18 Ways How To Twitter

According to a Google capability called Insights that provides information on how Google is being used by the public, one of the most popular search terms this week was "How to Twitter". Although the Twitter help center is useful in detailing many of the technical aspects on tweeting, it only provides a general overview of the subject of "How to Twitter".  This is are multidimensional subject, so here are some high level thoughts on the matter:


What To Tweet

What you tweet in 140 characters is known as content. It may be difficult at first to condense your thoughts into 140 character packets at first, but it does become easier with practice and discipline.


Creating Content

Twitter gives you the freedom to broadcast whatever comes to your mind. After a while, you may begin to see and think of things that would "be a good tweet" message.  Watching what others are tweeting is a good way to see what the general stream is talking about and how they talk about it. You may also find many others that share your views on a subject and they will converse with you about it.


Twitter gives you the freedom to let your mind wander and just simply have fun with creating messages.


Trending Topics, shown on the right hand side of the web interface, usually with a hashtag # symbol, change hourly and cover a wide range of current popular topics on Twitter. If you click on a Trending Topic subject, you will get the search results of that Trending Topic subject and you will see what others are writing about.


You may also see some hashtag terms not in the trending topic listing appear in your timeline. These may be hashtag games, usually through a play on words or letters,  that are a lot of fun to participate in and meet people.


Some of the content may cover:

• Personal experiences and observations
• Your thoughts and feelings on subjects
• Favorite music
• Favorite sports
  
• Family
• Friends
  
• Hobbies and subjects that interest YOU

Twitter is the easel for painting sentences on whatever comes to your mind.


Rebroadcasting Content

Find content that is interesting to YOU, and you'll be amazed by the number of people that will also share an interest in seeing the same information.

• Funny 
• Philosophical 
• Inspirational Messages
• Quotes
• News
• Sports 
• Websites

Where can you find content:

There are many sources of information on the Web that you may wish to reference in a tweet. Twitter allows URL web addresses to be pasted into the message box. Twitter will shorten the http:// URL web address to save character length. The title of the article should be shown when pasting a URL into the message box.

• Google, Yahoo, MSN, CNN, Other News Sources
• Creating Your Own Lists of Users
• Using Other's List of Users
• RSS sources

The main consideration with rebroadcasting information is to give credit to the original author or creator of the work. A rebroadcast of a tweet is known as a ReTweet, or RT for short.

• Always give credit to the source
• Use the RT button below a message 
• Put "RT @" then the username who first wrote the message into the message box to give them credit to the original creator.

How to Build Followers

Part of "How To Tweet" also includes the subject of getting followers. Having more followers makes Twitter more fun because there are more possible interactions with some really great people.

I have put up many articles on this blog on getting followers that are worth looking over if you are looking for ideas. A good place to start is with the many great followers I have shown on the side of this page.  --------------------------->

Having Fun

The more you use Twitter, the more fun you will have with the application.  For further reading, the Twitter Help Center has a Twitter 101 article for HowYou Can Get Started Using Twitter that can give you some more ideas on "How to Twitter".

In the end, there is no pop-quiz, so just have fun and meet some great people.