Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that lets people broadcast short 140-character text messages (called “tweets”) to the Twitter site. Twitter allows you to network with people and stay up to date with the latest news in your professional field.

Twitter is also an excellent online reputation management tool because search engines like Google rank it very high in their search results.

Your Twitter Username

Twitter limits your username to 15 characters. With Twitter, it is actually better to have a shorter username because of the nature of the 140-character limit of the messages. As with all of the other recommendations I’ve made, choose something professional for your username.

It is okay to choose something different than your full name as your username because Twitter gives you the ability to input your full name into your profile (be consistent across your online profiles). Google ties together and indexes your Twitter fullname/username combination. For an example of what I mean, try searching separately on Google for my full name “Kathleen Bobrowski” and for my Twitter username “kocobob.”

Your Profile

Add your portrait photo and short biography (160 characters). You can also add a link to another online profile here (I suggest adding your personal website, blog, or LinkedIn account).

Professional Focus

While it may seem that everyone else is using Twitter for fun, posting tidbits about their lives and poking fun at the latest trends, don’t do it. It isn’t going to enhance your online reputation. Instead, search Twitter for topics that relate to your professional interests and follow people who talk about those topics, and tweet about those topics yourself.

Don’t Blindly Follow Back

If you stick to your professional focus and offer quality content, people will follow you. You don’t have to blindly follow them back. There are a lot of Twitter spammers out there. Carefully read someone’s bio and tweets before considering whether to follow them back. If someone doesn’t enhance your reputation, don’t follow them back.

Twitter and Security

Twitter recently announced that it added a user setting that lets you always use HTTPS when accessing Twitter. Set it up now for your account.

Everyone is Watching You

If you use the public (default) setting on Twitter, your tweets can be (1) read by anyone who visits your page, (2) they will appear in search engine results, and (3) they will be archived by the Library of Congress.

As stated in Twitter’s privacy policy, “Your public information is broadly and instantly disseminated. For example, your public Tweets are searchable by many search engines.” As stated previously, Twitter shows up really well is Google’s search results, so watch what you tweet because if you use your real name in your profile, it will come up in the search results for your name.

Even if you “protect your tweets” and only allow certain followers to view your tweets, that doesn’t protect your account. In reality, your tweets can be retweeted by any of your followers and broadcast to the public, tied to your name, picked up by the search engines, and archived by the Library of Congress.