How to plug your product using twitter - without spam.

Is this an elegant solution to get around spamming?

Let's investigate what seems to be the logic behind it: 

1. Locate one of the questions and answers sites that your potential customers frequent, like mahalo.com.
2. Search for questions containing the keywords by which your prospects normally find your products. Put your ad-words to active use. 
3. Do not plug your product there, that looks unelegant and spammy.
4. You could try to locate this prospect on Twitter, and offer your solution there, but that could be seen as unsolicited email message according to Twitter's TOS.
5. On Twitter, invite customers of the product you would recommend (but  don't) to answer the original question. Include a direct link to make it easy for them.
6. Enjoy your customers selling to your prospects. Stand out, dare not to fit in.

Oh, wait, what if the world recommends competing products? 

Relax, watch and learn from it. Maybe your product is not the only or not the best solution for this potential customer. How do we know after just a single question-answer?   

How could you make this work for you?

Explore examples behind the links that follow, (i) inspired by Twitter user @barconati who managed to find the asker of this question about an intranet wiki and twittered him directly, too, because mahalo.com has an elegant solution. They are  @answers on Twitter.

FWIW: My personal thanks to twitter.