You have no doubt heard of Twitter, whether on CNN, a Sprint commercial, or even a recent Best Buy commercial. You know it is growing rapidly. But, you may not know how Twitter can be useful for you. When you first join, it is a little overwhelming and confusing. As you continue to use Twitter and participate by sharing thoughts or interesting articles, you will begin to get how it works. Twitter may not be for everyone, and many feel it is too time consuming. I feel it can be an extremely useful tool to get your name out there. Since it is free, what have you got to lose?
First, what is Twitter? Here are some of the basics. It is a micro-blogging site, where you are asked the question “what are you doing?” and given 140 characters to answer. You will follow other people on twitter and this simply means you can see what they are posting. Other users will follow you; therefore they can see everything you are posting. The more you participate, the more followers you will gather.
Some of the other terms and usages are the @ reply, the re-tweet, and a direct message or DM. If you post a tweet using @username, then you are replying to that user. And this is called an @ reply. A re-tweet is a post using RT and is simply repeating another user’s tweet. If someone has posted something you agree with or find interesting, you can re-tweet it to share it with your followers. A direct message is a message sent to another user that is only seen by that user. So it will not show up to your other followers.
It is important to approach Twitter with a plan. There are many useful tools to help you manage your Twitter account. I use Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is a free desktop twitter tool. You can create columns and group together your followers, see your @ replies and see your DMs. You can also easily reply or re-tweet others from Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck also now allows you to manage multiple twitter accounts. There are other tools like Seesmic, as well as many programs available for your phone. I highly recommend finding one of these tools that you like and using it. It is much easier to manage Twitter this way.
It is easy to get lost in twitterland. So decide when and how often you will spend time on Twitter and stick to it. If you are using one of the above mentioned tools, you won’t miss any mentions or @ replies. You can commit to getting on for an hour in the morning, respond to any mentions and post or re-tweet some new information. If you stick to a plan, twitter won’t seem as overwhelming or time consuming.
That is the quick version of what Twitter is. My next post will be some ideas for how builders and contractors can use Twitter.
