Twitter is the place where business leaders, celebrities and other news makers break their ideas on the public scene first. It's a place to chronicle short bursts of thought and lead followers and searchers to a new video, website, landing page, blog post, news article or single idea. Twitter is a broadcaster and receiver of breaking news around the world as well as an amazing connector of people with the same or similar interests. Of course, people tweet whatever they want and much of it is worthless garbage. But then, Twitter is a great medium to share inspirational quotes and ideas whenever they occur. I very often use it for that purpose myself. I enjoy scrolling through my Twitter feed now and then when I'm in need of some ideas. There is never a shortage of them springing from the smart minds I follow. The hashtag (#keyword) makes Twitter the most powerful search engine for real-time conversations. When you include a hashtag in your tweet, it will automatically and instantaneously be indexed and bundled into a group of individual tweets using the same hashtag - every single one in the world. Hashtags are used for every major topic or big event going on - business, social and political. Enter the hashtag in the search bar and you will see every single tweet using it in chronological order. Do you see the usefulness of this in connecting like-minded people worldwide at any given time, including potential customers? For a snapshot of what's being tweeted around the world about the broad industry topic, enter #realestate in the Twitter search bar. Add a hashtag for your state such as #MA or #NH and then see how the tweet results are narrowed geographically. Talking Twitter 101 can be a reminder about how important this powerful social and business conversation engine can be for getting our messages noticed on a wide scale. The key to using it successfully, like anything else, is how relevant and interesting you can be to your audience. Chuck Sink is president of Chuck Sink Link, Hopkinton, N.H.