What is Twitter? Should you use it? It's a timeless question yet one that should be answered in a timely manner. Even in Adams County, Pennsylvania, you can find useful ways to reach the right audience for your business even if you consider that not many residents of this area are on Twitter.

If you decide to use Twitter, know that the term for publishing a message there is "tweet." If you tweet, you publish a Twitter message. Simple, right?

Now that we've got that out of the way, why should you tweet? Why should you use Twitter at all?

1. First, Twitter is a great place to get blog ideas. You can follow your favorite Twitterers within your niche and often come up with unique topics to blog about. As long as you don't plagiarize, it's a good place to get ideas.
2. Another reason to use Twitter is because you can often develop new relationships with prospective customers. While there aren't a ton of people from Adams and York counties using Twitter, there are people from this area using Twitter so don't be afraid to jump in. You can find them at Twellow.
3. Real-time search is something you're going to want to learn about. The search engines now return search results for Facebook status updates, tweets, LinkedIn updates, and other social media interactions - in real time. That means if you tweet a message right now and someone in Adams County conducts a search right now for the very information that you are publishing, then there's a good chance that your tweet will appear in their search results.

So there are three reasons to use Twitter. Should you use it every day? If you were doing business in a major metropolitan area, then I'd say probably so. But for local Adams and York county businesses, maybe just a moderate usage is ample enough. You have to do what is right for your business.