Twitter Quick Start Guide

Twitter is about hashtags (#), 140 characters, and followers.

Keywords to know:

Tweet: The message you post

Retweet: sharing someone else’s tweet on your twitter (you may see RT or MT before the message)

Hashtag (#): the way to link a subject or group ie. #iStandwithRitz

@: seen before someone’s twitter name to get the message to their twitter feed

Follower: someone who will see your tweets in their feed

TwitterStorm: Having as many people tweet using the same hashtag within a certain window of time. The goal of a TwitterStorm is trending. 

Trending: This is an algorithmic formula of how many original or unique* tweets using the same hashtag are being tweeted at a given time. It watches for spikes in hashtags. There is a trending scoreboard on the homepage of Twitter, where you can see the hashtags being used the most at any given moment. 

*When trying to get a message trending, it’s best to use the quote or copy/paste method and change one character, so that it will register as an original or unique tweet. The more people you have tweeting, not just the number of tweets, the more likely to trend. Quote option only available on the mobile app.

How to tweet:

• You have 140 characters to get your message out, this includes hashtags, names, spaces and punctuation.Your twitter compose box will show you the number of remaining characters from the 140 original count. 
  
• Don’t use names, use @twitter handle , ie @lynnk1246 wrote this twitter info. This will send me a message saying I was mentioned in a tweet.

If you want to reach all of my followers you will use .@lynnk1246 -adding the .(period) before the @, allows my followers and not just me to see the tweet.

• Abbreviate as much as you can to get the message across.
• Use several hashtags (#) to bring in as many people to your message as possible, ie; @lynnk1246 wrote this #twitterinfo #newbies #iStandwithRitz

This tweet will notify me and anyone who searches #twitterinfo or #newbies or #iStandwithRitz, will see this tweet. This is especially useful to get new people to the message, keep a group connected and to market your message to several different groups whether related or not.

Good luck and happy tweeting!