Twitter 101 – How to Use Twitter
Facebook and MySpace are all about sharing and connecting with friends. LinkedIn is geared towards professional connections and networking. YouTube is the video sharing site that offers you the option to create your own “channel”. Digg and Delicious are social bookmarking sites where you can share and find content from any online source. And now there’s Twitter, the social media “microblogging” site that has taken the world by storm. But how do you use it?
This is a great question and has been on my list to learn for a few months now. I’ve finally researched how to use Twitter, and thought I’d share my findings with you in case you’re curious too.
Twitter Basics
To put it simply, Twitter is about engaging in conversation. You can read updates posted by people you know personally, search for current news, get updates on your favorite celebrities, or follow industry experts to enhance your career knowledge. You can also do your own tweeting, but I’d recommend getting acclimated to Twitter by following a handful of people first. The best way to learn about Twitter is to jump in and set up your account.
Set up a Twitter Account
Create a Twitter account with a username that’s 15 characters or less. After you select your username and enter your email address, you have the option to search for friends via Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL. This is an easy way to find friends that are already on Twitter and quickly build the list of people you’re following. You can also search for users on Twitter, invite people to join by entering their e-mail addresses, or check out Twitter’s suggested user list. You should try to follow a few companies, experts, or any other tweeters you find interesting. After you select some users to follow, go to the “settings” menu where you can upload a picture, one line bio, URL, and location. A complete profile will make you more credible and easier to find via Twitter’s search tool.
Spend a few days checking out what your friends and connections are tweeting about, and pay attention to how they tweet. I say this because it’s kind of a language of its own, complete with @s, #s, RTs, and DMs. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it seems once you learn how to tweet properly.
How to Tweet
You can type up to 140 characters in your “tweet” box. Go for it – write whatever you want, using abbreviations and shortened URLs to fit your comment in the allotted space. Here are more ways to effectively communicate on Twitter:
- Respond to someone else’s tweet. Click the “Reply” link in the bottom right-hand corner of the tweet that you’d like to respond to. This will display the @ symbol with the username of the person you’re responding to in the “tweet” box. Type your response after the @username and press enter. Note that everyone can see your response, as this isn’t a direct message.
- Respond with a direct message to just one person or all of your followers. Select the “direct message” link from the right-hand menu when you’re on your Twitter homepage. Select one user from the drop down, or leave this blank to send the direct message to all users. Your direct messages will never be public and are the recommended way to respond to someone’s tweet when you don’t want everyone else to follow your conversation.
- Tag your tweets with hashtags. Type a # sign before keywords in your tweets to allow others to easily find your tweet via Twitter’s search function. Example: A lot of people tweet about #MichaelJackson. You could also type an underscore between Michael and Jackson. Twitter’s search is getting better and hashtags aren’t as important anymore, but they’re still considered a best practice.
- Retweet really great stuff. Type RT @username and then paste their tweet into the “tweet box”; you may need to abbreviate some words to make all of this fit within 140 characters. Here’s an example: RT@galebowman See my press release here! http://tinyurl.com/yg889lp
- Mark your favorites to re-visit later. Click on the blank star above the “Reply” link next to the tweet that you like. When you want to check it out later, go to the “favorites” menu from your Twitter homepage.
These seem to be the basic ways to effectively communicate on Twitter. Now I just have to figure out what to say and how to say it effectively! Stay tuned – I’ll cover that next time.
