It’s Friday May 15, 2009 and it’s no longer cool to have a brown box on your Twitter profile.

Way back in March just HAVING a Twitter account said “savvy”.  Now the marketing  mavens  are branding the holy lights out of everything and Twitter’s gone main stream.

Here’s some examples of what I’m talking about:

Executives, and the publications that target them, are talking non-stop about how Twitter should be leveraged in the enterprise – as in  this video of CIO’s from Home Depot, Baxter, and Yahoo, and this  CIO Magazine article “Twitter’s Potential for Business Users“, and in newly coined vernacular like  “Real Time Monitoring” used by Lenny Mendonca in this Think Big video.

Denise Shiffman.  Denise is a successful marketing consultant and speaker, so no surprise she’s among those leading the charge with her well branded Twitter presence.

Here’s an example of personal branding on steroids: Richard Darell. Richard’s a web designer who makes it simple to follow his professional profile, portfolio, and marketing pitch. From his twitter profile you can link to his website that presents clean, obvious links to Technorati, LinkedIn, Twitter, and an RSS feed to his blog, Minervity.

For a great example of how to leverage Twitter to build your brand, market your products, and improve customer service, check out Whole Foods. (Thanks Denise, @denisess for tweeting this).

Advice abounds.  For starters, check out this post on Cristina Favreau’s blog, The Savvy Entrepreneur. After the appropriate amount of research justified by your brand and situation, you’ll be ready to implement or upgrade your twitter strategy.

The take away message is this: Twitter is a way to get noticed, keep the brand fresh and agile, and improve customer service.