Since getting back to work after taking time off for baby #2, I’ve decided to start exploring social networking sites. With 2 young boys, 3 businesses, and now living in 2 countries, I really had my hands full and was wondering if it’s all a waste of time.

However, it’s hard to ignore the numbers. Twitter apparently grew by 974% last year, which is just astounding.

So, if you’re a latecomer to these sites like I am or wondering how to integrate social media marketing and entrepreneurship, join me as I explore Twitter and share with you what I learned in my first 7 days on Twitter and more importantly, the amazing results I’m getting.

What is Twitter?
Twitter is a free service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

You’re limited by 160 characters and it’s like sending a short text or email or it’s also been called micro-blogging as your message is broadcast for everyone to read. If people find your ‘tweets’ interesting, then they start to follow you and what you have to say on Twitter.

Who’s on Twitter?
Your friends, customers, partners, competitors, all types of online PR and marketing experts and even Barack Obama, Lance Armstrong and Britney Spears. Okay, it’s not really President Obama, but he obviously has a savvy communications team who knew where the trends are and managed to get 250,000 followers on Twitter.

Can you imagine having a mailing list of 250,000 people just waiting to hear from you?

How Does it Work?
Just sign up for free, and here are a few suggestions to get you started:

1. Find a Twitter Mentor – someone who knows their way around and tweets about a subject you’re interested in. Follow them and model their behavior on Twitter.

2. Use TweetDeck – you’ll start to get overwhelmed by people you have clicked to follow and it’s a great add on to see at a glance posts that you want to follow, replies to you, direct messages to you and so forth.

3. Get your profile up – besides your tweets, people click on your profile to see if they want to follow you.

4. Learn the lingo and etiquette – DM means direct email me, RT means re-tweet when you want to send out something someone already wrote about and give them credit for it, hash tags like #blissdom or #winetasting are a way to find groupings on a subject.

5. Have something valuable to say – I follow quite a few mompreneurs and frankly, I do not want to read 12 consecutive posts on what they are having for dinner. It makes me wonder if they are having dinner, or just tweeting about it! I use Twitter to learn about new ideas, share my ideas on getting PR or what it’s like to be an entrepreneur mom and yes, market my businesses while sharing a personal side to me as well.

If LinkedIn shows your business side, and Facebook shows a more personal side, Twitter allows you to combine both and see multiple facets of a person. It’s also a great way to follow and learn from people that are otherwise ‘unreachable’ by email or phone.

My 7 Day Results:
In 7 days and about 30 Twitter posts, I had a mere 60 followers or so. Doesn’t seem like a lot compared to Obama, but here’s what else came about:

-A Joint Venture possibility with one of the largest and most established mom groups out there
-An Affiliate Marketing partnership with a product mompreneurs are looking for
-A PR client that inquired and then signed up with us for a project
-Sales of my how to do PR ebook
-An inquiry for an interview with Forbes Magazine (so far it hasn’t come to fruition, but I’m just jazzed that it even came my way)
-Most importantly, IDEAS, IDEAS, IDEAS. Those are just priceless, aren’t they?

If you’re a bit stuck in marketing your business, take a look around Twitter and see what (and who) you find.

Oh, and do say hello and you can follow me at www.twitter.com/ElenaVerlee