Advice on using social media to advance your career and job search is everywhere. Breaking down this advice into smaller manageable bites is a smart way to venture into the often-rough social media waters. Choosing one social networking site to get your feet wet is a great way to avoid being overwhelmed by social media. These tips will help you get started using the social media site Twitter to advance your job search.

Brand your Twitter handle.

For many business owners, this may simply mean using your name, particularly if your personal brand and unique value are highly connected to your name. So, @JohnDoe may just be the perfect draw to your brand. However, some brands are better displayed through a representation of what you do, who you serve, how you serve and so forth. If your brand is one of these, then consider drawing a visual word picture. The challenge: Creating a handle to represent your brand in a 15-character limit.

Check out these examples from U.S. News of personally branded, value-focused and/or descriptive Twitter handles to give you an idea of where to start:

1. Describe how you help others: @AuntieStress (She undresses your stress by getting to the heart of the cause)
2. Show your unique value: @WorkIntegrity (A career transition consultant with integrity)
3. Use your name brand: @lizadonnelly (A New York-based cartoonist and writer)
4. Create a hybrid handle: @RedBaronUSA (A turnaround management and growth strategy expert who uses a company name, RedBaron, and first name, Baron, in the handle)
5. Describe what you do while concurrently using your company name: @Brainzooming (Strategy, innovation, creativity, and social media ideas)
6. Incorporate your name brand plus credential (niche area of focus): @tracystewartcpa (A CPA PFS CFF CFP CDFA, collaborative neutral financial advisor)
7. Emphasize your personal brand tagline: @ValueIntoWords (A certified master resume writer translating value into words. @Glassdoor career and workplace expert)

Follow people and share their content.

Try researching four or five of your favorite colleagues on Twitter and then start following them. See who they follow, and if their content is relevant and follow them as well. Social media is a great way to begin sharing content. Select one of your follower's relevant tweets and share it using the "retweet" button. Or, better yet, create a personal introduction to the tweet and customize your share.

Follow leaders in your field, potential employers, your college career center, your college alumni office, career coaches, career advice sites, etc. Twitter makes this easy through the search function, and with recommendations for related sites. Use Twitter's advanced search feature to find job-related tweets.

You may also want to connect with TweetMyJobs and sign up for the free services. You can indicate the cities and job titles you're most interested in, and these will be tweeted to you as they appear. The postings are immediate, so you'll hear about a job before other social media platforms will likely have it.

Become an industry thought leader.

In any job search, it's important to establish yourself as an expert or thought leader. Establish yourself as knowledgeable in your area of interest by tweeting about the latest articles, news, or research related to your field. Tweet about interesting items related to the job search as well.

Twitter is pretty simple. Just remember: it's a starting point. You will have to take your job search off your social media sites at some point to interview, network or otherwise meet your potential employer, but Twitter is another great tool in the growing toolkit of a job seeker.