Love it or loathe it, Twitter is becoming an irrepressible force that’s hard to ignore. While it started life as a place for celebrities to talk about themselves, increasingly, Twitter is becoming a useful marketing tool for businesses large and small, allowing for instant customer interaction and the potential for increased website traffic.

With current users at around the 5 million mark, Twitter presents an opportunity to reach a large audience, extremely quickly and with only 140 characters allowed, there’s no need for expensive copywriters or graphic designers to get your message out there. Effectively, everyone is on a level playing field, the trick is to generate interesting ‘tweets’ that attract followers – inviting your customer base to join is a great way to start.

Twitter is not a direct sales tool – droning on about how fantastic your products or services is not interesting to most people – but providing customer support and advice, maybe interspersed with humour and general interest is the right approach for Twitter.

Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos.com said, “We’ve found that Twitter has been a great way for us to connect on a more personal level with our employees and customers. We use it to help build our brand, not drive direct sales. In the long term, Twitter helps drive repeat customers and word of mouth, but we’re not looking to it as a way of driving immediate sales.”

For me, Twitter is a perfect platform to deliver accountancy support, providing answers to individuals, which may be useful to many, which in turn generates interest in my services and hopefully customers. Follow me @AccountsAssist and join me next Tuesday – questions can be emailed/tweeted in advance.

In the two-minute video, Dave Hartnett, HMRC’s Permanent Secretary for Tax, warns that anyone with undeclared offshore bank accounts who doesn’t come forward under HMRC’s New Disclosure Opportunity (NDO) will face much higher penalties and even criminal prosecution.

Dave Hartnett says:

“For some people, offshore bank accounts and tax havens typically conjure up images of exotic and far away places, well out of the reach of the taxman at home. Well, life’s just not like that any more. And here’s a blunt message from HM Revenue & Customs: times have changed. The taxman now has more powers and more information.”

And if you think you can ignore this opportunity, Mr Hartnett says “you’re burying your head in the sand”.

Issuing a reminder about the 30 November notification deadline, he makes it clears that people must do it now, “because there won’t be another chance”.