A business leadership specialist has advised IT contractors that small businesses can really benefit from using social networking site Twitter in marketing campaigns.

Twitter is a useful tool for increasing the profile of a brand and connecting with potential customers, according to Mark Batchelor, managing director of Markman OTW.

In addition, perhaps most importantly for firms with small budgets looking to minimise costs during the recovery, these benefits are extremely cheap.

Twitter users can engage with other people to exchange ideas, useful in market research and product development.

"Using something like the TweetDeck application is really useful because you can dip in and out of several live conversation feeds and identify conversations you want to be involved in very quickly," Mr Batchelor adds.

Mr Batchelor's comments follow the publication of a new report by the Edison Research/Arbitron Internet and Multimedia Series, which found that 51 per cent of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks.