So, my politico pal, the twitter skeptic, signed up. I’m trying to collect some twitter tips to help make the experience more navigable for her. Have I missed something that you think is critical to twitter survival? Leave your twitter truth in the comments.
- Twitter is actually a lot like riding the bus. Some of the people who cross your path are, well, not people with whom you’d choose to become lifelong friends. On twitter, they may be spammers of the obvious Twitter-is-going-to-ban-them type, or they may be less obvious — simply single-minded about their real estate sales. SEO magic, or social media mojo. They may also be amazingly inappropriate. Your tolerance for these people on the edges of the conversation is probably close to your tolerance for them real life. You can simple ignore them. You can block them (it’s under actions on the user’s profile page). You can try and engage and get them to make more sense.
- You don’t have to read it all. Twitter isn’t like that. It’s not email. That’s part of its beauty, actually, but also part of what can be overwhelming. There’s a public timeline, there are the updates from the people you follow. Read what you want. Dip in and out of the stream. But don’t worry about it. Seriously. That said…
- Replies are where it’s @. Use them and read them. People can flag a public message for your attention by simply putting “@username” in the entry. Pay attention to those. You can see them, logged in, via the @yourusername on the sidebar of your profile page. It’s not just about reading those things. It’s also about pointing out things for others. @username inserted in their post will make sure they see it. So, for example, if you wanted to make sure that I saw something from you, you would just add “@webb” to your tweet.
- Spread the good stuff. Someone else tweet something that you really want to share? Do it! Simple begin with “RT @username” and follow it with the orginial message (you might have to do some shortening to get into the 140 character limit) and send it along. The RT indicates that you are retweeting something and the @username give credit.
- You don’t have to read it all. Yes, yes, I know. People broadcast. They are jerks. You don’t know why they are following you. Hop up to number 1 on this list and read that again.
- Find your tribe. Search is your friend on Twitter like it is almost everywhere else on the Interwebs. Use search on the profile page to find, via keywords, conversations that may be useful to you. When you do find one that strikes a chord, save it. Saved searches will appear right under the search box.*
- Follow people who are interesting to you. Don’t worry about whether or not you know them. Don’t worry if they have a gazillion twitter followers or two. Follow people because you know them. Because you like what they are saying. Because you care and might want to engage in conversation.
- Introduce yourself. Do it in your bio. People actually look at those. After all, they want to know that you aren’t a spammer. Give a bit of context and a link. And you know, you can do the twitter version of a handshake: use the @ to tell someone what interested you enough to follow them.
- Make sure you have the d. You want to send a private message. You can if the twitter user is following you. Just put a “d” and then space and then their username. Private messages are nice for messages that are, well, private. But also for those quick thanks or nice to see you or that reminds you kind of post. But do everyone a quick favor: make sure you’re private messages are marked up properly. After all, you don’t want all of us calling you at 10am tomorrow.
- You. Do. Not. Have. To. Read. It. All. Really. Really. Really.
* Over time, you’ll probably move this process to desktop or mobile twitter clients. But let that come. No need to start in the deep end if you don’t have to.
Photo Credit: Flotilla, taken by James Jordan
Nice tips! I was a Twitter newbie not long ago too. I dip into the Twitter stream briefly whenever I am online. I do block obvious spammers who try to follow me. You can identify them by the fact that they have no info in their profile, are following scads of people but have no followers, or have pics that show them in compromising garb.
I think under point seven you didn’t mean:
“Follow people because you know them.”
My guess is that this was supposed to be “Follow people because you like what they are saying.” or sth. similar.
@Joanne — Thanks for the adding your thoughts about blocking people. Makes it even more important to for folks to prove themselves not spammers by providing a little bit of twitter bio.
@Timo — I did actually mean follow people you know but I think I didn’t explain it well. What is was trying to get at: I get business cards with twitter handles on them. Emails have them in the sig file on the bottom. Blogs that I read regular whose authors point to their twitter selves. I should be following those folks that I know. Twitter helps me to maintain contact with them.
I also think that you should follow them because you like what they are saying, of course.
And, of course, I don’t mean follow people you know to the exclusion of others.
Marnie, what an awesome list–thanks. I like it so much, I’m about to RT it
One other suggestion to add:
*Hashtags (#) are your friend.* Hashtags let you label the content of your tweets and connect your messages to others. The best use of hashtags so far has been to connect conference- and event-goers. These days, conference organizers often let folks know about the one tag to use (like #10NTC) and ask all to add it when they tweet about a learning, gathering or related topic. Using the same hashtag helps people find related content in searches. Some orgs also try to organize its constituents to use the same hashtag with the goal of appearing in Twitter’s list of trending topics. Great how-tos on hashtags from @mashable: http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/twitter-hashtags/
I’d argue that something like TweetDeck is the shallow end. I’ve known several people who gave up on twitter, only to return once they saw how easy it could be using something an app that simplified the following/@/etc processes for them. I’d say that figuring out *which* app to use may be the deep end, but utilizing one of them to start with is often a good idea.
Ditto Farra on hashtags, Jeff on apps.
Too many tweets take up too much time, so I use TweetDeck to organize the people I follow into groups, Group One being the people I absolutely don’t want to miss. Is there a way to group followees in Twitter?
Bought Tweetie because Marnie uses it, but am probably not getting the most out of it (for one thing, can’t figure out how to group followees, don’t think it can).
So I hope Marnie follows up with a post on apps.
So what you’re saying is, you don’t have to read it all, huh?
That’s the number one point I try to stress about Twitter and RSS readers, but it’s really hard for people to accept. If it’s in a list, they want to read it all. Our old media culture was about consuming everything. That, of course, was when there were only 25 channels on TV, books, and newspapers.
We need a new set of skills for filtering and understanding what we need to give our attention to. How can people practice these new skills? Any tips?
Jeff and Leo,
Thanks for the comments — maybe I underestimate the value of the desktop apps. But somehow, and maybe this is just me, the put so much into the organization of the content and the way you respond that it starts to feel a lot like, well, email, and that starts to feel like something you have to manage.
I think for folks just starting out in twitter they really have to get their head around the “you don’t have to read it all” and then figure out how they best engage with twitter and find the appropriate app.
I like tweetie, for example, because I think it’s lightweight, gives me easy way to group by search (which, frankly, is more meaningful to me than almost any other grouping) and doesn’t make twitter, well, take over my screen in the way that TweetDeck did. Of course, you mileage may vary.
@Holly,
I hear ya about needing info triage and filtering tips. And its too simplistic to think that “you’ll see it if its important” really works for everything.
For me, the answer has been to adapt my technique to the tools and to rely heavily on RSS and search. But I haven’t really thought too much about how I do that as a practice or how it relates to organizations.