Guide for Twitter

The Beginner's Guide for Twitter. Learn how to use Twitter for marketing.

The Beginner's Guide for Twitter. Learn to know how to use Twitter for marketing.

On Twitter, following someone is not necessarily an admission of friendship, but nonetheless affords interaction and conversation — at least in short bursts.

The first step is to understand and master the vernacular. There are certain words and jargon native to Twitter that you may already have heard in passing. These terms and their abbreviations (in parentheses) are essential for understanding the network.

Tweet: A 140-character message.

Retweet (RT): Re-sharing or giving credit to someone else's tweet.

Feed: The stream of tweets you see on your homepage. It's comprised of updates from users you follow.

Handle: Your username.

Mention (@): A way to reference another user by his username in a tweet (e.g. @mashable). Users are notified when @mentioned. It's a way to conduct discussions with other users in a public realm.

Direct Message (DM): A private, 140-character message between two people. You can decide whether to accept a Direct Message from any Twitter user, or only from users you are following.

You may only DM a user who follows you.

Hashtag (#): A way to denote a topic of conversation or participate in a larger linked discussion (e.g. #AmericanIdol, #Obama). A hashtag is a discovery tool that allows others to find your tweets, based on topics. You can also click on a hashtag to see all the tweets that mention it in real time — even from people you don't follow.

Once you get rolling, Twitter will give you better follow suggestions, based on the industries/fields associated with your interests. With time, you'll become adept at discerning who is worth following and who is not. There's no set strategy for this — it's completely up to you and your own personal tastes. If someone follows you, there's no requirement to follow them. If someone is tweeting too much and clogging your feed, feel free to unfollow him immediately.

Another way to communicate with Twitter is through direct messaging (DM). The messages are private, between you and the receiver, but keep in mind what you say could still be leaked — so make sure whatever you send is something you'd feel comfortable having publicly posted.

Retweeting is a common way to share something interesting from someone you follow to your own set of followers. Pertinent information tends to spread virally via retweets. It's important to remember that a retweet should be thought of as quoting someone or citing a source.

Another way of retweeting arose from the Twitter community itself. This way is a ever-so-slightly more labor intensive, but gives you the opportunity to comment on a tweet before you retweet it. Simply click to expand the tweet, copy and paste its text, and then create a new tweet by clicking the compose icon in the top-right of your profile page. Be sure to include the letters "RT" and the handle of the person who originally tweeted the information. (This is illustrated in the lower example in the picture below.) Notice that the tweet now appears in your timeline, with your profile pic and your comment before the original tweet.

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