Twitter, the No.1 microblogging and social networking platform has grown exponentially in popularity and acceptance in recent times. According to the the latest figures from Hitwise, traffic from Twitter in the UK has grown ten fold by 974% in the last one year alone. In the US, It is about to surpass Digg from a traffic perspective and here in the UK it is currently the most talked about website.

So how can you leverage Twitter to aid your decision making? 

My advice is not only geared towards managers or business owners but the ever growing populace of Twitter Republic. Well… my the simple answer is to ‘Search’.

I would give you a simple example of how I used Twitter to make a decision on choosing a hosting company (a decision I am very happy to have made).

One of my sites on a shared hosting package on 1&1 internet was generating huge amounts of traffic.  I got several emails from the 1&1 tech support team to switch my hosting package to either a 1&1 dedicated hosting package or another hosting package. If I did not take any action, I faced the risk of having my 1&1 hosting account shut down.

In a frenzy, I started to email a couple of my friends and contacts who also have high traffic websites to seek their advice on an ideal hosting company to switch to. The feedback I got was quite mixed – ranging from regrets on their current choice of hosting providers to really over priced options.

I then headed to Google and started to run searches like ‘best web hosting’ & ‘robust web hosting’. I was bombarded with either highly optimised websites/blogs that were more or less sales pitches and Pay Per Click ads that I just didn’t really trust. I nevertheless started to make a shortlist.

I then had a ‘light bulb’ moment – to search on twitter! So I started to search through twitter’s hard to find search facility using terms like ‘web hosting’ , ‘best web hosting’ and then my list of top hosting companies. One hosting company kept popping up – it was Media Temple. I then started to probe tweets about Media Temple and started to get real time feedback on their service from their customers on Twitter. This to me was the key deciding factor to go ahead with them. I then rang their sales team and their pitch tallied with the feedback I got from fellow twitters.

I have also used this technique to find email broadcast providers and to verify real time facts. The beauty of Twitter is that it is largely organic, viral and moves with time.

If you are unsure about a product or service, try Twitter – Search, Research and Reach Out to fellow twitters for advice.

For business owners now is the time to embrace Twitter.

How I use Twitter to make Decisions and Answer Questions is a post from: Fuzz One Media