Twitter explained part 1 of 4 : The lingo

What is this twitter all about?

• Twitter lets you communicate with family, friends, co-workers and your business network.
Imagine sending a group message to all your friends so that they can read it, share it and respond to it.

• Messages or “tweets” are written from your profile and need to be 140 characters or less.

• Twitter can be used to :

1. Let people know what is happening right here right now with instant messages.
2. Entertain your network by linking them to videos and images.
3. Educate people by linking to news stories and blog articles.

How do I use twitter?

Twitter lets you:

+ write tweets and publish them on your profile
+ read tweets written by your network
+ retweet or share tweets written by others with your network
+ send private messages

So what is re-tweet?

Retweet or ‘RT’ lets you share the best links, updates or content that you see on Twitter with people that haven’t seen it. It is like forwarding an email that you like to all your friends except its a tweet.

How to re-tweet:

1. copy the tweet
2. paste it
3. add RT at the start
4. then put @immediately followed by the persons twitter username

It looks something like this:
RT @worksrec: check out this cool video channel: http://ow.ly/2Sc8c

Why use RT?
• It shows you are clued-up on how to use Twitter.
• It builds your relationship with the writer and they are more likely to share your content.
• You help grow someones network and they will help grow yours.
• Your followers may have not seen the tweet, if they like it, they will RT and you get the credit for sharing.

What is a # hash tag?

Add # to a word in your tweet and it becomes tagged.

User can search for tagged tweets in the search bar.

Say you put #olympics2012 in your tweet. If a user searches for #olympics2012 all tweets that contain #olympics2012 will be returned. VERY INTERESTING NO?

BUT make sure that your tweet is relevant and interesting or you will give yourself a bad name.