An article by ecommerce-guide.com,an Internet.com channel, cites recent data from Nielsen Online indicating more than 60 percent of Twitter users stopped using the social networking site a month after joining.

Data from Nielsen Online also reveals that while…

Twitter's website had more than 7 million unique visitors in February this year compared to 475,000 in February a year ago

…it still has a limited growth potential unless it can establish a higher rate of user loyalty.

A lot of the hype surrounding Twitter has come from the onslaught of celebrities joining the free social networking site and the buzz this has created. You hear that Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey and Larry King are all tweeting…you are fans of these celebs (or maybe just curious about what they’re doing on Twitter) so you check the site out and decide to join.

The issue I think many people who join Twitter face is they haven’t determined the value of Twitter for themselves. They join the site without really taking the time to understand how to use the service in a meaningful way.

Now I’m not painting all of Twitter’s recent users as celeb followers. But it’s not a far stretch to observe that the recent hype Twitter has received in mainstream media (thanks in part to Ashton, Oprah and Larry) has of course contributed to the high number of new people joining the service.

Whether its Twitter’s responsibility or not to encourage user loyalty I’m not so sure. The real crux for new Twitter users is understanding how to receive value from the service for themselves. There is certainly enormous amounts of data on the web about how to use Twitter for personal use, for business, for profit, etc.

Here are just a few guidelines and recommendations:

Understand how Twitter works. Watch a tutorial (CommonCraft’s Twitter in Plain English is a great start), read the FAQs or take the time to dive in and experiment with the service.

Understand what you want to get out of Twitter. Do you want to connect with others? Use the site as a way to gather information or promote your subject matter expertise? Knowing what you want to get out of the service will help you to understand the best way to use the tool and also to identify who to follow on Twitter.

Be honest. Be yourself. There’s no sense in trying to pull a fast one on the Twitter community. They’ll either ignore you or lambast you in a highly public way.

Find people (or Tweeple) with similar interests. The only way to join a conversation is to know where it’s taking place. There are a few different resources for finding people and conversations to follow on Twitter:

1. Use Twitter Search. Search on a keyword or phrase to find tweet streams (aka conversations) about a topic you’re interested in. When you find a tweet of interest you can respond and/or follow the users in that stream.
   
2. Go to http://wefollow.com/. Like Twitter Search you can find people based on subjects they tweet about.
   
3. Look at who other people on Twitter follow. If you’ve found someone on Twitter you find particularly interesting, take a look at who s/he follows (and in turn who follows her/him) via their profile pages. You may discover some really interesting people that way.

Add value to the Twitter stream. Twitter is more than just shouting in a 140 characters or less about how great you are. Make sure your tweets offer news or info of interest. You’re joining a conversation on Twitter so make sure what you say is relevant and timely.

Use hashtags. Hashtags are words with the # symbol in front of them, such as #ecommerce. Hashtags are a great way to connect your tweet to an existing Twitter conversation and to increase your findability on Twitter. When you add a hashtag to your tweet, it gets indexed and grouped with other tweets using the same hashtag. (For example, see how #ecommerce is indexed on Twitter Search.) This is a great way to tag your tweet for findability, particularly for engaging people in conversations about an event you may all be attending or a topic of interest you all care about.

There are more recommendations on using Twitter than what I list above and tons of different resources on how to get the most out of the service.

Manoj Jasra, author of the web Analytics world blog, has put together the “Ultimate Guide to Twitter – Marketing, Tips, Best Practices and More”. The article provides an extensive list of resources on the web for using Twitter for personal and business use.

If you have advice to add or other resources for how to get the most out of Twitter, please leave a comment below. :)