What is Twitter?

Mini-bloging giant Twitter is continuing to gain momentum in the social media realm.  Are you tweeting, retweeting, following, being followed, on someone’s list, contributing with a hashtag,  direct messaging, shorting URL’s, or attending tweetups?  If You just skipped over that last sentence because you were lost with the Twitter terminology, you are not necessarily alone.  Twitter has made some sense of all the lingo with a simple Twitter101 tutorial and you can find it here: http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/learning.

So now that you know what Twitter is, ask yourself how can you use it to fit in your portfolio of social media tools.  Here is a short video from the Common Craft Show (@commoncraft) that might spark some ideas about how you can use Twitter.

Twitter for the Masses

I attended the 2009 O’reilly Web2.0 Expo conference in NYC and Twitter was used and accepted as a major form of communication among conference attendees.  On of the ways they used Twitter was with a Twitter wall.  Basically how this worked was when someone tweeted with the hashtag #w2e it would show up in a search and displayed on the screen in front of a couple 1000 people.  Also with the use of the hashtag #w2e people would share quotes from the sessions they were attending, plans they were making with others, and a number of other uses…all within 140 characters or less.  If you would like to see the #w2e hashtag in a twitter search, you can find it here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23w2e.  Remember to leave a little room in your tweet for folks to share (re-tweet) your tweet with others.

Make it Easier – With Tools

Sometimes http://twitter.com can become over loaded and not let you log in to tweet your “super important tweet”…What to do?  Use a 3rd-Party tool.  On the desktop, my fav. is Tweetdeck.  Tweetdeck also has an iPhone app for when you are on the go!  So why use Tweetdeck?  You can tweet, retweet, follow, direct message, shorten urls, and the best part, the search feature.  You can set up several columns to search hashtags, or terms and see the results in almost real-time.  One last thing, you can also connect with your Facebook, Google Buzz, Myspace, Linkedin, and Foursquare accounts.

RSS to Twitter

Want to feed your Twitter account with your RSS feed?  I recommend Twitterfeed to accomplish this very thing.  Without getting in to the inner workings of Twitterfeed, you can push your RSS feed items to several services including  Twitter, Facebook, and a few others.

Your 140 Characters

I hope this post has given you some understanding as to what Twitter is and sparked some ideas about how you can use it in your personal and business life.  So sign up for a Twitter account and get started!  What will your 140 characters be?  Let me know how you are using Twitter or if you have any questions.

Follow Me!

You can find me on Twitter here: @leeyount