Twitter is great. And it’s easy to become addicted to the social media tool. But once you have more than about 10 people that you are following it can easily become overly time-consuming. So to get the best out of Twitter you should spend some time every month giving your account the once over.

Here is a quick checklist of things to do:

Is everyone active?: There is no pointing following a host of tweeters who aren’t active or who message rubbish or who are no longer useful to your website business. Take a look at who you are following and decide who to “unfollow”. One useful tool for doing this is called UnTweeps (http://untweeps.com/)

Who is following you?: …And should you be following them. Sometimes you forget to follow the right people so it’s worth having a check to see whether relevant followers are worth following back.

Take control: It’s possible to “mute” Twitter chat about certain topics. Simply take control of your stream and apply filters.

Set up Twitter lists: Twitter lists allow you to keep track of different tweeters in your life. For example you could have friends, business, family, hobbies lists.

There, a Twitter spring clean!

So you’ve had your new website designed. You’ve made sure it reads well (perhaps you’ve assigned a professional copywriter to do this). But there will still be a few bits and pieces that are worth checking over before you make the launch.

Make sure you check:

• Your website should have a site map, so it’s searchable.

• A feedback or contact form is a good idea.

• Don’t forget an “about” page so people can find out who is behind your new website.

• White space is a good thing. It’s easy on the eye for your readers. So don’t overdo your website design.

• Get connected to others by linking out.

• Make sure you have all your social media links, Twitter, Facebook etc on your site ready for people to click on

There are more than 400 million people now on Facebook, so it’s obvious that the social media site offers great potential for businesses looking to engage with potential customers.

But if you haven’t yet joined this on-line community how do you get started? Here are a few first-steps to help you on your way:

* Create a Facebook page (not a “profile” or a “group”). Pages have been designed specifically for businesses and organisations that communicate with the public in an official way. To create a page you first need a “profile” but after this it is the “page” that you run for your business.

* Choose a business type. Choose from local, professional, national etc.

* Select a page name. There is a 75 character allowance for this. You could include terms that people may use for searching on Facebook. Or you could decide to use the name of your company or website for consistency.  Remember that your page name is placed next to every post and comment that you make so don’t go mad with the number of page name words!
Now you’re ready to become a Facebooking business.

The chances are there will be a great deal more buzz about Google Buzz after recent news that some big-name web and applications have integrated Google Buzz via the new Google Buzz API.

TweetDeck and Seesmic had done so, which means that if you use these applications you can automatically post info to your Buzz feed. You’ll also be able to view Buzz comments and updates.

So from now Tweetdeck and Seesmic will be Twitter, Facebook and Buzz compatible.

It seems the world of social media just got bigger and more straightforward.

Google has launched a new TV service that brings together live television with the web. The so-called “smart TV” service allows people to search both live channels as well as content from websites, such as YouTube.

You’ll need a special TV set (the first sets will be sold by Sony in the autumn) to make use of this service, or you can simply add a Google box to your normal TV. This set up will also allow people to access the web and download applications.

A Google spokesperson is reported as saying: “Video should be consumed on the biggest, brightest, best screen in your house – the television. That’s not the PC, or mobile.”

Twitter experts are predicting a change in the way that people search the social media site. Recently there has been an increase in the number of users who use Twitter to carry out searches. This can be useful for companies, too, because they can search the site to find out who is talking about what, and which brands are being mentioned etc.

But what is also increasing is the “Anyone know” search. So you can search for “anyone know” plus a keyword. Eg “Anyone know sweets” or “Can anyone tell me a yummy sweets”.

Companies doing this should beware of looking too spammy with their replies but if carried out creatively and with commonsense it could be a good way to reach potential customers in your field.

This is a great way to find people who might be looking for a product or service that you are selling. We’ll bet this type of searching grows quickly.