to scroll down or go onto page two etc… etc … etc… So you need to use the little orange icon in the top right corner. That is an RSS feed. When you click on it it will give you the option to follow in Google reader. Google Reader is brilliant because you can have one line summaries of everything and check every mention of Valencia on Twitter since the last time you looked with links to articles, pictures and loads more. (Just hope that Antonio Valencia doesn’t have a good season at Manchester United. The day he signed was hell as sifting through everyone Twittering about it was awful)

Why do you want to know this information? Well you will find absolute gold there including property for sale in Valencia, stories about great days out, pictures of places you will want to visit and people to follow in Twitter who will give you much more information by following their tweets and also you can engage in discussion with them to get more info about the place, in other words you have somebody on the ground who can give you the background of the place.

Remember you can do this for any term but let us stick to Valencia.

On Tweetdeck you can organise your contacts you find into columns so that you don’t miss what they say. You could follow me for example on @grahunt or the more business based tweets on @valprop and you would be flooded with info about Valencia and Spain as I use the quite brilliant Posterous service along with sharing stuff I find on Google Reader to post news that will be interesting to anyone who is thinking of coming to Spain. (My Posterous blog of interesting stuff can be found at www.grahunt.posterous.com . At times there is stuff not related to Spain too) In Tweetdeck you could put everyone you follow in Valencia into a single column to separate them from family and friends for example just like you do in Facebook maybe.

How does it benefit me as a business. Well I have defined RSS searches such as “Moving to Spain” “Going to Spain” etc set up. They tell me when someone is thinking of coming over, is on the point of coming over etc… If i feel the information I supply can be helpful to them then I will follow an message them. Get this though, I will not spam them with sales offers. Remember, I don’t like being spammed so I don’t see why anyone else should like it either. Make the initial contacts friendly and informative. You can move onto email, Google Wave or wherever later for more in depth conversations. The person who has tweeted “Right that’s it I am moving to Spain in January” is usually happy to start up that conversation and then just believe in the power of the random connection. You never know where an initial contact will lead but the fact that it can lead somewhere means much more than idly sitting around and hoping that clients knock on your virtual door wanting to buy your product.

So do you now get why I place such a huge importance on Twitter? It is real time and gets you the info about just about any subject you want right now. Compare it with the search engines which will find you the most relevant websites about your search term. However the information on those websites might well be years old in many cases. Twitter is more immediate.

Get yourself on Twitter and blog about your impending move to Spain and I will find you and follow (I will then of course hope to sell you a house because you will trust me due to the fact that I have given you so much great information )