A guide to getting Tweetwise from freshbaked PR

What is it?

Twitter is a social networking site that lets you record your thoughts in ‘tweets’ – small updates of 140 characters or fewer.

Why use it?

You can use Twitter to communicate with people you know, find new people who interest you, or both. Just like other social networking platforms, Twitter can be used to stay in touch with people you already know.

Alternatively, you can use Twitter to make friends with people around the world who have similar interests or to meet new business contacts.

Many people also use Twitter as a promotional tool, to promote a blog, website, product or company – see Marketing on Twitter.

Since the celebrity invasion of Twitter, some users have just signed up to follow notable users – eg. Jonathan Ross (wossy), Russell Brand (rustyrockets), Stephen Fry (stephenfry)

Signing up

Freshbaked PR can help you create an account that comprises a username and password. We can also customise your profile page to include a photo, the URL of your website, a background design and a biog of 160 characters or fewer.

How to tweet

There is no right or wrong way to tweet. Don’t assume that all your tweets have to be earth-shatteringly witty or intelligent. Once you’ve decided what to tweet, type it in the textbox underneath the question ‘what are you doing?’

As you type you’ll notice the counter above the textbox going down, to tell you how many characters you’ve got left before you reach the limit. If this goes into minus figures, you’ve written too much and you won’t be able to post your update. Including links in your tweets is straightforward – just type in or paste the web address in and Twitter will automatically turn it into a hyperlink.

If you’re having trouble deciding what to tweet, here are some suggestions:

• Link to a website

• Link to a news story

• Share an interesting fact

• Share a quotation

• State your opinion

• Disagree with someone else’s opinion

• Report a problem with a product or service

• Ask your followers a question

• Review a film, book, product or service

• Recommend some good accounts to follow

Understanding your homepage

On your homepage, you’ll see the most recent tweets of people you’re following. Roll over them and you will see a couple of symbols:

Clicking on the star will add the tweet to your favourites, which is useful if it contains a link you want to look at later.

The arrow allows you to reply to a person’s tweet. If you click on it, ‘@’ followed by the username of the twitterer will appear in your textbox, and you should type your reply after it. You can also type ‘@’ followed by the person’s username if you want them to know you’re mentioning them in a tweet.

You’ll also see the abbreviation ‘RT’ a lot. This stands for ‘retweet’ – see below. It is the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an email. If you see a tweet that you think is worthy of sharing with your followers, retweet it by typing ‘RT’ then ‘@’ followed by the username of the person you’re quoting before repeating their tweet.

# is another symbol you’ll see a lot. It normally appears before a word or a phrase, as in #followfriday. These are known as hashtags, and tweeters use them to make it easier to search for the topic they’re writing about. If you create a hashtag in your tweet, it will create a link that takes people to all the other recent tweets on the same subject.

Twitter netiquette – some simple rules

• Don’t overtweet

• Don’t undertweet

• Don’t go overboard with abbreviations such as IMHO – it goes against the principle of micro-blogging

• Don’t boast – tweet about your frustrations as well as your successes

• Don’t tweet about how many followers you have

• Don’t post updates that span more than one tweet

• Don’t try to use up the whole 140 characters every single time

• Be subtle with your plugs

• Give a bit of an explanation for your links

• Don’t @ message someone to tell them you’ve sent them a direct message

• Retweet instead of passing off the tweets of others as your own

• Don’t retweet everything in your feed

• Restrict boring conversations to direct messages

Buzz words or tweologisms

Twitterati – used to describe celebrities who tweet

Tweet elite – those who attract hundreds of followers

Tweeps/ tweeple/twittizens/tweeters – users of twitter

Twitterholic – someone with a tweeting problem

Twitteristics – your activity profile on twitter

Tweetwise – versed in the etiquette of twitter

Tweetworthy – something you deem worthy of an update

Other jargon/abbreviations

Follow Friday – the tradition of suggesting people to follow on a Friday. To participate, tweet the hashtag ‘#followfriday’ and then the usernames you want to recommend.

Broadcaster – someone who uses twitter mainly to post updates rather than engage with others

Responder – someone who uses twitter mainly to reply to others rather than post updates

Lifestreaming – tweeting every single detail of what you do in your life

OH – overheard

HT – heard through

DM – direct message

IRL – in real life

Marketing on twitter

Twitter can be useful for promoting your company or your company’s product. However it requires effort and time. Lots of companies seem to think that all they have to do is set up a twitter account, tile a photo of their product, follow as many people as possible and then sit back and watch the sales graph climb. Not the case!

The principles of using twitter for marketing are much the same as for personal use. If you interact with people by replying to their tweets, you’ll have a much greater presence than if you just use twitter to broadcast. If you tweet about general events in your field rather than just posting about yourself, people will be much more likely to follow you. But if you turn every tweet into an excuse to link to your site, it’s unlikely that many people will be interested.

Use twitter’s search function to find out what people are saying about you or your competitors. Their opinions might not be nice, but they could be useful to know. You should consider posting a reply if you think someone is making an unfair comment.

Try to use Twitter to build up a community of people who are interested in your area. Follow relevant people, comment on their tweets, retweet what they are saying, and you’ll get the right kind of followers.