If you’re thinking of using Twitter to promote your local business (such as your local real estate business), one of the first things you should be doing is finding local Twitter users. After all, if you primarily deal with local people, then there’s not much point in using Twitter to communicate with people on the other side of the continent.

One place to start looking for local Twitter users is to use Twitter’s advanced search tool and specify a “place”. Frankly I find this method a bit rough around the edges.

A more useful website is Twellowhood which shows the location of registered users by state or province and city. This is actually the place I would start if I was looking for local users.

Another interesting application for monitoring location-specific tweets is called Twitter Local. This is an application you can download that runs on your desktop. You can enter a location and it will monitor tweets as they are made by people within a designated distance of the specified location. This shows you active tweeple in your area, and gives you an easy way to follow them or communicate with them.

There are other ways to find local Twitter users – here is a good overview provided by Mashable.