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Financial news media including The Wall Street Journal have recently been filled with articles about Twitter.com – a social media networking site in which people send 140-characters messages called tweets. If you haven’t tried it yet, you might be surprised at how it has become a tool for brand promotion, which can be used strategically by financial professionals. Here’s how.

To help our readers use Twitter advantageously, we asked author and Internet marketer Phyllis Zimbler Miller for advice on how a company or individual can get started. Twitter is not about telling the world what you had for dinner; but if you are a food critic, that’s exactly what could help grow your brand.

“Your tweets can reach a self-selected targeted audience faster than any other medium,” says Miller. “If you know how to use Twitter to promote your brand or business you will be way ahead of other financial professionals.”  If you want to give it try, go to www.Twitter.com and follow her advice in creating your account:

Choose your username carefully. Do you want to promote your name, your business or your brand?  While you can change your username later, it’s best to start with an effective username. Avoid underlining between words, do capitalize the words that should be capitalized, and try not to use numbers such as JaneJones2.

My personal opinion is that Twitter is so valuable that it pays to have the head/owner tweet himself/herself because of the powerful relationships that can be established.  If you decide to have someone other than the head/owner tweet with the company name as the username, provide that person with a written policy of what can and cannot be said in the company’s name. (I tweet with the username ZimblerMiller and my business partner tweets with the company name MillerMosaicLLC.  Even though we are partners, because her Twitter username is our company name, she checks with me if she thinks there might be an issue with something she is about to tweet under the company username.)

Put your real name in the settings field when asked for a name. Your username is the one that shows up automatically, but people want to know who you really are. Even if you are tweeting for a company, use your own name because people on Twitter want to form relationships with people, not companies.

• Immediately upload a good headshot of yourself. No cap or glasses blocking your eyes.  And even if you are tweeting as a company spokesperson, it’s better to use a headshot of a real person rather than a company logo.

• Include a URL to the site that you want people to identify you with.

• Write a good 160-character bio – one that interests people in learning more about you.

There’s more to optimizing your Twitter profile, and additional information is at http://budurl.com/twitterroundup.

When you sign up, immediately do two tweets on the “spine” of your brand or business. If that spine is financial news, then include a link to a financial news story that might interest people in following you.

Decide who you are targeting on Twitter to connect with, such as other businesses, professional peers, potential customers, and then tweet information that will appeal to them. Don’t waste their time or they will stop following you. And be generous in sharing links to other online information that would be of interest to your target Twitter audience.

Miller’s top tips include:

• Do not use automatic follow back. Instead, check out everyone who follows you by getting an email notification each time someone clicks to follow your tweets. You can decide whether you want to follow back that person.

• Do not try to get tons of followers at once. You want to grow your list organically with people who are truly interested. Anyone can choose to follow you, as tweets are public. Don’t try to game the system – Twitter may kick you off as a spammer.

• Use the search function to look for people and/or topics you might be interested in following, such as TARP or IPO or XBRL or 401k, in the search box and see who’s talking about this subject.

• You can also use tweetbeep.com to be notified when someone mentions your topics of interest. (If you were tracking news on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last week, you could have been the first in your office to learn he was a victim of identity theft.)

As you use Twitter, you’ll automatically learn more and more strategies from the responses you get and from observing what your peers are doing, says Miller. A good analogy to guide your own behavior is to imagine that you are at a party. You don’t want to bore people, or turn them off with excessive self-promotion, or by inappropriately handing out your business card. “It’s all about sharing information with others, learning from others in a social network – and promoting your brand organically.”