Social media is here to stay and everyone’s using Twitter. But if you’re worried about how to best use it, here are propertyadguru.com’s Top 10 Tips for Real Estate Agents Using Twitter:

1. Understand what Twitter is and plan before you tweet. Twitter is about posting short updates of less than 140 characters, which have been described by some as a little like a mobile phone text messages for the web. It’s all about telling your followers about what you’re doing at that moment. Look closely at examples of how others use it.

2. Every word matters. You only have 140 characters, think carefully about how you choose to spend them…

3. Personalise your Twitter account, but keep it professional. Make sure to think business and include all your relevant contact details in your profile, choose a relevant name, add a photo, include a short bio and make new friends or follow other relevant businesses using the “find people” function.

4. Tweet. You can’t just sit there – you need to be active. Twitter is social – so participate, and find your Twitter voice. Read propertyadguru.com’s article on Twitter: to tweet or not to tweet.

5. You need to be followed, and follow. But remember: it’s about quality, not quantity. There’s no point having the most followers if they’re not remotely interested in what you’re doing.

6. Think big and be creative with your Tweets. No one will care much for hearing about what you ate for lunch, but they might be keen to know you sealed a big deal, or have a great new property for sale. Whatever you tweet should be newsworthy.

7. Don’t overdo it. Think about the frequency of your posts. Nobody likes a spammer and the aim is to keep your social network alive and expand it through Twitter, rather than annoying people.

8. Learn the Twitter commands. Using the @ symbol before someone’s username is a reply and the user will receive notification. Using the # means it is tweet about a certain topic or event (#icny is Inman Connect New York). You also have the facility to send and receive direct messages that don’t show as a public tweet.

9. Think about how you can best use extra Twitter related applications. There are many such as: tinyurl.com, budurl.com, tweetdeck.com, twitterfeed, Twitter for mobile, twitpic.com, ffwd.com’s Twitter Connect for Video, or Facebook’s Twitter function.

10. Keep up-to-date with some of the fantastic twitter advice sites. twitip.com is jam-packed with useful information. UK comedian Stephen Fry has even been advising on Twitter best practice (and he should know, he has 100,000 followers).

But overall, just enjoy it.

Editor’s Note: You can also follow propertyadguru.com on Twitter: twitter.com/propertyadguru.