Have you heard of twitter? No its not a noisy bird. Twitter is a Social Media Platform that is growing so fast that it has growing pains. If you are a newbie then you are going to need to learn the twitter basics. Here are 12 terrific twitter tips that will get you started.

1. A “tweet” is the name given to the 140 character message you create in response to the question twitter asks “What are you doing?”

2 Reply @ Symbol
Twitter has a every unique replying feature. Whenever a person’s name is preceded by a @ symbol, that means that the sentence (tweet) that follows is directed at them. So if you are using Twitter and you want to reply to someone, simply type @ and then their name, then type your message. If you don’t want to type the @ all the time you can simply click on the reply button which is to the right hand side of every tweet.

3. Direct messages – DM
You are sure to see the letters DM mentioned in tweets. This stands for Direct Message. Sending a DM is similar to sending an email to a person. A DM goes to your direct message inbox and only you can see your DMs. This is different to replies and regular tweets, they can be seen by your followers, but DMs are completely private. You use DM’s when you want to write something privately to someone, but more importantly, if you are writing something that your followers will not find interesting. We recommend using DMs if you are replying more than twice to someone.

4. Retweet (RT)
Twitter users retweet when they believe that a tweet that interests them will also interest their followers. The Retweet basically quotes a person’s tweet and gives them the credit for the tweet. Your Retweet should look like this RT @juliegaroni (tweet is here). There is a space betweeen the RT and @ symbol. People can see the Retweet and then choose to follow that person. Its like forwarding an email. By retweeting the tweet you increase that person’s exposure to the twitter community. For instance the person who made the original tweet may have only had 20 followers and therefore only 20 people would have seen the tweet. But if the person that is retweeting has 4000 followers then the original person has just reached 4000 additional people. Importantly retweeting promotes one of the ideals of the Twitter community…share someone else’s ideas, and they will share yours.

5. URL Shorteners
The 140 character limit of twitter can take a while to get used to… but it is the 140 characters that give twitter its potent power. You need to think carefully about what you are going to say and to say it in the shortest number of character’s. The twitter community is dynamic…people like to share articles and posts, and not just hear about your thoughts. Including links to news articles, websites, blogs and other external sources puts pressure on this 140 character limit. How do you include a messsage and a long url in 140 characters? The answer is to use url shorteners. There are endless sites that shorten urls, just do a google search and you will one that caters to your needs. We at Social Traffic Espionage recommend and use TinyURL.com.

6. Tweet Regularly
Make sure you tweet (post) regularly. This shows that you have an active presence, and you want to belong/participate in the twitter community.   People are more likely to connect with you if they believe that you are an active twitter user. 

7. Participate In The Twitter Community and Respond To People
Make sure to respond to people that ‘@’ or direct message you. This is just a matter of showing respect, if people are taking the time to message you, then you should respond.

8. Wefollow
Finding people to follow is easy when you use WeFollow. In our opinion, it is the best and most effective way of finding people to follow. How does it work? Basically Wefollow is a twitter directory that uses the tags people have given themselves. It is organized in a very user-friendly way to enable any twitter user to build a quality twitter network in a very short period of time.

9. Twitpic
A picture is worth a thousand words…everybody loves pictures. Twitpic is a twitter tool that allows you to share pictures with your followers. We recommend that you uncheck the box that tweets the picture automatically,since this can be annoying and you might not want it tweeted automatically. Twitpic is simple to use…upload a picture to Twitpic, copy the URL, write something about the picture in twitter, then paste the URL for your followers to see and hit the update button.

10. Hashtag (#)
Hashtags were designed to enhance the Twitter experience. They enable easy categorization of tweets for effective future searching. For instance if you are tweeting about Oprah, you simply insert a # before the word Oprah. Anyone who then searches hashtags.org or Twitter search, for #Oprah, will be shown your tweet as well as all tweets on the subject. Hashtags actually add a lot of fun to Twitter. One of the most popular hashtags you will come across in twitter is #Followfriday. This is one hashtag that you should use if you want to build strong relationships in the twitterverse. To particiapate in Followfriday you enter #Followfriday and then the @ symbol with the username of the person you want to recommend. So your tweet should look something like this…#Followfriday @juliegaroni @pauldaw.

11.Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is the most popular, and useful 3rd party Twitter application out there. If you can only install one Twitter application, Tweetdeck should be it. Tweetdeck automatically integrates a number of twitter features. Using Tweetdeck you can reply, DM, retweet, shorten a URL, and share a Twitpic without ever leaving Tweetdeck. The newest version also includes a cool feature that when replying to a tweet with a hashtag, the hashtag is automatically generated in your reply.

12. What is twitter search?
twitter search is a twitter tool that lets you see  who is talking about you and what they are saying.  You can only see your replies in twitter if someone starts off a tweet with ‘@(your twitter name)’ but sometimes people use ‘@’ in the middle of their tweet. For instance they might say  “thanks to @juliegaroni” instead of  @juliegaroni thanks”. The great thing about  twitter search, is that when you enter “@(your twitter name)”  into twitter search it helps you find tweets that contain your “@name”  anywhere in a tweet,  just not at the beginning.

We hope these tips have been useful. We encourage you to leave a comment about this post or ask us any twitter questions you might have.

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OK  we all know that;  I mean how could we not! You would have to be living on a deserted island under a rock with no access to the Internet, newspapers or radio to not know something about twitter.  Everybody knows that Barack Obama used it during his election campaign

As twitter continues to expand at a phenomenal rate, the million dollar question that is on the lips of business owners is “Can Twitter be used to build businesses”  The answer is  YES!  Switched on businesses  are already using twitter as a terrific business building tool.  These  businesses know that twitter is a FREE,   no-cost way of marketing,  but best of all its is viral. 

So how do these businesses  use twitter?  Its all in the posting (tweets).  Twitter provides a public forum, and each post (tweet) a business makes becomes a form of promotion as other users, follow the businesses  posts(tweets).  Over a period of  time these tweets build a reputation for the business as  people can visit and look at your Web site and the quality of your content. The business becomes part of the community.  But wait theres more,   business owners  can also use Twitter for market research and to keep an eye on customer service issues.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says businesses “that are not quite big enough to make an impact on the Web, or to spend resources there,” have been some of the earliest users of twitter.  Some San Francisco-based coffee shops and bakeries have sent tweets to tell their customers about specials or products they may be out of that day.  “Businesses use this as a hybrid between marketing and customer service,” says Stone. “They use the Twitter Search to track mentions of their products and services and as a way to begin a conversation.”

To summarize, twitter can be used by businesses to;
1.  build a reputation and brand
2.  market products
3.  achieve  viral marketing 
4.  conduct market research
5.  monitor customer service
6.  develop relationships with other  twitterites
7.  participate in the twitter community

Twitter seems Terrific for  building businesses doesn’t it?  But hang on a minute, before you rush off and start using it today, its worth noting that like any online forum, Twitter may not be for everyone. It can be a time waster and for some people addictive. Having said that if you own a business its definitely worth a look and even a try before you decide whether twitter is terrific for building your business.

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