I'm going to explain Twitter as I understand it. Also known as I'm going to give you poor information about something I know little about.I have had several conversations recently with friends who have either attempted twitter and were immediately turned off, have just created a twitter account and are a confused or are afraid to even attempt twitter because it seems so overwhelming. The point of today's blog is to give a brief explanation and hopefully a plethora of ideas on how to get the most out of a twitter account.
Everyone starts Twitter the same way, by searching for people they know and following them. But when you only know about 7 people with a twitter account and you're already friends on Facebook it seems kind of lame so what do we do next?
It doesn't have to be complicated. Lets break Twitter in to two parts. When using twitter you are either an observer or a participant.
Observer - who you are following
Participant - who is following you
For the time being let's just concentrate on how to make the most out of Twitter as an observer. Who should you follow? First, clean your slate. Un-follow everyone you are currently following and start over. You can always re-follow your favorites so don't get all clingy about it. Pick a topic. Something simple. Go to your home page. Click on who to follow. Click on browse interests. JUST PICK ONE INTEREST TO START WITH. How about the News? I'm going to pick TIME, Reuters, BBC, PBS, and Huffington Post. What I have now is a very general feed that shows tweets allowing me to quickly peruse the list until I see a headline that captures my interest enough to follow the link and read the full article. I can now check my twitter every morning as a news feed. How Nice.
That was easy let's expand. I play fantasy football. It would be nice to every morning see a quick football rundown. One thing to remember is that there are hundreds of broadcasting outlets and all day long they repeat the same story over and over following everyone in this or any category would just overwhelm your home feed. Pick just a few to get started. I'm going to choose FantasyInsider, MatthewBerryTMR, NFLFantasy News and Michael_Fabiano.Awesome now I have my news and my fantasy football. What else does a girl need? Well.....I like to laugh. FakePresQuotes, Fake SteveCarell, FunnyorDie, Real Tracy Morgan, Patton Oswalt , LouisCK, etc. it all adds up to Hilarious!!
News, Football and silliness. I love my feed now. Man! I'm a great observer. I took the observing portion of the show and I owned it. So let's segue in to becoming a participant.
Don't panic it's still relatively simple. What are your hobbies? What do you like to talk about? Coin collecting? Art? Gardening? Cooking? Me, I'm kind of in to writing lately. So I follow other writers and writing outlets. After you identify your interest and in some cases your area of expertise it's not hard to find your peers. Home Page - Who to Follow - Browse Interests now in the search box......search your topic of choice. Check out their profiles. Their websites, their blogs etc. If interested follow. and then ............... here it comes .... tweet.
If you have posted a status, added a comment, liked a comment or shared a comment or link on facebook you are already a pro. Let's take a quick look at your options to engage on twitter:
Favorite - mark this to add a tweet to a favorites list = Like on facebook but it takes it a step further and saves it so you can view it again later. The only time I ever use this is when something is hilarious and I want to show it to someone who doesn't have twitter.
Retweet - It is the equivalent of share on facebook. I do this when I see a really funny message or when one of the more philanthropic groups I follow posts something I want to help spread the word on. Twitter is used to speak to the masses and it occurs when messages are sent from personal network to personal network. This is where reciprocity comes in to play. If you are using twitter to build a network you plan to use for marketing you'll want to be in the habit of doing unto other like minded groups as you would have them do unto you.
Reply - this is the equivalent of commenting directly on a post. This one is the important one when you want to connect with peers and introduce yourself to a group. If your hobby is cooking and after building your community a chef that caught your eye tweets a link to his "everything eggs" blog this is where, after reading the blog, you ask if the recipe requires any adjustment for altitude.
This is just a good starting point. Fairly quickly you'll start following the people that consistently grab your attention and users will follow you in return. Next time you can't decide the best ground covering for a shaded spot of the garden you can tweet about it and all of your new gardening friends will quickly give their suggestions.
There are so many "how to" articles on the use of Twitter that are likely much more thorough and educational and I suggest you read them if you will be using Twitter for anything more than just a past time.