The Idiots Guide to Twitter
If every twitter user read this before even considering their first tweet, the world would be a much less annoying place.
Consider this your “Idiots Guide to Twitter”. In 7 easy steps I plan on taking you greenhorns from Twitter n00b to a slightly less embarrassing Twitterer.
1) Get the Right Hardware
First off, no one really uses the website to tweet, “via the web” is the scarlet letter of twitter n00bs. Use a service. For your desktop Twhirl and Tweetdeck are amazing. For the iphone Twitterfon is great, and free.
These applications will make it much easier for you to engage in conversations with others. They take the guess work out of direct messages, replies, sharing pictures, and shortening URLs.
2) Follow the Leader
The most important thing to remember about Twitter is this… Above all else Twitter is a community. It’s about engaging in conversation, exchanging ideas, promoting yourself and others. It’s organic.
The single best way to learn what is and isn’t acceptable in any community is to shadow a leader. So your very first move (after getting the right hardware) should be to follow all/some of the following Twitterer’s:
- kevinrose
- guykawasaki
- techcrunch
- fredwilson
- jimmyfallon
- ev williams (twitter co-founder)
- biz stone (twitter co-founder)
Follow these people for a week. Read what they have to say. Check out the links they post. Notice the different strategies they all employ. Try to figure out why they have as many followers as they do.
Do this all without tweeting once. Take one whole week to just absorb this, and learn. You, and the community, will be much better for it.
3) Conversation Basics
The following are the basic commands and what they mean in twitter.
@username - This is a reply, it lets you respond to someone’s tweet. If done properly the username should become a hyperlink in your timeline, and they’ll get a notice of this reply. Replies are how conversations are born. You can also use this to reference someone in your tweet (i.e. “hanging out with @biz in Union Square”).
d username - This is a direct message. It doesn’t show up on anyone’s timeline and only the user you sent it to can see it. It’s essentially a private tweet.
url shorteners - The two best are bit.ly and is.gd. They shrink unruley URL’s (just look at the one for this post) into something that can actually fit into a tweet.
share pictures - Twitpic allows you to post and share a picture via twitter. Great when you’re on your iphone/crackberry.
#keyword - These are hash-tags. They allow you to link your tweet to a particular keyword. Making it easier for people searching for tweets on that particular keyword. Like for this post I might say #twitter_basics or just #basics.
4) Remember: this is not a billboard
This is a common error for Company’s/Organizations. They get on twitter and assume that the best way to get out their message is to literally, get out their message.
Every single tweet is some link to an article about them saying “look at what the wall street journal said about us (link)” or “new york times announces that the _____ (insert business market you are in) business is on the rise”.
Allow me to be perfectly clear, STOP THAT!
Remember, this is a community. This is like having dinner with a family friend that happens to be an insurance salesman, and all he talks about all dinner is how you “really should get some supplemental health insurance, I can get you a great deal”. Would you talk to that person ever again?
Promoting yourself or your business is fine… in moderation.
5) Tweet like you eat
I like to follow a “food pyramid” tweet strategy.
The base (starches + fruits + veggies) should be filled with unique, personal content. This should be your opinions on current events/articles, what you’re doing (only if it’s noteworthy), and replies to other people’s comments. The kind of stuff that shows your personality 140 characters at a time. The majority of your tweets should be of this variety.
The middle (meats + dairy) should be links to cool articles/videos/websites. These are things that are good a couple times a day, but when done regularly can really clog up your system. They add flavor and are what many people look forward to. So even if people don’t like your opinions they still might follow you for the funny links alone.
The top (sweets and fats) should be self-promotion. These need to be USED SPARINGLY. Done on rare occasion they make for a great treat, and can really get a great response. Unfortunately these can easily be abused.
Keep your tweets on a strict diet and you’ll at least not annoy the sh*t out of your followers.
6) You Don’t Have To Be Cool
Unlike anywhere else, on Twitter, you don’t have to be cool to converse with a celebrity. Shaq, Ellen, Martha Stewart, Diddy, Jimmy Fallon… all are on twitter.
And unlike other scenarios involving celebrities, twitter has no faux pas for randomly joining a convo. Every conversation is an open forum, so if Shaq says something that strikes you, feel free to reply to him. He may not answer, but it’s not because you broke some unspoken rule that only cool people can talk to cool people, it’s simply because he’s Shaq and he probably gets 1,000 replies a minute.
7) Don’t Be That Guy
That being said… don’t be that guy. We all know that guy (in this case “guy” is not gender specific, it just flows better than “person”). That guy that has a comment for everyone and an opinion on everything.
It’s fine to be opinionated or to have a lot of views, just don’t impose them on people. Twitter isn’t about deep conversations. It’s about interesting quips, picking sides, adding color commentary. If your explanation takes more that 1 tweet, you’re doing it wrong. If you often find yourself in long drawn out arguments via twitter… you’re doing it wrong.
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You just have to understand twitter as it is. It’s not some great marketing platform for you to reach hundreds of thousands of new people every day. People really don’t want to know about “what you are doing” every single minute of the day. And it’s not a place to forge amazing alliances or to boost your network.
While all these things might happen, that’s not the point of twitter.
The point of twitter is to bring everyone down to the same level, and essentially hold a dinner table conversation, with everyone.
Tell about what you learned today, or a funny thing someone said at work, or something you heard on tv that pissed you off. That’s what twitter is for. That’s what social media is about. Anything else that comes of it is an unintended bonus.
