What is Twitter and How Do I Tweet?

When you first heard of Twitter you didn’t pay much attention now did you? I know you have been hearing A LOT about the power of Twitter and how well it works to get the message out. Most of you can probably remember learning about the crisis in Iran, the earthquake in Haiti, the protests in Egypt, Charlie Sheen and the recent earthquake in Japan and thinking, “All of these events have one thing in common and that is… Twitter?!” Think about it. It’s true. Twitter gives every single human being the platform or ability to shout or “tweet” anything and everything they would like. Think of this way… It’s like opening the window to your house and yelling outside whatever it is that you have to say. Except on Twitter it is all recorded and can be categorized for anyone and everyone to find if they want to or need to. This is such a powerful tool to use when you need help. You have a voice and it is now heard.

How do I sign up and what the heck is tweeting? It really is easy and the first thing you need to do is go to Twitter.com to sign up. It’s free and once you go through their steps to sign up, you are on your way to composing your first tweet. “Tweeting” is the actual message that you compose and send out. If you are familiar with Facebook, think of it as your status update, except Twitter is much faster paced and approximately 71% of tweets go unread. Why is that? Because the volume of total number of tweets is so great you just can’t keep up.  The biggest thing to keep in mind about Twitter and what makes it unique in its own way is that each tweet can only contain a maximum of 140 characters. That’s right; they make it a word game. You will quickly learn that if you have something lengthy to say, Twitter is not the place for you. However, you will become a pro at getting your message across efficiently and effectively within 140 characters.

Below is a compilation of some Twitter tips & best practices to keep in mind.

• Re-tweeting. This is one of the very first questions that beginner tweeps ask. What does that mean? Re-tweeting or RT as you may see it all over Twitter is a way for you to let your followers know that you liked something someone else had to say. You liked it so much that you want to pass it along. And that is how you pass things along on Twitter. You Re-tweet. It’s effective.

• Hash tags. Hash what?! If you’ve been on Twitter or watched the news you have probably seen # signs and thought to yourself, “Why are they putting number signs in front of words?” It does seem weird if you don’t understand the method behind the madness. The hash tags provide a way to tag or categorize a tweet with a certain topic or keyword. For example, if you were talking about parenting you would add the hash tag #parenting to your tweet, so others looking for parenting information would see your tweet.

• Links within your tweets. If you have a link that you would like to include in your tweet, (you can include links to videos, photos or websites) you want to shorten that URL so that it includes the least amount of characters as possible. “How do I do that?” you ask. There are several different websites that offer this service. Bit.ly is a good one, as well as TinyURL.com.

• Photos in your tweet. You want to utilize a service such as Twitpic.com or Picfrog.com that will allow you to attach a photo for all of your followers to see if it is relevant to that particular tweet.

• Twitter apps. Holy moly, we live in a world full of apps, so of course there are many to choose from when it comes to accessing your Twitter account, especially on your mobile device.  A few of the most popular ones include; Tweetdeck, Hootsuite etc. These websites give you the capability of managing your account or more than one account at one time without going crazy trying to log in and out of multiple accounts. [This applies mostly to business owners that have a personal account as well as a business account.] Most of these applications have different features that you can set that will give you options to how you receive, view or re-tweet your tweets.

• Twitter directories. There are many different directories out there that are the “Yellow Pages” of Twitter. This ginormous network of an estimated 56 million registered users is a great opportunity to network with people that are interested in the same things as you. Narrowing down your searches by different interest niches is one way that you can get the most value out of using Twitter. The directories also provide a great platform to gain new followers. Some of the most popular directories are Twellow, WeFollow and Twitter Counter. Twitter Counter is a little different in that it shows you your worldwide rank in terms as how many followers you have, as well as statistics on how many people have recently added you, and how many followers you are estimated to have in thirty days.

• Some other helpful hints. Follow people back that follow you, but only if you’re interested. It is smart to check and see who is following you and if you discover you are also interested in what that person may have to say, follow them back!

If you are a business owner and you are not yet using social media or Twitter as a part of your inbound marketing strategy, please give Mainely SEO a call for a free consultation. When you do join Twitter, please don’t forget to follow MainelySEO on Twitter.