New Tricks: A quick Twitter primer

February 17th, 2009

All right, folks. So thanks to us — perhaps — you’ve signed up for Twitter. Here are some rules of the road:

(NOTE: You must be logged in to Twitter for this tutorial to be most effective.)

- Want to reply to someone publicly? Type “@Name” in the text box to respond. You can put the person’s name at the beginning, or you can incorporate the name in your Tweet, like this.

- Not all of your Tweets will benefit your followers, so sometimes it’s good to send a private, direct message. Here’s how you do it:
1. Once you find someone you want to DM, go to their profile page.
2. Click “Direct Message” on the right rail.
3. Send your message.

- Sometimes there’s a big story that’s either ongoing or just developing. You’ll find that savvy Twitter users will tags their Tweets to get them seen as part of the conversation. For instance, the tag for Super Bowl-related Tweets was #superbowl, for Rod Blagojevich-related stories it was #Blagojevich and for the Obama inauguration it was #inaug09. You can find hashtag trends here and on the Twitter Search main page.

- Want to follow someone? Go to their page, and click the little “Follow” button under their avatar. It’s as simple as that.

- You’ll notice that you only have 140 characters per Tweet. So, if you’re posting a link, that means you’ll have to shorten it. My personal favorite right now is tr.im. It has a nifty metrics dashboard and doesn’t have some of the SEO issues of other URL shorteners. Go to tr.im, paste your long link into the box, click the button, and voilà — you have a much shorter link.

And now, for some Twitter etiquette. Or as it’s called, twetiquette. Enjoy this instructional video:

What are your tips?

Entry Filed under: Twitter, social media