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Twitter is the new MySpace, Facebook they say. I agree and have been slowly experimenting with it and thought I would pass along some tips.

Think of Twitter as microblogging. Each post can only contain 140 characters, so one needs to be concise, to the point and it favors those who can lrn how to abbrv, eg.

So, you go to twitter.com and sign up. So far so good. Free, of course.

Then go download Tweetdeck, which will help you organize all the ‘tweets’ from the people following you. Followers are people who find you so fascinating and charasmatic that they want to see every time you post something. Just try it, it’ll make sense soon enough. Click on the name or ‘handle’ and you can see the contact information of the person following you (your followers), and of the people you are following.

Here are 10 things I have learned so far.

Trick number one. Pick someone to follow, you can go to his home twitter page and see the people following him. If he twitters about a topic of interest, you can hitchhike on his popularity and follow those people. Most of them will, in turn, follow you. Your list of followers will grow and grow, to the point where every week, you should un follow some people who either do not follow you back, or who are just too weird. I unfollow people who have odd pictures of themselves, one guy I happen to know, chose to wear his stocking hat in his picture. Un followed him.

Trick number two. By using #jobs, #HR, you can see everything about jobs or HR that has been tweeted, the little hash tag takes you to a list that is more manageable.

Trick number three. When you see their picture, there are four actions you can take behind their picture. The bottom right one, called “actions” allows you create groups. I would recommend you start with this right away, it makes it easier now than later.

Trick number four. RT means re-tweet. If someone says something you like, hit RT, which will send that person’s tweet to your followers. People love it when you do this, it is the twitter equivalent of being a ‘comment whore’ but it’s still a nice thing to do. If you want to send the person a direct only message, that is DM. BTW, there is no spam because you can’t DM someone who is not following you.

Trick number 5. On Tweetdeck, there is a blank under the main box which automatically reduces your long url into a smaller one. These links are then in your tweet and your followers can go to your blog or website by just clicking on it.

Trick number 6. Browse around google for twitter tools. I am finding some nice ones, tweetlater, eg, which allows you to schedule your tweets around the clock. Guy Kawasaki does this too much, so I un-followed him

Trick number 7. Don’t forget your manners. Twitter can de-generate into a bunch of people figuratively yelling at eahc other ‘LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME.’ Fight the urge to promote your business constantly, and RT often, and don’t use links all the time.

Trick number 8. If you want someone to RT you, ask them nicely as in Please RT. They will do it. And because everything adds up, be sure to keep your tweet to about 120 characters when you want it re tweeted.

Trick number 9. Best time to use twitter? In front of the TV, assuming you have a laptop.

Trick number 10. At the bottom of each column in Tweetdeck, there is a filter icon. Click that, and it allows you to filter all the posts. Type in RT and you can see all the RTs. Type in http and you see all the tweets that are linked somewhere else.

All you Twitterers, did I miss any glaring helpful hints or tricks? Please leave some tricks of your own. If you like, I will keep learning and thinking about what I learned and will pass it along.

There are all kinds of ways we can use Twitter in our business, how are you using it in yours?

twitterHat Tip: Scott Gordon, twitter.com/sgordon70