Last month I wrote a post called “I don’t get twitter” that was aimed at a couple of work colleagues who couldn’t get their head round how twitter could be fun. Now, since then a couple of people have said that the basics are a bit daunting and – to be honest – I can see exactly what they mean! Let’s take an example:
RT via @efan78 #followfriday @StewSimpson is a fab musician <- Follow him now!
So you see, Twitter uses codes which are confusing at first glance, but I promise they don’t stay that way!
When you post your first update to twitter you’ll probably use the web interface at www.twitter.com, so I’ll use that as my base. As you get used to twitter you’ll find that there are a lot of different ways to access the site and a lot of people will recommend services and twitter apps (applications). That isn’t the purpose of this post!
So, when you first post on twitter you’ll fill in the “What are you doing?” box. There are a few different ways of doing this and none of them are really ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. You’ll develop your own style/personality.
As you start to follow people you’ll start seeing their posts appearing in your twitter thread and you’ll probably see posts that you want to respond to. It’s really easy to do, when you hover your mouse over the tweet you’ll see a small arrow on the right-hand side. By clicking on this the “What are you doing?” box will automatically fill with @<username> – this is called a reply.
Anyone who can see your posts can see a reply but it will stand out to the person that sent it. You can check your own replies by clicking on the link at the far right hand side of the screen. If you want your message to be more personal then you can send a direct message – this can only be sent to someone who is following you and that you are following.
You’ll also see three other things that will help, two of them can be lumped together (RT @<user>, and Via @<user>) - which means ReTweet or that a message came via @<user>. A ReTweet is a message copied verbatim from another user and the @<user> bit tells everyone who you got it from. Via is a message that’s still evolving – I use it when I’m not copying a message verbatim but posting my own personal take.
The other thing that you’ll need to know about is the #hashtag. It’s a keyword that people use to help others find tweets on a particular subject. One of the most popular is #FollowFriday.
I hope this is some help, and will be continuing to add to this page as I think of more things!
