In case I haven’t made this clear before, I’m a huge Twitter fan. Yes, I’m that annoying person who’s always suggesting that my job-seeking friends and entrepreneur friends get on Twitter. Right. Now.

Problem is, they’ll often come back after a few months and say it hasn’t really worked for them. It seemed too time consuming, and they weren’t getting any followers.

But this post isn’t about how to get followers (this one is). It’s about how to make Twitter work for you when you’re a newbie. It’s about how not to mess it up your first 20 Tweets in. Because while it’s true that Twitter doesn’t work for all types of businesses, more often than not it’s because a person isn’t using it right.

So if you’re new to Twitter, or thinking about creating an account, here are some tips to make sure you’re not doing it wrong.

1. Get a Twitter Client, like, yesterday. I know it sounds contradictory, but you won’t be using Twitter to its fullest potential if you’re using it on the website itself. A client like TweetDeck or HootSuite will keep you updated on your replies (so you don’t accidentally ignore  people trying to chat with you). You can create tabs where you can monitor certain keywords, like industry terms, or chats (as indicated by a # sign before a term, like in #brandchat). Because the whole point of Twitter is that there are several conversations being updated in real time—wouldn’t it be best if you sifted through the noise to get to what you want to hear?

2. Don’t make your followers do all the work. If you want to share a link to a blog post you wrote, or a product special on your site, please, please, PLEASE don’t just tweet the link. Give people a reason to click on it. Tell them what’s in it for them; if you ask them to figure it out on their own, they simply won’t.

Don’t make it difficult for someone to RT your messages. Keep them about 20 characters below the 140-character limit so they don’t have to edit your Tweet before sharing it with others.

Don’t Tweet a link to your Facebook status updates. I see people do this all the time, and since Facebook doesn’t have a 140-character limit, their tweet gets cut off and creates a link to Facebook. Twitter-folks don’t like this. It’s like Tweeting a link to another link. We are all busy, and don’t want to go through several hoops to get the info we’re interested in.

3. Don’t send an auto-DM every time a new person follows you. This is, guaranteed, the fastest way to lose new followers. If you want to thank someone for following you, send an @reply and make it personal. Auto-DMs are such a polarizing topic. I can’t stand them, but will quietly roll my eyes upon receiving one instead of unfollowing you. But I’ve seen others get so irritated that they’ll not only unfollow, they’ll announce it with an angry Tweet to all their followers. Yes, it’s extreme, but sometimes, I can’t say I blame them. Auto-DMs are the spam of the Twitterverse. Don’t be a spammer.

I realize this makes Twitter sound like a snarky, unfriendly place. It’s really the opposite, but there’s an etiquette to it just like any other community. So that’s the quick version, the intro. The rest is easy to learn as you go, so long as you stick around enough to find it out. I did, and, several new clients, friends and colleagues later, I can honestly say it’s made a huge difference in my business.

What about you? Are you on Twitter, thinking of joining, totally against it? Leave your tips and questions in the comments below.