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.

With millions of people to pick from, deciding who you should follow is no small task. Twitter blogged about discovering who to follow, and I recommend you read it before continuing this post.

Additional Sources for Follows: Journalists

Many columnists and reporters now post to Twitter throughout the day. The blog Journalistics provides a handy listing of sites that list journalists who use Twitter.

The publications and shows for which these journalists work also post tweets of interest. Refer to WeFollow.com for the top and local listings.

WeFollow.com is a directory where you can add yourself and select five keywords (hashtags) that define who you are. The site also provides major category directories of Twitter people ranked by the number of followers each has. This is a quick way to find top leaders in many fields, and a way for you to be found by others.

Add yourself to be easily found by others searching for Twitter people on your topics.

Look through your favorite news sources and you can find the publication’s user name or the reporter’s user name. You can also search for them by name on Twitter.

Don’t expect to be followed in return by each of these since they have huge followings – hundreds of thousands of people at times – so it’s not feasible for them to follow every one in return. That means you won’t be able to send a direct message to the person.

Now you can tweet at the user to share your opinions or feedback on stories.

Many news organizations are using this technique also to source information from their audiences to enrich their stories.

With shrinking budgets in news organizations, this substitute method of information gathering can provide a vital link that keeps viewers and readers informed through on-the-spot sources in real time.

Additional Sources for Follows: Twitter Directories

As with all popular sites, related sites appear on the scene to attract traffic and provide unique value.

MrTweet.com is another source for Twitter follows.

MrTweet examines your tweet history, followers, and follows to recommend others with similar activity.

While you will need to accumulate some followers and follows after you have been tweeting for a while to get the best results, the service is a good one to revisit periodically.

Be sure to follow @MrTweet, too, for tweets directed at you about new suggested follows.

These tools are free. Bookmark them and revisit every other month to expand your Twitter network.

When You Get a New Follower

Since Twitter is driven by content and influence, you need to demonstrate both at each opportunity.

When you get a new follower, send a reply “thank you” so that your current followers see who is following you. For example:

@bobthompson Thanks for the great speech last night and the follow!

Don’t thank the person through a direct message. You want to share with others who else follows you.

This is a viral technique to get one another’s followers to follow the two of you as well. Why? Because your follower thinks:

“If David Doe is following Jane McDoe now, then I bet David’s tweets are great like Jane’s. I will follow him, too.”

While some of this sounds like you are gaming the system to increase your follow count, that is not the purpose of these techniques. Your goal is to attract a quality network of people you can share with and influence.

If any of this strikes you as bragging or showing off, remember that the rules of engagement and standards for behavior are different in the world of Twitter. These are accepted norms and not actions that are viewed in poor taste.

How to Be of Value

The best contribution you can make is to answer questions posted by others. Similar to how the best and most popular news articles bubble to the surface based on how many people are sharing links to them on Twitter, the best answers to questions tend to bubble up, too.

These phenomena happen because we trust others in our networks more than information sources we do not know or trust as well.

A plumber may label himself “Five-Star Jim’s Plumbing” in a yellow pages ad, but does he really offer five-star service? I prefer to ask my neighbor who did the best job for him when he’s used plumbers in the past.

Word of mouth provides that unconscious third-party endorsement we like to find as a way to validate our choices.

Be As Good As Your Last Tweet

As with all social networking and social media sites, being an active participant is the key to being recognized and valued in an online community.

With Twitter, influence can be measured in part by the number of followers you attract. That does not mean that Twitter is simply a numbers game, where the guy with the most toys wins. Rather, the way to attract a solid following is by delivering good content that is useful, and to deliver it in the right way.

Status Updates

Twitter prompts you by asking, “What are you doing?” Do not type, “Reading the newspaper, going for a walk afterward.”

Tweets should include opinions, announcements and conversations.

As Joel Comm remarks in his book Twitter Power, “Produce content that’s interesting, fun, and valuable.”

Finding Content

Whether you read magazines, books, listen to radio shows or podcasts, or prefer to watch television, any media you consume likely has an online presence.

Instead of visiting multiple news sites throughout the day, I recommend using an RSS reader to follow your favorites news sources, blogs and web sites. I consume news by the bucket load every day. I use RSS feeds to follow topics in national news, business news, technology, design, and social media along with a few niche topics.

By setting up an RSS reader on your computer and populating it with RSS feeds, you create an easy way to find content of interest to you. Doing so also enables you to easily share content with people in your social network.

RSS readers commonly have sharing functions built in at the news article level. Sharing the item across any network then only takes a few clicks.

RSS stands for “really simple syndication.” It provides a news feed that the reader tool pulls in to your browser.

When you see the icon below, click on it to add the web site’s feed to your reader.

Commonly found icon for RSS feeds

The Google Reader is a very popular reader because of its simple interface and easy method for adding feeds. Google provides excellent resources for learning how to use their reader at http://bit.ly/GglRdr

Building Your Following

What interests you? Is it the latest news about a particular celebrity, athlete, TV show, or musician? Do you want to keep instantly up to date on the latest happenings in your industry, your city, or other news streams?

Whatever information you want to follow, there is a tweet stream to follow.

A good strategy is to identify two to three major topics that interest you.

Using those topics as hashtags, and search for them in Twitter. This will show all the tweets on that topic, from newest to oldest.

Another simple tip: give your hashtag context. Most people won’t actually know what your hashtag means, so give a quick explanation in one of your tweets or, if you’re making a hashtag, make it very apparent what it’s talking about.

Finally, if you’re looking to create a hashtag, be sure that it adds value for yourself and your followers. The best way to utilize them is when you need to organize information. Conferences, major events, and even reminders (i.e. #todo) can help organize specific tweets and make life easier on you and your followers.

Read through a few dozen and see if any persons stand out among the crowd. Look for frequency of postings, how well their tweets are written (do they include links and credit others when they retweet?), and how often does it seem others are retweeting the person’s original tweets?

This is not an authoritative means to evaluate a person’s knowledge on a topic, but it gives you an indication of how active she is.

Click the user name to learn more about the person. Active and high profile users (key influencers) will customize this page with their own artwork and details about themselves.

This provides a quick way to judge if you want to follow the person or not.

For example, I scan a person’s latest tweets to see if I’m interested in what they tweet about. I read their bio line and if they posted a link to a site, I click through to it as well.

In 30 seconds you can determine whether the person is a match for you.

Now that you are looking at other people’s profile to see you want to follow them, you can better appreciate why your own profile matters so much.

Follow those who look interesting, and don’t be surprised when they follow you in return. That’s common courtesy in the world of Twitter.

I typically test-drive a Twitterer for a few days to a week. If they appear to post only personal thoughts and opinions at random, or reply to other tweets with “Oh yes! Totally agree!” or other remarks that do not add value to the conversation, I unfollow them.

There are simply too many good tweets with usable content to read that I do not want tweets with little to no value clogging my stream.

People self-select over time who to follow and who to unfollow. Usage on Twitter also fluctuates so you may notice your number of followers go up and down over time, rather than a consistently upward trend.

Twitter debuted is new Lists feature in late 2009.

Lists let you organize the people you follow into groups. It is a way to group Twitterers into common topics to streamline your reading experience.

I use this tool to put all my technology follows on one list, while all of my social media follows are on another. When I read through my tweet stream, reading them grouped by similar topics focuses my attention and prevents the distraction of jumping from topic to topic.

By putting people on Lists, you streamline your experience of reading tweets. If you are like me, you like to mentally check off tasks as you complete them. By organizing people I follow into Lists, I can group their tweets for quicker consumption.

If you prefer to keep your follows in a single stream, you may find it hard to keep up with the various streams of conversation because each tweet will jump from one topic to another.

By grouping follows into Lists, you maintain a manageable degree of similarity from post to post so you don’t have to do so many mental acrobatics to follow the thread of a conversation.

Some Twitterers use the number of Lists on which they appear as a measure of their reach and influence. This is akin to the sheer number of follows and followers a Twitterer accumulates as a badge of their popularity, and can be a competitive effort to see who can appear on the most lists.

As I constantly say, focus on the quality of your content and contributions – not the quantity. Popularity rises and falls with the times but quality will endure.

You may find it useful to peruse the Lists of others as a way to find interesting new people to follow, especially when you are new to Twitter.

Lists can be made public or private, depending on your preference.

See the Twitter help page for detailed steps to creating a List and adding people to it at http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/76460.

A Tweet Before We Go

Twitter is a popular, easy-to-use tool that engages users with frequent updates to topics that interest them and simplifies the process of sharing information across your social network.

I recommend diving in feet first with Twitter to experience it in full, then decide to what degree you want to pull back to make it both useful and not overwhelming. Finding balance takes some exercise, but you will quickly gauge what works for you.

Twitter is an incredible resource that will endure and evolve but it can feel like drinking from a fire hydrant for new users. Learning to moderate is the key to enjoying your Twitter experience.

Contribute, engage, share and always be of value are the primary goals to remember as you tweet, tweet, tweet.

How Do You Tweet?

Tweet us a Comment and we’ll tweet you right back. Tweet me @geofftucker.

When you attend conferences and networking events, you may notice that people will write their Twitter handle on their nametag. This is a clever way to communicate their name and promote their Twitter feed. I recommend you do this for any event you attend where you think it’s applicable.

Let’s Tweet!

Writing your first tweet can be as confusing to write as your first blog posting. If you intend to tweet about a particular topic, now’s the right time to announce that. Some examples are below:

• “Tweeting today about the city mayor’s campaign updates. Vote Thompson 2010!”
• “Looking for professional bloggers to follow. Suggestions?”
• “Offering free math tutoring lessons for grade school kids in May. Tweet me for details.”

Enrich Your Tweets

Since Twitter is such a streamlined platform, you must do a lot with a little. One way to make your tweets more valuable is to share links to articles, videos, web sites, and other online content that is relevant to your typical tweets or your followers.

For example, professionals who follow the news in their industries will post links to articles throughout the day. This provides a rich reading list that is endorsed by your followers as worthwhile.

Let me sidestep for a moment regarding why this matters.

Rather than reading the newspaper cover to cover each day – still a great pastime for me – you can trust that your follows’ judgment is as good as yours when determining the value of a particular news story. This third-party endorsement filters popular stories to the top of the trend of topics throughout the day. The sum result is, “Everyone is tweeting about this. I should read it, too.”

This is not groupthink. Rather, it’s pulse-taking and a means for you to participate in the topics of the day. It also slims down your information intake on a daily basis to only key items if you want a quick digest instead of full, deep analysis.

We all suffer information overload, and cannot possibly read as much as we would like to each day. If we did, we would have no time left to do our jobs, engage in real life, and remember to take out the garbage. In short, be willing to skim, contribute, acknowledge, and move on when the conversation fizzles.

URL Shorteners

When you want to share a link to a news story, you probably copy the web site address from the address window in your browser and paste it into an email, then send that to your friends, colleagues, and others.

This limited form of sharing makes passing along information cumbersome. By using Twitter to share links, all of your followers see it and judge for themselves whether to click through. By tweeting, you did not add yet another email to a person’s inbox (remember how overwhelmed we already are with information?). By using Twitter you made it easy for your followers to share it to their followers (called a “retweet”).

So what happens when the web site link is more than 140 characters long? That leaves no room for your tweet itself.

The solution is to use a URL shortener service.

Here’s two popular, free services and how they work:

• TinyURL.com is a popular URL shortener, and an early entrant to this field. Simply copy the web site address, paste it into middle window, and click “Make TinyURL!” You are given a new URL named http://tinyurl.com/ followed by five random numbers and letters. Now your tweet has a link and room for your message. You can copy and paste this into your tweet.
• Bit.ly is a newer, more popular URL shortener. It’s popularity grew because it also provides statistics on your shortened URLs. If you like to know how popular your tweets are, it will show how many people clicked on the links you post. Again, copy and paste your link into the window to receive a shortened URL of http://bit.ly.com/ followed by six random letters and numbers.
• Like TinyURL, Bit.ly offers a drag-and-drop tool for our browser toolbar that turns the conversion process into a one-click step. Click on the Bit.ly toolbar button, and a side panel opens. The URL is already shortened and the Twitter field is pre-filled with the article’s headline. This makes tweeting an article almost effortless.

I prefer Bit.ly for its clean interface, the statistics it provides, and the easy tools it provides to tweet links. The traffic they attract also bears that they are now a dominant service provider for URL shortening.

Hashtags

Hashtags are another element to add your tweets. They are preceded by the pound symbol #.

Think of them as tags that highlight keywords in your tweet. Using this technique makes your tweets more searchable and easy for followers to find.

There are a few methods to using hashtags.

The most common is to enter them at the end of your tweet or in the body. For example:

• “Looking forward to tonight’s rally http://bit.ly.com/8wzEMF #Thompson #mayor #2010”
• “Looking forward to tonight’s @BobThompson2010  #ThompsonRally”

This tweet communicates what this user is involved in, her attitude toward it, and includes a link to the candidate’s web site in the first example, and the candidate’s Twitter handle in the second example, along with hashtags that make it easy for other supporters of Thompson to find each other.

Conferences and events have begun to include the hashtags that tweeters can add to their tweets. This provides a real-time tracking tool to follow the comments and thoughts of the crowd at an event. Some will post “What a great event tonight!” to “@BobThompson2010 ‘Let’s work for a new era in our city. #Thompson #mayor #2010.”

That second example is a very common type of tweet you will see. It shows that the tweeter is live at the event, and publishing quotes from the speaker as they happen.

This happens often at conferences as well. If you cannot attend an event, it makes a great substitute for live reporting from an event where you can follow along as events unfold.

Now that your profile and setting are optimized for the best experience for you and your followers, it’s time to join the game.

Find People to Follow

Twitter provides a simple tool that scans your email address book to find people you know who are already on Twitter. It then suggests them as people to follow.

This feature works with the online email services from Yahoo, Gmail, and AOL.

Click on the email service you use, and provide your username and password. Twitter only scans your email for email addresses that match those of users already registered for the service. Your privacy is protected and your email is secure. You can re-run this service periodically as you communicate with new people via email, too.

Once you provide your log in information, Twitter will quickly scan your email and return a list of people to follow. Review the list and pick which ones you want to follow by clicking the “Follow” button below their info.

Each person will get an email from Twitter alerting them that you are now following their tweets. It’s common courtesy in the land of Twitter to follow people in return when they follow you. That’s why you will find many of you follows will become your followers in return. Be sure to respect this convention as you use Twitter more and more.

I inspect each new follow as they happen. Yes, you will be followed by “get rich quick” schemes people, by people selling useless products, and other valueless content. Use your judgment to decide who you want to follow in return since you will see the tweets of all your follows in your stream. And if a person is blatantly spam, report them so Twitter can revoke the profile. A little shared policing action is good for the community.

Not enough for you?

The Twitter scan will also return a list of users in your email address book who are not on Twitter. You can send invitations inviting them to sign up and follow you.

If they ask you what the service is about, or why they should be using it, feel free to share this post with them.

Twitter also provides a list of Suggested Users. There are many people and companies who have tens of thousands of followers. For example, if you are shopping for computers and equipment, follow the Dell Outlet account @DellOutlet. They offer numerous Twitter-only deals throughout the day.

Prefer to shop local? Many independent businesses use Twitter to promote sales and events in their stores. By following their tweets, you can find excellent bargains from $1 coffee to big discount coupons. When you visit a local shop, look for a sign promoting their Twitter handle – and start following. Others are beginning to experiment with running contests as a combined way to attract followers, and people who engage with their brand while passively spreading the brand across their own networks.

Many bloggers, authors, actors, and other high profile people have Twitter accounts now. Simply search for their name to find their handle and to begin following them.

Twitter provides a simple double-O graphic as the default image for users. You are going to replace that with a photo of you.

Select a headshot of yourself that clearly shows your face, and is not a full body shot.

Avoid grainy images or taking the photo yourself. The perspective of a camera aimed down the arm toward the face is not a good choice. Pointing a camera into the mirror to take a photo is not a good choice either.

Have another person take your photo against a neutral background, and focus on your face. Give a nice smile and that’s it.

You want your followers to connect your tweets with your face.

Don’t skip this step by substituting a photo of your pet or kids, or your favorite sports team’s logo. Build a brand that is about YOU.

Background Design

Twitter offers a handful of background designs for your Twitter page. You can select from their default options, or tweak the color schemes to suit your tastes.

You can also build your own. Try Mashable’s how to for specific instructions. For now, choose one of the options that Twitter provides since this option is one of taste, and not one that impacts your activity.

Mobile

Twitter was built on the premise of being used mostly on cell phones.

Click the Mobile tab to set up your cell phone to access the service. Check with your cell phone provider to find out if or how they charge you for text messages and tweets before proceeding. If you have a high volume or unlimited text messaging plan, this should not be an issue.

Notifications

After you complete the set up process on your phone, Twitter will send a code via text message. Send that code to 40404 in the US, 21212 in Canada or +44 7624801423 in all other parts of the world.

This sets up your phone to send and receive tweets. Remember, though, that once you start following a lot of people, you will not want your phone going off every few minutes with updates. To prevent that, send the word “stop” or “quit” to the Twitter number for your part of the world (as noted in the paragraph above).

Twitter also provides a variety of notifications to you via email or cell phone when certain actions happen.

Among the choices available, opt in for when you receive a direct message from any follower. If you are not checking Twitter on your computer or phone regularly, this alerts you immediately to tweets that probably need your attention. You can reply from your phone or computer.

You can choose to allow selected users’ tweets to update your phone as they’re posted if you prefer. Simply send the message “on [username]” to the Twitter number. All tweets by that user will now appear on your phone as they are posted.

I recommend experimenting with this approach. You may have certain follows that you want to tweet with throughout the day when your phone is your only means of access. Having this feature on full-time will become tedious and time-consuming if you have too many updates coming through. Turn it on and off at will, based on your preference. The users you select for this feature will not know you are changing your settings.

Before you begin to tweet or follow other people, let’s work on your profile so that others will know who you are and what you are about.

When you follow a person, he receives an email from Twitter saying, “Jane Doe is now following you on Twitter” with a link to your profile. Most likely, he will click through to see who you are, especially if he doesn’t know you. Let’s make sure he gets the right impression when he clicks through.

Click the Settings link in the menu along the top of the screen.

Let’s start with the Name tab.

1. Enter your full name.
2. Enter your user name. Twitter will confirm if it is available or not.
3. Enter your password.
4. Enter your email address (more on this below). Choose if you want Twitter to send you updates about their service.
5. Enter the words the reCAPTCHA box to prove you are not a computer or spammer.

Twitter asks for your email address so it can send certain notifications to you. It is not shown publicly or accessible by others. Choose one that you use often to monitor when other people follow you or send you a direct message (more on this later).

See If Your Friends Are On Twitter

Click “Skip this step” for now. We want to fully prepare your profile before you begin tweeting, following others, and attracting followers. Why? When people start following you, you want them to find a fully developed profile when they click on your name to learn more about you.

Twitter will present you with a suggested list of people to follow. Click “Skip this step” again for the same reason.

Finish Up Your Profile Basics

Twitter will send an email to confirm that you are who you say you are. Be sure to click on the link in the mail to verify your identity, then continue with the steps below.

Your name and user name will be pre-filled on the screen. If you need to change your email address, you can do it from here.

Time Zone

Select your time zone. Note that all your tweets will be time-stamped with your local time as you post tweets. The same applies to all other Twitterers and tweets.

More Info Link

This link is an ideal spot to use your LinkedIn profile link. If you have a blog or personal web site, you can use it here instead. Keep in mind that you only get to post one link so choose wisely where you want people to learn more about you.

One Line Bio

So, tell me about you. In 160 characters or less.

As I said, Twitter is a master of brevity.

Refer to your LinkedIn Summary to select 3-4 words that define you. List them, then add one more that paints who you are as a person. Some examples are below:

“Financial advisor, sharp networker, MBA, and avid gardener to prune the weeds from your retirement.”

“Business writer, traveler (not tourist), operations manager, and frenetic dad of 4.”

Experiment with writing these one-liners about yourself, and add a little zing at the end to better stand out among a sea of weak efforts.

Location

Including your location can make you easier to find online, particularly if your local or target market is an important part of how you want to be known.

Twitter also offers to geotag your posts. This is a small bit of code that provides your geographical coordinates on the globe. By geotagging your tweets, Twitter makes tweets become hyperlocal. That is, you can search for what is going on among Twitterers in your immediate vicinity by radius. This is helpful for following people who are tweeting at conferences or events, or just surfing the collective conscience of those around you at any given moment. Try it from your favorite coffee shop sometime.

Language

Select your preferred language. Twitter has a handful of choices for now.

Privacy

The point of tweeting is to participate in conversations. You can choose to limit who sees your tweets to only people who follow you.

This narrow-casting approach has its merits for some.

Since you are focused on building your online presence, leave it blank for now.

Your Twitter profile should be every bit as compelling and descriptive as your profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook. Unlike those sites, though, you have to say a lot in a little space.

Twitter will help you master brevity like no other medium.

Your Twitter User Name

Making your name easily findable when searched for online is always your best strategy for profile names.

If people know that your Twitter user name is simply your name, they only have to enter the URL to start following your tweets.

My Twitter user name is my name:

http://www.twitter.com/geofftucker

If you choose a user name at random, you are forfeiting valuable real estate in establishing your online footprint. The exception to this is if you are known by a particular designation. For example, Brian Clark blogs about writing copy (content) in a variety of mediums. His blog is titled Copyblogger, and @copyblogger is his user name, too.

If you are well known for a particular expertise, with an established reputation for that subject matter, this strategy makes sense.

If you are new to Twitter, I recommend using your own name.

Does another user already have your name? Experiment with alternatives by using your full first name, your middle initial, your profession, or other keyword to set you apart. The other advantage of using your own name is that it is easy to remember.

If you decide that you dislike your Twitter user name, remember that you will give up your list of followers when you migrate to a new one. Making sure everyone follows you over to that new user name can be a herculean task that risks losing people along the way. Building that list of followers is not an effort to regard lightly.

Optimize Your Profile

After you register your user name, pick a password and confirm you are not a robot in the reCAPTCHA box. This is Twitter’s effort to thwart spammers.

Twitter provides a tool scans your online email accounts for Yahoo, Gmail and AOL. It scans your address book to determine if anyone you know is using Twitter, and it will suggest them as people to follow.

This tool will also present a list of all your contacts not on Twitter so you can invite them to join.

Twitter demonstrates how publishing on social networks is evolving into two-way participation. Successful users create conversations – not content. Communities form around these conversations.

Twitter was formed by Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jack Dorsey in 2006 as a dispatch service accessible via texting on cell phones. They were working on Odeo, a podcasting company at the time. The service was used as an in-house method for contacting one another with status updates on projects and tasks needing urgent attention. However, it morphed into a whole different tool from there.

Twitter bears a frequent misconception by those unfamiliar with it. “It’s people telling you what they’re doing at every single minute of the day. I just don’t care.”

When it morphed into a popular forum, Twitter’s user base was predominantly 18-24 year olds, and such postings were common. The age and motivation of its user, like Facebook, has likewise changed in its first three years.

Co-founder Jack Dorsey said, “The working name was just ‘Status’ for a while. When we came up with this vehicle, we were trying to give it a good name. We liked the SMS (short message system, or text messaging) aspect, and how you could update your friends and colleagues from anywhere and receive from anywhere — even in very obscure places where you wouldn’t be able to have cell phone reception.

“We wanted to capture that in the name — we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word ‘twitch,’ because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But ‘twitch’ is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word ‘twitter,’ and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds.’ And that’s exactly what the product was.” (Wikipedia, 2010)

Twitter achieved popular fame and usage when it won an award at the 2007 SXSW Festival, the annual technology/music conference in Austin, Texas.

Twitter was estimated to have achieved 18.1 million registered users in 2010, and, that year alone, attracted over 10 million visitors per month. While its traffic grew 2,500% from 2007-2010, its user base has grown more slowly. This signals that Twitter is not for everyone.

According to Twitter’s blog, about 50% of Twitterers follow and are followed by just 10 people (“Twitter Power” by Joel Comm). That means you can be in the top 10% of Twitter users by attracting only 80 followers.

And who are these Twitterers? In 2010, Twitter’s largest age group was 35-44 year olds, with 60% of the service’s traffic originating outside the US.

More so, Twitter has attracted high profile users such as the 44^th U.S. President Barack Obama who used it as a very successful campaign tool during his run in 2008. The American Red Cross has continued to use it as a way to communicate updates about local disasters.

Not-for-Profit organizations have also utilized Twitter to raise instant funds — at the click of a button – that keeps them afloat during times where accessing local support is less likely.

What It Is, What It Isn’t

Like a micro-version of Facebook, Twitter lets you set up a brief profile, post a photo of yourself, and send status updates of personal or professional interest to you and those who “follow” you.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter, to date, does not let you post series of photos, audio or video recordings, or long chunks of content.

Facebook is a well-rounded, complete picture of you and your life – depending on how full you make your profile. If all you do is complete your profile but never interact with Facebook, people can still find you, perhaps contact you via the information you share, and get an up-to-date impression of who you are (or who you portray yourself to be).

One of the agreed upon values of Facebook comes from the content in your profile and your interaction with your friends on the site.

Twitter, in contrast, is more like a stream of consciousness tool. It includes the basics like your photo, your location, your website link, and your latest tweets, or postings to Twitter. But its core value comes from how you engage in the conversations you follow. To make Twitter relevant to you or your followers, it will require participation, not passivity. Like a garden, it must be attended to or the connections dry up.

Whom you follow will make a big difference in how you tweet, too.

Where Twitter differs from text messaging is that your tweets are posted to your stream (a web page that shows your tweets in reverse chronological order) on the web. People who choose to follow your streams are “followers” and the people you follow are “follows.”

For example, if I follow a person and notice that his tweets are frequent but adding no value to the conversation (e.g., “Oh I like this a lot!” with a link to web site with a picture of kittens) then I usually unfollow after a week of valueless tweets. Don’t be shy about unfollowing. To unfollow means to remove a person from the list of people you follow.

Twitter requires consistent interaction to derive value from it. Try to deliver the kind of value you want to derive from it.

Saying A Lot In A Little Space

You get 140 characters and that is all.

The 140 character limit comes from the service being originally designed for use primarily on cellphones. If you use text messaging features on your mobile phone, there is a limit to how long your messages can be. This is a technical limitation imposed by the cellphone carriers.

These short messages are referred to as “tweets” in the Twitter nomenclature. They are also referred to as microblogging since your tweets are essentially very short blog entries, but tweet is the most common reference.

You can follow or unfollow anyone at any time. You can also block someone from following you. Notifications are sent to you when a new follower begins following your tweets, but nothing is communicated when you are unfollowed by a person. The same applies when you follow and unfollow others.

By posting your tweets on a web page, it’s like sending a text message to hundreds or more of people with one simple effort.

The value of Twitter lies in who you follow, who follows you, and what you tweet about.

Twitterspeak

Before moving forward, let’s orient you to how people and activities are commonly referred to among the Twitterati.

Twitter uses avian references to itself (its logo is a stylized bird). There are many bird-related references and mashed up terms beginning with “tw-.”

For example, the people whom you follow can be referred to as “tweeple.” Topical conversations are called “twendz.”

The jargon might leave you feeling like Elmer Fudd so use the terms that you are comfortable with but be aware of what they all mean. Visit Twitter Glossary for a complete dictionary of popular terms.

As you read tweets, you will notice that a tweet will contain a reference to another person but it will have the @ symbol before the person’s name. User names always have the @ symbol before their name. To refer to another person in a tweet with the @ symbol before her name is akin to pointing at the person in real life. It directs the reader to finding the person by clicking on her user name.

Another common use of one’s user name is at public events. Next time you attend a conference, look around to see who is using their Twitter handle instead of their name or below it. This is a good practice to start with your next name tag. By doing so, you make yourself publicly findable in a crowd and simplify the connection process.

Twitter as Community

As I’ve mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, many people mistakenly assume that Twitter is for narcissistic people who want to announce to the world that they are hungry; that they are walking to the store; that they are bored at work, stuck in traffic, using the bathroom, and a thousand other mundane aspects of daily life.

Yes, in fact, there are many who use it that way. But I recommend you do not follow them.

Instead, look for people who are using Twitter wisely. Either as an extension of other online activities they practice, or who use Twitter as their primary social networking tool.

For example, Twitter has become an extension of how people use their blogs. When the writer posts a new entry on his blog, through a simple addition of a utility to his web site, he can post a tweet that he just added a new posting to his blog.

This immediacy is what empowers Twitter to provide a real-time stream of content. Like a virtual postcard updating friends, it gets sent out to audiences (followers) that are usually interested.

For example, many top blogs such as TechCrunch and Mashable post tweets about new articles on their site as they are posted as a way to drive traffic to their sites. Before Twitter, they waited on users to visit their sites. With Twitter, users can quickly scan a day’s worth of postings by headline and click through to the ones they want to read. This drives people to use the sites more often than before. Such attention may facilitate direct purchasing for people selling products or services via the websites.

Twitter also makes sharing content very simple. By “re-tweeting” another person’s tweet, all of your followers see an item that you have deemed interesting enough to share. This passive endorsement suggests to your followers that you thought it was worth passing along, so it’s implied that they will find it useful, too.

This draws on the concept of crowdsourcing, where we rely on the judgments of groups of people to divine what is worthwhile and what is not. The good stuff bubbles to the top while the mediocre sinks downward to microniches or obscurity.

If celebrity news is your thing, Twitter was made for you. Nearly every celebrity around has a Twitter following and either has a ghost twitterer to update fans or tweets herself to be closer to her following. If famous people are your thing, get ready to drink from the fire hose like never before.

Twitter and You

If you choose to blog, and you blog frequently, installing a simple Plug-In (a small piece of programming that adds new functionality to your blog) to your blog will copy your blog post’s headline to become a tweet. It will automatically send this out and include a link to your blog posting. Tweeting done.If you use Facebook primarily to update your social networking status, there is a plug-in available via Facebook that performs the same function.

Pay attention that you don’t exceed the 140 character limit to avoid tweeting partial entries. That may confuse readers.

If you use Twitter as your primary, or optional, update tool, you’ll find it easy, if not addictive, to use throughout your day.

When you first join Twitter, it’s a good idea to read what others tweet about for a while and get used to the lingo, formatting and topics. When you’re ready to join the conversation, jump in. Just remember, add value to your reader and you’ll get back value or at least a more substantial following.

A great way to start tweeting is to use the “share this” feature found on most content sites, like newspapers and magazines. These publishers want their content to spread like a lively virus across the web so they add this feature to make it simple to do so.

When an article grabs your interest, and you think people in your immediate circle would also like it as well, like one birdie to another, tweet it.

This approach is part of how you build an online persona that establishes what your interests are and areas of expertise.

For example, I know an interview coach who frequently posts links to advice columns that discuss questions he addresses with his clients. This is a value-added benefit to his followers and clients alike. Intermittently, he inserts a tweet that encourages you to take a free 30-minute consultation with him to improve your interviewing skills. Check him out on Twitter by clicking on FIND PEOPLE and searching for  @interviewcoach.

Many small businesses have begun using Twitter as a way to create professional visibility and promote their company’s offerings.

Healeo (@healeo) is a health food store in the urban neighborhood of Seattle called Capitol Hill. Healeo tweets throughout the day when they begin serving fresh batches of soup and pastas made that day. They tweet about beverage specials; that the visiting massage therapist is on site and available, or just comments about how busy their store is on a given day.

These tweets cost nothing to produce aside from a few minutes of time. They generate business for this small company, help Healeo measure their audience, and determine which followers use the coupon codes that only appear on Twitter.

Dell Computers is another commonly cited case study of business using Twitter for fostering and tracking sales. Dell uses Twitter to promote specially discounted computers, sales that are not available anywhere else. By using this free tool, they estimate generating an additional $2 million in sales through their tweeting alone. In the old days, $2 million might have been Dell’s entire advertising budget.

In our personal lives, Twitter offers an excellent resource for finding answers to questions.

Whether you’re a student conducting research or a traveler looking a good hotel while on a trip to Chicago, you can tweet to ask for referrals – or slog through pages of user reviews from two years ago and make your best judgment call from there.

Whatever your need or desire, Twitter is a tool for putting your query out there for a quick answer. And when you see others asking questions, try to provide a useful answer.

Since this is all done publicly, you are adding to the knowledge of others along the way.

Flashmobs, or Instant Gatherings

Despite the strong arm efforts of repressive governments to limit or suppress free speech, technology offers clever workarounds that are near impossible to shut down.

Twitter has proven its usefulness among dissenters and protesters time and again as a tool for organizing, communicating banned information and locating one another.

For example, Iranians opposed to the current regime have used Twitter to great effect to organize themselves beyond the purview of government officials. When the law limits how many people can gather in a place at any given time without a permit, Twitter lets everyone gather simultaneously without skirting the law – and achieve their collective goals.

URL Shortening on Twitter

When you post a link, the link may be longer than your 140 character limit. To work around this, use a URL shortening service like Bit.ly or Twitsnip.

This online service converts your long URL (the web site link) down to a small URL so there is more room for your tweet. With Bit.ly, you will have the option to accept the random series of numbers and letters it generates or customize the URL with plain English of your choosing. Sign up for a free account to customize the link.

An added advantage with Bit.ly is that it also tracks how many of your links are clicked on. If you are into data, that’s a fun measurement to watch as you tweet more and more links to stories across the web.

I have used these Bit.ly customized links throughout this series as a shorthand to point you to various off-site resources.

While we’ll cover the steps to joining Twitter and setting up your profile in the next section, this unit focused on how you can utilize Twitter for the best results.

Build Your Nest, Little Birdie

Twitter is a terrific and powerful social media tool. Want to talk about getting started or how you like it so far? Post it in the Comments section for a response.