Twitter 101

This is post number 5 or 6 in mini running series on Twittering. If you would like to know more use the search engine on the blog for words like hash tags and tweet.

Twitter is a community. Have you joined in the conversation? It can be addicting like Words with Friends and sometimes ranty like perhaps Angry Birds.

Twittering is like texting with a world of strangers and friends you do not know yet. 

The key to building your Klout there is multi-pronged. First you have to reach out and connect.

There are a million ways to find new people to follow.

If you follow people, people will follow you. Not always just the people you are following either.

To go wide search out some television shows, channels and actors you are a fan of. Follow them.

To stay more local search out your favorite nearby small business.

Follow them. If they do not have a Twitter presence do they have a Facebook page? If the answer to either or both is no do they need a social media player on their team and could you be it?

These are interesting questions to ponder.

If you have favorite authors follow them. They tend to be a bit more intimate and personal than say television or movie actors.


Have you learned to read Twitter stats? Pay attention to the numbers when you are deciding to follow someone. 

How many tweets have they made. How many people are they following. How many people have chosen to follow them?

Do they have a web site linked? What do they seem to tweet a lot about? Check out their lists and favorites.

Doing all this over and over should help guide you to being a better member of the Twitter family and community. Adjust accordingly.

Next it is all about content. What are you talking about and why should anyone care? What do you care about and who are you reaching out to?

Finally you should be a good neighbor: 

• RT (or share) great, funny, informative tweets

• Report/Block spammers

• Style and decorate your page to keep it popping 

• Save special tweets (use the Favorite button)

• Make your own personal lists of users

• Fact check

Before you hit send or ReTweet on something sketchy or inflammatory please make sure and double check your information.

Remember that your Twitter feed is public unless you have set it to private. Even then anyone who views it could copy paste it and reshare it so beware.

You do not want to go viral due to a mistake.

If Twitter is too much for you or if you have the dot com site mastered have you  tried the applications sites that make it more user friendly?

They are HootsSuite and TweetDeck. I have an account with both. These days I only use the latter.

 Image courtesy of Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot at FreeDigitalPhotos.net