Top Twitter Tips: Beginner's Guide to Tweeting for Fun and Profit

I Took the Twitter Challenge!

I have been on Twitter for over a year now, and I have learned a few things about life, the twitterverse and everything along the way. Tweeting can be a valuable tool in your professional life, not to mention a lot of fun. Here are my top tips for twitter success.

Twitter is the micro-blogging social media platform that's all the rage among the kids these days. Or, rather, Twitter was all the rage until everybody and her Aunt Oprah got in on the act. There is nothing the cool kids hate more than knowing that when they tweet about what they had for lunch or what they are watching on TV, Barbara Walters is doing the exact same thing.

Contrary to the belief of my mother- and probably your mother, too- if everybody was jumping off a bridge, we wouldn't necessarily follow like lemmings. Now, if there was a bungee cord involved...well, it might be a different story.

And that, my friends, is exactly why you should join twitter. With everybody from Stephen Fry to Shaq to Neil Gaiman to Oprah doing it, why shouldn't you? Twitter can be a valuable tool to connect with your readers, make new friends and drum up new business. You just need to make sure you do it right.

Top Twitter Tip: Keep business and pleasure separate.

If you have a personal twitter account already, create a separate twitter account for promoting your writing. Your readers, potential readers and potential clients do not want to know what time you and your drinking buddies are meeting up for your weekly pub crawl and vomit festival. Let's face it: they really do not need to know that you have one in the first place.

Closely related to this is the need for twitter privacy. There is a weird and not always wonderful world out there, and if Carl Creepster knows that you stop for your morning latte like clockwork and exactly which Starbucks you frequent, it is only a matter of time before Peter Policeman is standing over what's left of your dismembered body in a field somewhere.