If you’re only using Twitter as a way to communicate between yourself, your family, and two close friends, ignore this post. But, if you’re using Twitter to enhance your personal or professional brand, you may want to read this: It’s pretty Social Media 101, but it can’t hurt to have the occasional refresher.

I sent the email below to a friend of mine tonight – She finally got on Twitter, and started promoting it in her email mailing lists and the like. I clicked on the link in the email I got from her tonight, excited that she was finally taking that step.

And her account was protected.

“Screeeeeech!” was the sound of my trackpad, as I didn’t follow her, and didn’t tweet out why she was amazing to my followers, recommending they follow her, as well.

I’ll never ask my followers to “ask” for permission to follow someone, and you shouldn’t either.

Here’s what I sent to her:

Hey Patricia:

Unprotect your tweets. Simply put: Twitter is a way to enhance your brand. You have fans. They want to feel connected to you. If you don’t make your tweets accessible, they feel left out, even if they ask for permission to follow and you grant it. A super-high majority of the people who go to your twitter site and see that your tweets are protected won’t bother to request access. As such, you lose 90% of a potential channel to reach your fans. Unprotect your tweets, and simply be smart about what you tweet – Anything you tweet, just remember that it’s public and it goes to everyone. You’re smart like that, it’s not like you’re going to get drunk and tweet naked photos of yourself. So unprotect your tweets and open up a whole new way for your audience to interact with you. You’ll appreciate it. Trust me.

I hope she does it. I really want to introduce you to her. She’s surprisingly amazing, in a “Holy crap! You do THAT for a living?!” type of way.

PS: She just got my email, and unprotected her tweets. And she’s worth following – When was the last time you got a chance to follow a smart person who also, with one hand tied behind her back, could easily kick your ass, because she’s a 2X Golden Gloves winner working her way up to Professional Boxer? Follow my good friend Patricia (Patty “Boom Boom”) Alcivar on Twitter.