2. The Basics
• Pick a good “handle” or at least have your full name
attached to it, so people can find you
• Don’t be private
• Include a photo
• Type some sort of bio – let people know who you are and
what you’re likely to tweet about
• Follow people, companies, and news sources that provide
info you care about
• Use Twitter’s search function, look at whom your friends follow, or
discover people organically
• Download a mobile app (Twitter has one, but I
recommend Tweetbot for iPhone)
3. Retweets, @ Replies, and Direct Messages
• A retweet (RT) is when you manually type “RT
@username: [tweet]” or press the retweet button on the
website or in the app
• Sent to everyone you follow who don’t follow the person you just
retweeted
• @ replies are when you reply directly to a tweet from
someone else and begin your tweet with “@username”
• Seen only by your followers who follow both you and the person
you are replying to
• Can make all your followers see the tweet by starting it as
“.@username”
• Direct messages (DMs) are private messages through
Twitter
• You can only send a DM to someone who follows you
4. @ Mentions and Hashtags
• @ mentions are simply when you type “@username”
anywhere besides the beginning of a tweet
• All your followers will see the tweet, and provided you’re not
private, the person you mention will be able to see the tweet even if
he/she doesn’t follow you
• Hashtags are words or phrases that begin with #
• They began as a way to make tweets more easily searchable, but
now people use them more frequently with less of a reason
• Lots of events have hashtags associated with them
• Allows for words or phrases to become a “trending topic”
5. RT with Comment and Modified Tweet
• Sometimes you might want to comment on someone’s
tweet and do more than just reply
• You can retweet with a comment, such as: “+1, some of these are
really fantastic RT @Loh: #removeoneletterfilm is the best Twitter
meme I've seen in a while.”
• If you need to change the tweet (but not the meaning or
message of it), it is often “polite” to type “MT” or modified
tweet
• “wow that was quick- bet Highlight wishes they were acqd
MT@TechCrunch: Fbook Buys Location-Based Discovery App
Glancee http://t.co/5RXWVXuj”
6. Other Acronyms Worth Knowing
• +1 – usually used before a RT or MT to endorse what comes
afterward
• FB - Facebook
• #FF – Follow Friday (endorsing people for your followers to
follow)
• HT (@username) – Hat tip / heard through (give someone
credit for what you’re tweeting)
• ICYMI – in case you missed it
• IMO – in my opinion
• IRL – in real life
• LI – LinkedIn
• OH – overheard
• Via (@username) – give someone credit for what you’re
tweeting
7. What to Tweet About (and Not Tweet About)
• Commentary on live events
• Links and news stories (adding a comment is helpful and
better)
• Sharing photos or videos that you take through Instagram
or another service
• General observations
• Don’t give a play-by-play of what you’re doing
• Don’t push numerous foursquare updates to your Twitter
feed
• Don’t share things you don’t want to be seen by
potentially thousands of people
8. Linking Twitter to Other Services
• You can connect Twitter to Facebook or LinkedIn to push
your tweets to those websites
• Can also type #fb or #li at the end of a tweet to selectively push
tweets
• Can connect foursquare, Path, Instagram, Pinterest, and
other services to Twitter so that you can selectively share
content with your followers
