Twitter, in the right hands, can be a dynamic part of a real estate agents marketing apparatus, but it’s still valuable to know the limitations of the site.

We’ve written about Twitter on numerous occasions, and for good reason – like Facebook and, with increasing its prominence, Pinterest, Twitter is a social media lion, an essential component to any Internet marketing platform for real estate agents.

However, Twitter, like all social media platforms, has its inherent limitations, and real estate agents in particular should be aware of how those limitations affect how they use the service. With that in mind, here are the three most notable things you should not do while using Twitter:

1. Analyze the Market in a Meaningful Way – Twitter limits its users to tweets of 140 characters, and that does not make a platform ripe for detailed analysis. Yes, there are many users on Twitter, and yes, it’s always great to demonstrate your market knowledge; however, with just 140 characters, you simply don’t have the space to write anything of value (and no, you should not split your messages across more than one tweet!). Now, you can still show off your analytical prowess, but do so in a more abbreviated fashion through sharing interesting articles and, if you’re truly a social media rockstar, posting the links to your latest blogs.

2. Offer Detailed Listing Descriptions – Building upon what we just wrote, your sales pitches for properties will be similarly hampered by Twitter’s tweet limit. Sadly, we see tweet listings all the time that feature incomplete information about a listing, because the agent was overzealous and wrote more than 140 characters-worth of information; again, your website should allow more than enough space to describe your listings, so use Twitter to promote those pages, instead.

3. Explain Any Issue with Depth – Beyond the market and your listings, there are also the core tenets of real estate – escrows, PMI, appraisals – and the many prospective homebuyers who want more information about those issues. But again, do not try to explain those very complicated issues within the span of 140 characters. It may seem like we’re beating this point to death, but we come across tweets like this all the time. If you really want to share information about those issues, start a blog, and write away – and then utilize Twitter to spread the gospel.