I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how people use Twitter. When it comes to basic tips, what I’ve read seems to be pretty sparse or unhelpful for your casual user. So, I thought I’d post what I try to do as I’m using Twitter.

Start Following People You Already Know

Twitter provides an easy way to scan your contacts and search for people you know that are already using Twitter. Of couse, it’ll ask for your password to your email, so this might not be for everyone. I took the chance and plugged in my gmail password (I changed it soon after, just in case) and found a bunch of people I didn’t know that were on Twitter. This is the best way to get your feet wet. Once you get used to how things work, you can start searching for other people that are talking about things you’re interested in.

Engage

Most first tweets consist of something like “Well, I’m using Twitter. Now what?” To answer that, find out what your new friends are talking about and reply to them. If you’re viewing it from Twitter.com just click the “Reply” link and talk to your friend.

Learn Twitter’s Rules

When you click that reply button, you’ll notice it takes you to the update box and enters “@joeday” at the beginning. This tells Twitter that you’re talking to Joe and will show up in his Twitter stream as a message to him. When you start a message using what’s called an “@reply” (I think it’s pronounced “at reply”) only the people that are following you and whoever you’re replying to will see it. So, if I say, “@JoeDay, write what you want, you can always edit it later.” Joe will see it, I’ll see it, and anyone that is following Joe and me will see it. Now, here’s the twist; if I say “Write whatever you want, @JoeDay, you can edit it later.” Everyone that follows me will see it regardless of whether or not they’re following Joe.

You’ll also notice in the picture above, that @joeday has included #tc and #fb at the end of his Tweet. These are called “hashtags” and they give you a way to tag your message as being about something, or, in this case, they trigger an event (#tc posts your message to The City and #fb posts to Facebook).

Both the @reply and the hashtag follow some basic grammar rules; if I put an apostrophe after someone’s name—@JoeDay’s—it will still work as if I didn’t. If I put an apostrophe in a hashtag—#I’mwrittingablogpost—only the letters before the apostrophe will become links (in this case #I). When you click on an @reply or a hashtag, it takes you to the person’s Twitter page or a page showing all the tweets with that hashtag.

Quite often you’ll see a tweet begin with “RT.” This is a “retweet,” which is a way to pass along to others some nugget of wisdom. There’s a few types of retweets. The first is RT, as I mentioned. The second will end with (via @someone). And the third

Basic Etiquette

Twitter is kind of like hanging out at a crowded bar. Everyone is talking to the people at their table, some are louder than others and occasionally you’ll hear a conversation that you want to butt in on. Be careful. Resist the urge to only use Twitter to sell yourself or your thing. If one of your friends is looking for advice on the cool new thing to try and what you’ve got is a great fit, then go ahead, talk to him. But don’t be the guy that hovers around the bar trying to peddle his goods. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone do this at an actual bar, and there’s a very good reason; he would quickly find that everyone wants to avoid and/or punch him.

Followers

It really doesn’t matter how many people you’re following; just because you’re following them doesn’t mean they’re following you. And really, it doesn’t matter how many people follow you. You might have 4,000 followers, but only a fraction of those people interact with you. Focus on building relationships (see the “Engage” section above) not the number of followers and you’ll actually see that number grow.