A guest post by @laura_champion

So, you’ve been told that Twitter is a great way of marketing your small business on an even smaller budget… but when you log on it all looks like gibberish. As a relative newbie to Twitter myself, I thought I’d jot down what I’ve learnt so far to help you make the most of this powerful communications channel.

Twitter is a Social Media website, where you ‘follow’ people in order to see their Tweets. You see the Tweets of all the people you follow in a chronological stream, and they will see yours if they follow you. The tricky thing is that a Tweet is restricted to just 140 characters, so a kind of short hand has emerged that helps people to communicate rather a lot, in this very small space.