Five years ago today, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent the very first tweet, a message which read simply “just setting up my twtr,” according to Mashable. Since that day, 30 billion 140-character-or-less Tweets have been posted into the realm of the World Wide Web.

According to Mashable, Twitter is now valued at almost $10 billion, and the service has grown to become one of the most important online marketing and communications tools of a generation.

Marketing Week reports that Twitter now hosts more than 1 billion tweets a week. This provides 1 billion opportunities to see and be seen for businesses everywhere.  For this reason, Twitter is climbing the ladder of online social media marketing for businesses.

PR firm Burson-Marsteller analyzed the social media presence of the Fortune Global 100 for its “Global Social Media Check-Up 2011” and found that Twitter, specifically, saw major growth compared to 2010. Seventy seven percent of companies around the world have Twitter accounts, up from 65% last year. Of these, 67% of companies using Twitter us the “@” convention to directly mention other users, while 57% use retweets to repost a fellow user’s comment, according to Burston-Marsteller.

While Twitter has such a large reach, it is still not reaching its full potential for marketers, yet. According to eMarketer, “Twitter, while popular among marketers, still has a relatively low penetration among general consumers, but has plenty of room for growth and continued interaction.”

Why should you, the marketer become a part of this growth? The answer is simple, to connect with potential customers and gain insight through these connections.

Ian Lyons, a leading social media advisor believes that Twitter forces businesses to tackles non-traditional selling strategies.

“Fundamentally, it’s a shift from interrupting people to sell them your wares to helping people to buy, “Lyons said in an article on Startupsmart. “No one likes being sold to. Once you can make a shift to thinking about who benefits from your product and service, get to know the customer and get an answer to the key question ‘who would miss us if we were gone,’ Twitter is a great tool.”

Ross Hill, digital strategist and founder of SME networking group, The Hive, feels that Twitter ads a lightness to business.

“It’s easy to write a Tweet, whereas a newsletter takes time,” Hill said in an article on Startupsmart. “It has a lightness to it and its reach is huge.”

To learn more about how your company can amplify its brand by appealing to potential clients through social networking tools, visit Pennsylvania and Miami-based marketing experts The JLS Agency.