There seems to be no denying that Twitter has found an important place in not only our culture, but in a great many ways, our business life for many smart business people. They have come to realize that Twitter is not simply a tool for telling the world what color socks you’re wearing today. Instead, clever folks are finding ever more ways to use Twitter creatively for business purposes, and are reaping the benefits. Here are twenty great business practices using Twitter.

1. Get into the habit of helping, particularly with business-related problems you can address.

2. Pass along any company or industry news that bears notice. Give you take on it as well.

3. Create and use opinion polls, and actively deal with the results.

4. Tweet about any conferences or events you’ve attended lately, and why they were valuable, or not. It’s also a very good idea to Tweet that you are going to said events ahead of time.

5. Find and join groups in your market. Twibes.com and WeFollow.com come to mind as good starting places.

6. Make use of you other social networks, and make them all work in concert. Most people have more than two, so using a good tool for this makes sense, such as TweetDeck or Twirl.

7. Get involved with relevant Twitter chats in your market. This is obviously a great way to help with credibility and authority.

8. Use Twitter to seek employees. You will likely be inundated even with a casual request, so use some judgment here. Conversely, Twitter can be a great way to find a new situation for yourself. Just be sure not to be overly aggressive in this. It’s not a job board.

9. Stay in contact with friends and business associates. Help them with referrals, and ask for referrals.

10. Use Twitter to follow any conversations about your company or brand, or especially your name, and respond to them when appropriate.

11. Be real, use a recent photo, and make sure your focus is on relationship building, not marketing or sales.

12. Make sure your Twitter contact is on your other business tools, like cards, website, email signatures, and so on.

13. Provide links to your videos and other material you publish, on the Web or off.

14. Be careful about scheduling Tweets far in advance. You may end up appearing out of touch and silly.

15. Use your businesses keywords to ensure that you have a chance to be found in search, on Twitter as well as the search engines.

16. Make sure that you emphasize the quality of your Tweets over the quantity of them. Don’t trivialize yourself or your business!

17. Use humor, and be genuine. This alone will help you win followers. Never be afraid to inject a Tweet that, while totally unrelated to your business, has had a profound impact on you.

18. Announce product launches, or newsletters, and where they can be found.

19. Give honest recommendations about companies and services that you’ve found useful and worthwhile.

20. If you are outsourcing this task to an employee, make sure you have a backup plan, or a team. People, leave, get sick, and need vacations.

There are infinitely more ways to use Twitter in your business. Just be sure to be as down to earth and real, as you can be, and you’ll be amazed at what can happen!