Are you still wondering what all this twitter craze is about? Well, let me try to help. I think of twitter like texting to the masses. Twitter limits updates to 140 characters. Which is awesome. Short, sweet, and to the point. Since it’s short and sweet, it challenges you to use those 140 characters wisely. Twitter is used differently by everyone, but the main uses are to network, socialize, teach, learn and promote.
In today’s post, I am going to discuss 5 basic principles of Twitter on the twitter dashboard.
- Followers: Everyone can see what I’m saying if they want to. However, more than likely, it will be the people following me. Just like Facebook, you can add friends, or follow people. When you follow people, this adds their updates to your twitter stream. And likewise if someone starts following you.
- Mentions: Formerly known as @replies. When you click on this on right hand side of your screen, you can see when others are mentioning your twitter name. Usually people use this when they are directing a comment, or question towards someone in a public format. See below for an example.
3. Direct Messages: aka DMs. This is used when you only want that person to see your message. It still follows the 140 character rule, but is just not shown to the twitter nation. DMs can only happen when two people are following each other.
4. Search: You can search for anything and everything in this search bar. Keywords, usernames, etc. This may help you find people you can network with. Here is another great search tool you can use for twitter.
5. Trending Topics: This gives you the top 10 topics that are being discussed on twitter at that very moment. It’s a great news resource. I can’t even tell you how many times I have found out pressing news stories, or random trends on twitter before I have ever heard it from a news source.
I hope this helps give you some of the stapes of twitter. Stay tuned for more twitter helps. I will be talking about different twitter lingo, and other basic tips in my next posts.
