The Bloggin’ BUZZ

Monday Madness – Q & A

This post is a continuation of a post I wrote last week regarding the following question:

Q: Help!  I keep hearing that I need to be on Twitter, but I just don’t get it.  Can you give me some tips for getting started?

Kate Leser, A Distinctive Image

If you didn’t see last week’s post, you can read it here: Twitter for Beginners…Part 1.

As a quick recap, here’s what was covered last time:

1. Decide What You’re Going to Tweet About
2. Shrink Your URLs
3. Share Links to Things That You Find
4. Retweet Other People’s Messages (RT)
5. Follow Your Friends and Mentors

And now for the second half:

6. Communicate With People (@replies)
Respond back to people and build your relationships!  If you see a post that invokes a response, write back.  This is easily accomplished by clicking on the reply button on the particular tweet, or you can place @name in the Twitter tweet box.

For example: @deidrehughey thanks for the great tip!

7. Send Direct Messages (DM)
If the information that you are sending is meant for only one person, then don’t fill the Twitter stream with your tweet.  Instead, send a direct message (found in the Twitter sidebar).  Keep in mind, you can only send a direct message to someone who’s following you too!

8. Share Pictures
Remember the pictures of the US Airways plane that crashed into the Hudson? The first pictures were caught on a phone camera, uploaded to Twitpic and messaged to Twitter.  Share pictures with your followers…all you need is an account with Twitpic!

9. Share Your Favorite Music
Now, in my opinion, social media is a perfect forum for sharing music and blip.fm allows you to do just that!  After you set up your account in blip.fm, you can add Twitter (using the services tab) and every time you play a song in blip.fm, the tune and update can be sent to your Twitter account.

10. Pick a Desktop Client
There are a number of options for you to choose from: twirl, snitter, tweetdeck, etc.  The benefits of a desktop client is, well, first of all, twitter comes to you!  Second, a robust desktop client can ensure that tweets that you really want never get missed.  For example, Tweetdeck allows you to set up a twitter stream of people that you don’t want to miss.  (You can separate people out of your larger list and into a group.)

Hopefully, this has given you a good starting point!

If anyone has any additional tips they would like to give a Twitter beginner, please leave a comment!

Deidre Hughey

Other Twitter Related Posts:
Twitter for Beginners…Part 1
Manic Monday: 5 Steps to Twitter Retweets
2 Tips for People Who Wonder About Twitter

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Social Media 101 1/2, Tweet This!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.