The world of freelance writing is changing rapidly; Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, is a great way to keep up with the changes. But be careful: if you’re using Twitter, tweet with a plan; otherwise, Twitter can be a fun time sink and far less helpful to your career than it should be.

Here are four tips to help you build your Twitter writing success.

1. Use separate accounts for business and personal tweets

Did you know that you can have as many Twitter accounts as you want? Make use of this facility. You should separate purely personal tweets for your family and friends from commercial tweets.

On your personal Twitter account, tweet about your purchases, the music you’re listening to, and the sandwich you just ate. In your business account, make useful contacts, network with other writers and get writing jobs.

2. Set goals and achieve them

Once you’ve separated the business from the purely personal, it’s time to set a goal for what you want to achieve. You can set as many goals as you like, but each goal should have a deadline, and once the deadline has passed, take a few minutes to write a short report on your success or failure.

A word on “failures”: I’m a big fan of failures, simply because with any goal worth achieving, you WILL FAIL on your way to success… .

You can set goals for anything, but let’s say you’ve found a website or magazine that you love and think you could write for. In your business account, tweet using hash tags to ask about the business (more on hash tags below).

Typically, you’ll receive a tweet within moments, often from someone at the company asking how they can help you. This is much more effective than writing an email or inquiry letter.

3. Use hash tags to attract the attention of your target audience

Hash tags are a way of labeling your tweets so that your tweets can be indexed and found. Tagging is simple, just prefix your topic/tag with the hash sign: #.

Here are some examples:

You want to tag a tweet about Twitter: #Twitter

You want to tag a tweet about writing: #writing

You want to tag a freelance tweet: #freelance

4. Measure your success

It’s easy to waste time on sites like Twitter for minimal results.

For example, I’ve talked to several writers who were delighted that their following was increasing by the day. But when I asked, “How is that helping you?” they had no answer.

Building a large following can be useful if that is a goal that will serve you well. However, follower counts are often only used as a measure because they are highly visible.

It’s much more important to measure your useful success by the goals you’ve achieved: the research you’ve found, the sources you’ve been contacted, the writers you’ve formed a relationship with, the publishers who’ve contacted you… Twitter can help you achieve your goals. writing goals, as long as you tweet with a plan.