Retweeting
When you want to share another person’s tweet, it’s important you cite who tweeted it in the first place.
This is called a retweet.
Placing “RT” before the user name and posting the tweet to your stream is the most common usage.
“RT @melissawalker Attending the @PSAMA networking on 1/25 http://bit.ly/com/86frtx”
This lets all my followers see that I am sharing this event, its link, and who tweeted it originally. They may be interested in following Melissa Walker, too, if they don’t already, not to mention how to learn more about the event. The tweet also virally spreads news of the event because my followers can also retweet it.
If you receive more email than you can deal with in a day, following an organization’s updates on Twitter is an easier way to stay current – and not miss out on great networking opportunities.
There is a trend emerging with organizations reducing their reliance on email marketing and web sites to communicate with their audiences.
Using Twitter provides a real-time tool that sends communications to people who choose to receive the organization’s news. The threshold to entry is very low and (for now) Twitter remains free with virtually no technical skills required.
Join the Conversations
The openness of Twitter enables any one to join a conversation.
When you want to contribute to the debate, don’t just promote yourself or your blog. Self-promotion is smarmy and unwelcome.
Instead, provide information that is useful and a link to where others can learn more. Pointing back only to content that you have created is a closed loop that is self-referential. If you are tweeting links to your blog, be sure your blog post is not purely promotional about you. The blog posting should have direct value and usability for the reader. For example, a how-to, a coupon, or analysis of a news story.
Enrich Your Tweets with Pictures and Sound
TwitPic.com works with Twitter to post links to your photos in combination with tweets.
This works great when you want to shoot pictures on the go with your cell phone. Whether on vacation, at a concert, or just with friends, adding a picture adds that extra impact to make your 140 characters have more depth.
Sign in with your Twitter log in and password to get a free account. It works in connection with the Twitter application on your cell phone or the TwitPic site.
You can upload the image from your computer on TwitPic’s site or email it to an address that the site will provide especially for you. If you email it, put your photo’s tag line the Subject line of your email – not the body of the email.
Other Twitter-related applications for cell phones have photography capabilities built in to insert a link to make your photo viewable online.