Become A Better Tweeter

Are you still unfamiliar on what Twitter is all about? It seems like this social medium is a natural phenomenon, but many people I know just don’t get it. What is it all about and how can it help my business? Twitter is a way to tell people something in a small amount of text. Think of it as a quick email – but going out to your entire contact list at once. It saves the information so people can look at it at a later date. Since the information is limited, you have the opportunity quickly glance at what others are saying and decide for yourself if you want to look at their comment in greater detail. If you still are confused, here are five tips on becoming a better tweeter.  This article was originally posted on http://www.myfivebest.com and written by this author.

USE A PICTURE

This is kind of important. People want to see a picture of you. They don’t want a logo. They don’t want an empty Twitter icon. They want you. If I have someone contact me on Twitter and they have a logo as their picture, I am hesitant about following them, because it is likely they aren’t a real person. I think it is an automated “bot” (yes, there are such things) and I most likely will not accept it. This is a social medium, so be social and show your face.

IF YOU ARE FOLLOWED, FOLLOW BACK

There is nothing more disgusting than if you start following someone because you either know them or are interested in their business – and then they don’t follow you! I can see if you don’t look at your Twitter for a couple of days, but some people NEVER follow anyone. It’s rude and typically, I get rid of them. That’s even if they are close friends. Here’s an easy way to follow people and keep track of the people you need to follow. The web site is called Tweeter Karma and I have been using it for quite some time (i.e. it’s safe): http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ You go to the site, allow them access to Twitter and then they show you who is following you and who you are following. You can even bulk follow people if you wish.

SHARE SOME INTERESTING LINKS

One of the greatest parts of Twitter is the ability to share information. When you see something you like, you can share the information amongst your friends. It’s sort of like passing information on from one person to another – except with groups of people. This is called “re-tweeting” or RT. Here’s how you do it: When you see something on Twitter that you like and would like to share, simply copy the Tweet, put the letters RT in front of the @ and paste. For example: I tweet myFiveBest is awesome. You see this and want to share it with others, but still give me credit. So you copy it, and put RT@myFiveBestis awesome, and it gives me credit. That’s Re-Tweeting. There are several tools to track your re-Tweets and I will review them in a later article.

DIRECT MESSAGE PEOPLE

Sometimes you see something interesting that you want to comment on directly. You can directly message this person in Twitter and it goes to them. They call this Messaging or Message a person. Depending on the information you are sending, you have to be careful with this tool. Typically, your comments will go out to everyone you know. In a direct message, as its name suggests, goes out to one person. However, if you don’t do it correctly, you could end up like Representative Anthony Weiner and allow everyone to follow your conversation. Here’s how you do this: First of all, the person has to be following you to receive a private message. Click on the New Message button that can be found in the Message menu. Type in the person’s Twitter handle that you want to message – and that’s it. Pretty simple. It’s as easy as sending an IM back in the old AOL days.

WHAT DOES THE ‘#’ MEAN?

People new to Twitter may find this hash mark (‘#’) strange. The hash mark (#) before a word in a post allows you to tag that post for that word. But…(there is always a but…), in order to get tracked via a hash tag, you need to opt-in and follow http://twitter.com/hashtags. Once you’re following Hashtags, every time you make a post in Twitter and tag it with a hash mark like so: #mFiveBest, it will then show up as a real-time post on http://www.Hashtags.org. If you then visit Hashtags.org, you can click on any tag and it will show you all of the posts that have been tagged with that keyword. Some plugins work the same way. I have created some web sites that allow an automatic posting on my web site if I tweet with a specific hashtag. In any case, millions of people follow this ‘#’ sign to find things they are looking for on Twitter and elsewhere. NOTE: By placing a hashtag on any Twitter post will now make it searchable.

If you are interested in following myFiveBest on Twitter, feel free to follow me @myFiveBest (http://twitter.com/#!/myFiveBest)