Twitter Tips, How to Twitter and Twitter lingo and Dictionary
RuthAnne Anderson 7/23/09
Follow on Twitter @Twitter_Tips and @TwittPro for more helpful Twittering tips!
So Many Friends have asked me about Twitter. What, How and Why that I decided to write out my own tips on how to use Twitter.
If you’re using Twitter, you know it’s more than what people are having for breakfast. It’s more like “conference call using IM”. Link sharing, conversation, personal connections that break the ice before in-person meeting, & professional networking. It’s like having another phone on my desk in a different form.
If you’re just getting started on Twitter, you’re probably a bit overwhelmed and looking for a few ways to help optimize your experience.
Getting Started
User Name: Use your real name and a picture on your profile. It lets your followers know that there’s a real person behind the profile. You may use a business name for your Twitter name, but they can work if you have a real picture. In general, use a name related to your real name, other made up names can smell spammy to the casual observer.
Your bio should be real. Followers want to know who you are. Make sure you write something meaningful so others can learn something about you. A bio is your introduction as a person, not a 160 character “elevator pitch”. Sales pitches may turn followers away, especially if they think they’ll get pitched if they follow you. Personally, I don’t follow people who don’t have a bio or if they only have a Tweet or two posted, unless I know them personally and they just started Twitter. Bios are important and are searchable.
If this is purely a business account, the bio should be a description of your company.
Home page is Where Tweeting begins
· Status: Update your status and view tweets from people you follow in 140 characters
· Find People: Search for people to follow.
· Search: enter key words of your interests to find other people or topics and this will return tweets by people who have used these words. Then Look at their bio to see who they are and who their followers are. If you like what they Tweet about or who they are Click the follow sign to follow someone
· Following and Followers listed on Home Page Click to see who you are following or who is following you
· Read your tweets
· Profile page: Your tweets, You can see the tweets you have made here.
· Reply to other people’s tweets
· Click on @your name and you can see who mentioned your name or RT your Tweet. The @ symbol sends a reply. This symbol before someone’s name sends a reply that goes to their ‘reply’ tab. E.g. @Aruthanne
· Click the reply symbol. This will place the ‘@’ symbol in the status update box before their name. Then type your reply.
Following and Being “Followed”
You can search Twitter for people you know by entering their name, or any related word or description. Example: Photographer or photography. Twitter also has an option to search the contacts you have on Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and some others. If you have Facebook and go to FB Applications (Twitter), your FB friends now Twitter friends will appear. You can also select to update your Status on Facebook at the same time as Twitter on this application.
As you follower people and like what they are Tweeting, check out who *they* follow and connect to others in their network. That’s one way to build your network, and the people you follow will follow you back, most of the time.
If you start following tons of people, Twitter is very likely to mark you as an account with spam potential and suspend you. It’s not a race. Follow a handful of people, get to know them, grow from there.
A note about follower numbers: the philosophy is that more is better. I follow people who are personable, talkative, and multifaceted. They do more than talk about their business or drop link after link. If someone “unfollows” don’t worry. Each person’s has who they want to “listen” to Tweet. I “unfollowed” someone because I really didn’t care what they ate every meal and when they left the computer to go to the John. Too bad because the information, on occasion was good, so I found out who they were getting the information from when they RT - ReTweeted and dropped their name in by using this RT @NAME and I looked at the info on @NAME and started following them instead.
Consider following people as reaching out and shaking hands, connecting individually rather than just an accumulation of numbers. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s a communication experience.
Participating
Twitter like a conversation (because largely that’s what it is). There’s no “right” way to use it and your own purpose will emerge over time.
Twitter is conversing with other people. It’s sharing web links that are interesting or useful, personal or business. Your shared links are much more likely to get attention – yours web site or others- if you’ve spend the time to build the relationships with your “followers” before you ask people to Click Your Junk.
Participate – Tweet! Don’t beg for followers - if you’re interesting and interested in others, followers will show up. Talk, share, contribute and above all, have a little fun. It is the best way to build relationships and a community on Twitter.
The Twitter Lingo
Tweet: A post to Twitter - text only, 140 characters maximum (including spaces). If you’re just learning to use Twitter, start by posting your tweets from the box at the top of the page that asks “What are you doing?” Notice that while you type your post, the character counter (the number above that box, to the right) keeps track of how many characters you have left. When done, click the “Update” button - and your post goes live on Twitter!
Tweeter/Twitterer: Someone who uses Twitter. Once you Tweet you are now a Twitterer!
Follow & Your “followers” When you follow someone on Twitter means you elect to see in your timeline the tweets that they post. Your “friends” are the people who you follow (get updates from). Twitter lists this in your profile as your “following” statistic, but “friends” is the more commonly used term. Your “followers” (aka, your “posse,” “tweeps,” or “tweeple”) are the people who have chosen to see your tweets. TIP: You can click on any user’s stats to see who they follow and who follows them. This provides perhaps the best way to find people to follow: When you find a particularly interesting or relevant Twitter user, go to their personal page and click to see who they’re following. You can then choose to follow some of the same people directly from that list
@ replies: At Reply, or "@reply": A direct tweet sent to another Twitter user. This symbol precedes people’s “handles” or screen names on Twitter when a tweet is directed at them. Want to reply to someone’s comment? Start your tweet with @
RT: Stands for “retweet” and means that the tweet is being reposted from someone else. If I retweet something of yours, that means I’m passing it along for others in my network to see. When you see a tweet that starts with these letters, it means that the person is passing along something that someone else wrote. Many of the third party applications have a one-click button to retweet a post. Tweet Etiquette by "RT" and "@[username]," to give credit to the original poster.
Hash Tag: The "#" sign. Allows Twitter users to group tweets by topic, making it easier to search particular conversations using Twitter Search. You may often see tweets that end with a hashtag, or a pound sign followed by a term, such as #conference. The purpose is to keep track of tweets that are all part of a single subject, event, or topic. If you head to Twitter Search and type in the full hashtag, you can track all the tweets related to that term. You don’t need to do anything special to use a hashtag, just make one up and tell folks to use it if you want them to tag their tweets for your event or discussion.
Link: Including a URL in your tweet.
link shorteners: Twitter’s 140 character limitation makes posting big links impossible. So you’ll see shortened urls from services like TinyURL, Bit.ly, is.gd among others. They take a long URL and condense it down to a short version. Again, clients like TweetDeck have this built in, but you can use the web versions as well, many of which have a bookmark button you can use in your browser.
DM: This stands for Direct Message and is Twitter’s version of a private message. If you DM someone, you send the message directly to them and no one else can see it. To send one, type the letter D and a space followed by the person’s Twitter name (or use the Direct Messages tab on your profile page). The recipient of the DM needs to be following you for the message to go through.
Favorites: If you “favorite” a tweet, it’s like your bookmarking it for yourself. You can see your favorites on a separate tab on your profile, and others can see them too.
User. Typically this means an individual person with a Twitter account - but appearances can be deceiving. Some Twitter names are used by organizations or publications (such as NYTimes), or by groups of Twitter users (such as COtweeters, a communication channel for Twitter users in Colorado). One IBM engineer even has a Twitter account for his house.
Timeline. A series of tweets displayed on a Twitter page. When you refresh the page, new tweets appear at the top of the timeline and older tweets scroll down off the bottom.
Personal page. Every Twitter user gets their own page where all their tweets are archived in a timeline. If you click on the username of a person who posted a specific Tweet, that takes you to their personal page.
Short URLs. You can include links in your tweet simply by posting the complete URL, including “http://” - but you only have 140 characters total to work with, and some URLs are very long. Fortunately there are free online services that will create short, permanent “redirect” URLs that can replace long URLs. Three popular ones are snurl, tinyurl, and urltea. They all work basically the same way: You enter the long URL, and the service generates a short URL that you copy to your computer’s keyboard. You then paste the short URL into your tweet.
How to Speak Twitter
A TWITTER GLOSSARY
Dweet: Tweet sent while drunk
MisTweet: A tweet one later regrets.
SnapTweet: A tweet that includes a photo taken with a cell phone, uploaded to Flickr and posted to Twitter via snaptweet.com.
Twittcrastination: Procrastination brought on by Twitter use.
Twadd: To add someone as a friend or follower.
Twaigslist/Twebay: To sell something on Twitter.
TwinkedIn: Inviting friends made on Twitter to connect on LinkedIn.
Twittectomy: To remove someone from the list of people you follow.
Twitterati: The A-list twitterers everyone follows.
Twitterfly: Twitter's version of a social butterfly, marked by the extreme use of @ signs.
Twitterlooing: Twittering from the bathroom.
Twitterpated: Overwhelmed with Twitter messages.
Twittfeinated, Twigged Out, Twired: To be so hyped up on twittering that you cannot sleep
