There is lots of talk about Twitter in the media, but it's not always easy to work out whether you should be using it, or how to use it properly.

English UK is currently reviewing its communications, and as part of that we've just had a masterclass with Twitter expert Mark Shaw, who was a very popular speaker at last year's Marketing Conference.

We're considering putting on a training session for members with Mark* and here's a few of the things we learned to get you started, or to help you use Twitter better:

• Think about how would you measure the success in using Twitter: are you trying to drive traffic to your website or achieve something else? Mark says follower numbers and retweets are not useful measures of success.
• Who's doing the tweeting in your organisation? What resources you can devote to it? Mark says: don't just look to the youngest person to do this job.
• Everything you do should align with the goals of your business. You want 50 people engaged with you, not 50,000 who aren't.
• Think about context as well as content. "Everyone's pumping out tonnes of content, everyone's adding noise to a very noisy place." 
• Build relationships with your customers. Follow them on Twitter to understand them better. Spend time talking to followers. Don't immediately try to sell something to them. You are looking for advocates and referrals. Thank them for following you, but not with an automated reply, or offering a discount. Personalise your reply. 
• Plan in advance in case things go wrong - how will you react on Twitter if a customer throws a problem at you?
• Find your customers using Twitter's search engine - you can find people seeking recommendations for products or services.
• Your tweets should reflect the kind of organisation yours is.
• Twitter is not B2B or B2C, says Mark: it's P2P - person to person.
• When tweeting, remember the three Es: educate, entertain and engage.

More useful tips can be found here.

*If you'd be interested in an English UK training session with Mark Shaw, or have any other suggestons for us, please contact tom@englishuk.com or tweet us on @EnglishUK.