They don’t get it. Others don’t either, unless they use Twitter often.

Twitter isn’t just about letting others know what you’re doing through your tweets. The truth is that unless you’re a major celebrity, not everyone cares where you’re going or where you’ve been.

There are a few ways that you can use Twitter to help you grow your business including:

Drawing traffic to your blog. When you update your blog (which you should do several times a week), tweet your latest blog headline and a (shortened) link. The better the headline, the faster your followers will flock to your site.

Sharing articles that may interest your followers. Tweet about articles, blog posts or even photos that will help your followers. I scan about 150 articles a day to find the right ones to share with my followers. If my followers like my tweets, they’ll retweet them, which introduces me to their followers.

Establishing you as the go-to expert. When a writer, reporter or producer is looking for an expert, they may use TweetDeck, HootSuite,  Seesmic, or Twitter Search to find the right person to interview. The same goes for prospective clients looking for a product or service. Twitter is a viable search engine for up-to-the-minute events. While the tweets you find may not be from major news outlets, the links they provide may come from sources you recognize.  This Open Forum article, “Search Marketing, Twitter-Style” gives a good description of how well Twitter works as a search engine.

Growing your online presence. If you’re serious about growing your business, you have to have a Web presence.  Do an Internet search of your name and your company name and if you don’t find yourself, you need to ramp up your online efforts.  Twitter is a good way to do that.

Making new business contacts. I’ve been fortunate to meet some incredible business owners through Twitter including @daveyank, @RightGirl (she’s hilarious) and @TachelleDaniels. We’ve worked on projects together, provided guest posts or interviews for one another’s sites, and found ways to help each other out.

Twitter can help you grow your business if you take advantage of all it has to offer. As for letting others know that you’re on your way to buy frozen yogurt, you may want to open a personal account for that.

1. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do. At its core, Stewart said, social marketing is about finding your own voice and communicating your brand’s personality. It’s easy to do what everyone else is doing and hope for a good response.  Mix it up, break the rules and be willing to let others see the real you.
2. Find yourself a good co-pilot. Throughout her keynote, Martha Stewart tossed questions and remind-me-later asides at Eliad Laskin, her all-purpose technical guru. At some point you’ll realize that you can’t do everything and actually, you shouldn’t.  Find someone who has strengths in areas you don’t.
3. Go where your customers are — and remember that everyone’s a customer. Instead of picking one platform, Stewart advises finding ways to adjust your pitch to reach the different communities that form online. My Twitter and LinkedIn accounts are all business while my Facebook account combines aspects of both my business and personal life.

In her Small Business Trends post, “20 Reasons People Unfollow You On Twitter,” Barone shares the results of a quick poll she did with Twitter users.  All of the tips are insightful and worth reading, especially these four.

1. You’re a self-promoter: Lots of people mentioned that they were turned off by Twitter users who do nothing but promote their own content. You want to drive traffic to your site, but there’s other content out there.

2. You’re too self-centered. Twitter is about connecting with others and not making it about you.

3. You auto-DM: Nothing hurts more than choosing to follow someone you think is cool…and then being hit with the dread auto spam DM. There will always be something annoying and creepy about getting a sales pitch via DM. Build a relationship before you try to sell something to someone.

4. You don’t share anything new. There’s nothing wrong with retweeting unless that’s all you do. Share new information when you can.

Think before you tweet: Before you tweet that link, publish that twitter comment or get into that heated debate, ask yourself if what you’re about to put out there is meaningful. You know that queasy feeling you get in your stomach when you say something you wish you could take back? Bad tweets can give you the same feeling but you can’t ever take those words back.

Own your account: If you’re tweeting on behalf of a company, make sure you disclose that both in your tweets and in your profile. If you try to hide it, it will be found out. Bottom line: nobody likes a sneaky tweeter.

Learn to tease: Much of good Twittering is tied to the ability to write great engaging headlines and get people wanting more. With a name like Working Naked I can get away with double meanings. Of course that disappoints the teenagers who visit this site looking for pics of chicks working naked.

Leave room for retweets: There is nothing that validates you as a good tweet writer more than being retweeted by your followers; however, if you make your tweets too long you actually lower the chances of people retweeting you. Great tip that I never considered. Using Tinyurl.com helps but you can shorten a tweet only so much.

The article “6 ways to get people to believe you online” can help you become a bit more trustworthy.  A few of these tips may bring out the Boy Scout in you.

Talk like a real person. Nothing gives the impression that you’re faceless more than using completely neutral third person language across your site. This is something I had to learn early on, after spending years writing hundreds of third person articles for magazines. Sometimes it can be all about you.

Respond directly. This could mean using a tool like Twitter to respond directly to customer feedback, or simply posting comments on blog posts that mention your business or the category your business is in. A little attention can go a long way.

Use multimedia. If you can find a way to include more images of your retail location, or a photo gallery of your employees working together, or video of your products – each of these can go a long way to sharing the inside story behind your business and establishing a basis for trust. OK, already. It’s time to get started on videos.  (That’s a reminder to myself.)

Encourage advocates. Sometimes the best way to build trust in your business is to have lots of people online saying good things about you. The old saying, “It doesn’t matter what people say about you so long as they spell your name right,” doesn’t cut it anymore.  Someone spreading lies about you isn’t OK, even if they spell your name correctly.

I don’t read Twitter direct messages anymore (unless they’re from someone I know). Why? Because I’m not interested in “enhancing” anything, I don’t want a loan and if I needed to find a business coach, I wouldn’t use one who solicited me on Twitter.

Maybe I’m missing something.  Shouldn’t a direct message be used for sending a message that has value instead of using it to send a cheesy sales message?  While I appreciate the “thank you for following me” direct messages, I don’t want anyone to sell me anything.  Just thank me and move on.  As soon as I start following you, I’ll have a clear idea of what you can do for me and whether or not I need your services.

When the need to thank and sell at the same time goes away and people use direct messages to send a non-sales message, I’ll start reading them again.  Until then, I’ll stick to e-mail, Facebook and the contact form on this site.

People (and potential clients) want to hear from you…they really do.  Just wait to sell them something until after your first direct message exchange.

Would you call a friend and tell him or her what you were doing and what errands you were running as you did them? If so, you have a nice friend who doesn’t have the nerve to tell you to stop calling.

I have a sign in my home office that reads, “It’s all about me.” A friend bought it for me as a joke (or maybe it was a hint).  But the bottom line is that Twitter is the perfect place to share your expertise, business tips and resources to help someone improve the way they run their business. It’s not about you.

But if you want to keep everyone in the loop about your every move, open two Twitter accounts.  Make one account all about you and share your latest thoughts about life, the tuna fish sandwich you just had, or how you can’t wait to see Bon Jovi in concert (I’ve suppressed that tweet). Then on your business account, post helpful tips and info that someone else could use.

If you can’t resist tweeting about your latest run to Starbucks, at least be considerate and pick up something for me.

• Establishing expertise. The writer, Lisa Barone, makes a good argument for establishing yourself as the “go-to” person in your field. She recommends participating in groups and answering questions through the Q&A.

• Share content. Barone suggests you do it in a way that’s not self-promoting or appears to be selling to someone else. She emphasizes that people on LinkedIn are looking for content and not just passing by.

Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures and the author of nine books including Reality Check, has over 180,000 Twitter followers. He’s often asked how he uses Twitter and on the American Express Open Forum he answered questions about his Twitter strategy.

Kawasaki follows everyone who follows him because he feels it’s common courtesy and he wants people to be able to send direct messages to him. He considers Twitter a marketing tool and not a social activity. His goal is to drive readers to his site.

Something I found interesting is that Kawasaki repeats his tweets. He rationalizes that not everyone is on Twitter 24×7 and they don’t always scroll back to see what has already been tweeted. He compares repeating tweets to CNN repeating news stories throughout the day.

A few of the tell-it-like-it-is tips include:

• If you make a mistake with Twitter, you’re um, screwed.

• Don’t use hashtags that have nothing to do with your post, to attract readers. It can backfire on you.

• If you want to use Twitter, you have to learn to act different and sound human.