Advice: Twitter 101: A primer…

In the tradition of my other free advice on Skype 101, Photos 101, Google 101 and Search Engine Optimisation 101, today it’s time for the newest kid on the block – Twitter.

So… what is Twitter? Ah, the multi-million dollar question… Perhaps it’s easier to answer what Twitter is *not*, first:

• Twitter is not exactly like a chat program (MSN, iChat, Skype, etc), but it does let you communicate back and forth with friends
• Twitter is not exactly like sending an SMS from your phone, but it does let you broadcast news and other messages to many people
• Twitter is not exactly like a blog, although it does let you get to know people over time
• Twitter is not exactly like Facebook, although it does let you find people and see what they’re up to
• Twitter is not just a fad – it fills the otherwise empty niche of ‘real-time written communication’ – although it seems to be the mainstream media’s darling this year!

What Twitter *is*, is a free system of writing messages of no more than 140 characters, composed from either the twitter.com web site or any host of mobile devices or desktop applications, so that anyone in the world who is also on Twitter can *follow* you, and thereby follow the stream of messages you’re writing.

The individual messages (‘tweets’) can be about any topic you choose – where you currently are; what you’re currently doing; or what you had for breakfast (the clichéd first tweet!) – or they can be more meaningful short bursts of wisdom – or they can be links to web sites or photos or commercial endeavours – essentially anything that might be communicated on a blog or in an email, but in a vastly shorter format.

Depending on what you tweet about, other people find you and if they think that what you have to say has some personal relevance to them, then they *follow you* – it’s as if they had subscribed to your blog or ‘chosen to watch your channel on TV’. From when they follow you, they now get what you have to say in their main flow of tweets in their own Twitter program. Similarly, you can follow others, and the tweets from those you follow appear in *your* main Twitter screen.

Why join Twitter?

For personal use: Like anything on the Internet, even if you have the most eclectic of hobbies or interests, you’re sure to find someone else who shares your passion. Go to http://search.twitter.com and search for something, well, eclectic. Chances are that someone in the world has tweeted about it in the last hour or so. Click on their name to go to their home page (it always looks like http://twitter.com/their_username) and see if they always talk about what you like, or whether they just mentioned it in passing. Follow them, if you like!

For business use: not only will you find gurus giving away free advice, you’ll also have access to some pearls of wisdom from political leaders, media outlets, industry thinkers and even some competitors. In return, you can offer a Twitter ‘feed’ as one more way of being contactable, this time in *real time* and *public for all to read*. For some businesses, that’s a negative; for others, it’s a challenge; and for some, it’s a rare chance to ‘be real’ and interact with real customers, one on one in a public forum.

How to get started

OK – this time, it’s super-easy – no major hoops to jump through or anything – just head to twitter.com and click on the ‘Get Started’ button. You’ll be prompted for your full name, your email, plus a username and a password.

Your Twitter username must be unique, but it’s also what you’re known by within Twitter, so pick a decent username – and the shorter the better, if possible. Of course, pick a secure password – anyone who can guess your password can grab control of your Twitter account. Not good.

In the sign-up process, Twitter may suggest a few people to follow. Feel free to follow them, or just ignore it. You can always unfollow later on. Twitter will also prompt you to fill out your profile page – your home page on Twitter. Choose a background picture or upload your own, and fill out your bio and your location. When you fill out your location, you can find other Twitterers near you, and likewise you can be found by others, geographically. Nice.

For your first couple of tweets, we’ll just use the twitter.com site. There’s a big empty box up top of your Home page asking the eternal question: “What are you doing?”. Feel free to type your first tweet, and watch the number of characters count down from 140. If you go over, it’ll let you edit your tweet before sending – that’s half the fun, actually, trying to be concise yet clear, yet still have some element of personality in an individual tweet. Consider it like a written Suduko.

Each tweet you make is time-stamped, and they appear in backwards order, just like a blog. This means that the most recent float to the top. Find other people via surfing the net, via the search.twitter.com feature, or via any one of a dozen new Twitter-friend-finder type web sites, and press the ‘follow’ button under their name on their home page to choose to read what they write. If you change your mind, go back to their home page and press the ‘unfollow’ button.

Tweeting more seriously…

Conventions: Fitting your message into 140 characters is the name of the game, so shortcuts have developed:

• use the ‘@’ symbol like ‘@username’ to reply to someone and ensure they see your message in their timeline,
• use ‘D username’ to send a direct (private) message to someone, and therefore hide it from the public,
• use/make up/search for ‘hashtags’ to mark tweets as being on a particular topic. Eg: #F1, #bushfires, #GFC, etc
• use ‘RT @username blah blah blah’ to ‘retweet’ someone’s tweet to your followers – it’s a way of relaying on good info from one circle of friends to another.

Use a dedicated Twitter application: rather than using the twitter.com web site to tweet (it’s a great fallback, though), there are dozens of programs listed at http://twitter.com/downloads to suit any computer or phone. Most are free and the rest are typically less than $20.

The Twitter ecosystem (the ‘Twitterverse’): there’s no shortage of add-ons and extensions that help make Twitter more than just what I’ve described above. http://twtbase.com or http://twitdom.com list many hundreds of ‘helpers’ that people have added to Twitter to make it even more relevant.

Real-time news: with Twitter on smartphones so prevalent, Twitter is often the first source of news from around the world – to find the latest trending topics, try something like http://twopular.com or http://twitterfall.com

(And if you haven’t noticed, just replace the first few letters of any normal word with ‘tw’ to ‘twitterize’ it.)

I’d suggest to give Twitter a try for a month, and see if you come to use it as a daily tool like I have. Follow me on Twitter at @allroundniceguy to let me know how you go!

AB out