How do I use Twitter? To keep up with what is happening. Here is why I am an active Twitter @aprilmwilliams user.

Lists: My business is in McHenry County, Illinois and many of my customers and fellow businesses are located here. Monitoring my McHenry County Twitter list keeps my informed on what’s happening locally.

News: Top trending stories appear in my Twitter feed real time. Politics, finance, weather and celebrity updates are instantly available.

Retweet: Many tweets I read will interest my followers. I retweet or repost these Twitter messages.

Jobs: Some companies only post job openings on Twitter. If a client is interested in a company, I recommend they find out if Twitter is one of the company’s recruiting tools.

Networking: Through Twitter, I develop new connections with others both locally and around the world. We share resources and encourage each other from near and far. It is especially fun to meet IRL (in real life) after communicating over Twitter for a time.

Search: When I am looking for information on a topic, I’ll use Twitter as a search tool. Tweets include keywords and hashtags (#) to group topics.

Learning: My industry, social media marketing, is constantly changing. I follow industry experts like @hubspot on Twitter to keep up with what’s new.

Communicate: Twitter is a just in time messaging system for my updates on upcoming workshops, classes and presentations.

Business: It is not uncommon for one of my Twitter followers to contact me for proposals which lead to coaching or s0cial media work. Business happens on Twitter.

Are you a Twitter user? How do you make Twitter work for you? Let us know in the comments!