Should your firm consider jumping on the Twitter band wagon? Absolutely.

It's easy to use and can be a great marketing and branding tool if used strategically. But, if you're not careful, the micro-blogging platform can actually hurt you.

Consider the following:

• Always give before you take. Make an effort to share information and news that is useful and relevant to your followers. And don't advertise for yourself until you've built a relationship with them. It will turn them off immediately.
• Don't spam your followers with useless Tweets. They don't want to know where you went for lunch, as much as you don't want to know where they will go for dinner. Spamming your followers will result in losing them altogether.
• When using hash tags, make sure that they are relevant to your tweets. It is very inappropriate to use a popular, albeit irrelevant, hash tag in an effort to make your tweet more visible. For example: some users have been caught using popular hash tags such as #iphone or #Iran, even though they're tweeting about something completely unrelated. 
• Give credit where credit is due. If you copy another users tweet, simply include their username and the word re-tweet (or RT) in your post.

The Twitter community takes their practice pretty seriously, and for good reason. When used correctly, it can be an incredibly valuable communication tool. But when used inappropriately, it can do more harm than good.  Just be sure to remember your Twitter manners.