Getting started in Twitter

I’ll be teaching Using Social Media for Business three evenings this week, Tuesday through Thursday at Kirkwood Community College (the Marion center). I think you can still register for the course.

The first night, we’ll have a brief overview of why social media are an important development in digital communication and their roots in other forms of communication. Then we’ll spend most of the evening learning about Twitter. Participants will launch their profiles in Twitter, start following people and start learning how to us Twitter in their businesses.

The second evening, we will cover an overview of current social media tools and then split the rest of the evening teaching them Facebook and LinkedIn. Again, they will start their profiles and begin using them for business.

The final evening, they will learn how to create and use a Ning network. They also will spend some time learning to use a social-media tool of their choosing, then report to the class on what they learned and how they might use that tool.

This post will be my tips for getting started in Twitter. It is an updated version of the tips I provided in April for my Twitter for Dummies workshop for Edge Business Magazine.

Twitter is a useful communication tool for people in many different businesses or professions. Many people also find Twitter fun, but that certainly is a matter of personal experience and taste. This handout will focus on the useful aspects of Twitter. Though I am a journalist and use Twitter mostly for purposes related to journalism, I will attempt to address the usefulness across a variety of fields. Where I use journalism examples, I hope you will think how they might apply in your business or profession.

Twitter is helpful for a variety of uses:

• You can monitor the activities and discussions of people in the community, staying current on issues and events.
• You can connect with colleagues and share ideas with them.
• You can “crowdsource,” seeking ideas and suggestions on challenges you are facing.
• You can montior what people are saying about your business, organization or product, responding quickly to complaints and identifying happy customers who might have promotional value.
• You can drive traffic to your web site or blog as you post new content.
• You can get quick information on news, events, weather or traffic or on developments in your community or your field.
• You can connect with and/or monitor actual or potential customers, clients, competitors and vendors.
• I’m sure you can use Twitter in other ways for your business. Please feel welcome to add other uses in the comments.

Getting started

You can start your Twitter account in just a few minutes and we’ll do this in class Tuesday:

• Go to Twitter.com, click “Get Started” and choose your user name. I encourage you to use your own name or your business name as your user name. If you have a common name and a separate profile for the business name (or if you’re an employee and shouldn’t be speaking for the business) and want your own profile for business use, you might consider some combination of your name and the business name. For instance, I used stevebuttry as my Twitter name, but if that name were already taken, I could use something like SteveButtryGaz or SBGazette. You also can use an underscore to see if your real name is available in a different way: Steve_Buttry.
• Fill out location and bio. Especially if you can’t use some version of your own name for your username, I encourage you to identify yourself in your profile by real name, position, affiliation and city if you are using Twitter in your business. People are more likely to follow people whose identity is clear.
• Add a picture or a business logo to your profile, too. This also will make people more likely to follow you.
• Include your blog link in your profile, too. If you don’t blog, include a link to your company’s web site, a bio or something else that gives potential followers a chance to learn more about you.
• Don’t protect your updates if you intend to use Twitter for professional or business purposes. Twitter works best when you are open and transparent.
• Click “devices” in your settings and follow the instructions, so you can update and/or receive direct messages on your cell phone. Check to see whether you can use Twitter in your phone’s browser (I can on my iPhone and my BlackBerry). If you can, you might have options. You should make sure you can use Twitter on your phone. Twitter was developed for sharing of text messages and if you don’t use it on a mobile device, you aren’t getting the full Twitter experience.
• Click “notices” and click that you want to see all “@replies” (which means you can see replies or othe references to you, even if you aren’t following someone). Also select to receive emails when someone starts following you (you can decide whether to follow them back) and when you receive a direct message (you will want to respond promptly to most).
• Click the “design” tab and choose a background. You might want to design a background that includes your logo and contact information. (I need to get around to doing that myself.)

Following people

Be sure to fill out your profile and post a few updates before you follow anyone. When you follow people, some of them will click on your profile and decide whether to follow you. If you haven’t told them who you are and given some idea what you might be like to follow, they will be less likely to follow you. But you should start following some people fairly quickly, because following people is important to getting the full value and experience of Twitter. Most business people who use Twitter as a one-way stream will not be satisfied with the experience.

Choose some people to follow (this means their updates will show up on your Twitter home page).

• At the top of your home page, click “find people.” Click “find on other networks” and you can see whether any of your contacts on a gmail, hotmail, Yahoo! or AOL account are already on Twitter.
• Under the “Find on Twitter” tab, look for people by name.
• At Twellow, you can check for people to follow in your community or your industry or profession to follow.
• At NearbyTweets, you can see recent tweets from people in or near your community (or a community you will be visiting).
• At WeFollow.com, you can look for people who have chosen topical tags, ranked in order of their numbers of followers.
• As you follow people in your community or colleagues or competitors in your business or profession, take a look at their followers and see if you see anyone there you want to follow.
• When someone follows you, check the profile and the recent tweets to see if this is someone you want to follow.
• When someone you enjoy following replies to someone else with an interesting tweet or “retweets” a link to something interesting, click on the username of the third party and decide whether that’s someone you want to follow.
• Don’t follow too many people too fast. Adding about 10 followers a day for the first week is a good pace. Then add the people you find interesting to follow.
• If you’re not interested in someone’s tweets, you can stop following by clicking on the profile, clicking the arrow next to “following” and then clicking “remove.”

Basic Twitter vocabulary

These are some basic terms that are used widely in Twitter. For more Twitter terminology, check the glossary links in a separate post on Twitter resources and blogs.

• @ is how you identify a tweep you are addressing or tweeting about. Put @ in front of the user name (@stevebuttry) and people will know you are addressing or writing about that person. In addition, Twitter will automatically turn the username into a hyperlink to his or her profile.
• Applications. Lots of applications such as TweetDeck, Twhirl andTweetie help you use Twitter more effectively on your computer or phone. You can enjoy Twitter without using any of the applications, though, so I don’t explain them here. Start simple and as you read tweets singing the praises of a particular app that works with your phone or meets a need of yours, give it a try. I do recommend using the Twitter app in Facebook. This way your tweets become your Facebook status updates. While I did receive one complaint from a Facebook friend when I was twittercasting an event and kind of dominated his Facebook page briefly, I get lots of responses from Facebook friends (and the complaining friend is now on Twitter). This way I can stay active in Facebook and Twitter without actually spending much time in Facebook.
• Direct message or DM is a tweet sent directly to another tweet. This should not appear in either person’s public Twitter stream. (But just as some people accidentally reply to a list-serv with a message intended to be private, some people tweet publicly when intending to DM, so DM prudently.) It’s especially easy to make this mistake when DM’ing by text message. If you just reply, you can be tweeting to everyone. To reply by DM, type “d username” (with no @ symbol): “d stevebuttry”
• Fail whale is the graphic you see (featuring a whale) when Twitter is over capacity. This was a frequent frustration in early 2008 when Twitter was growing faster than its servers could handle the traffic but is less of a problem now.
• Favorite. If you really like a particular tweet, you can designate it as a favorite by clicking on the star at the right, which will become visible when your cursor is over the tweet. You can see all your favorites through a link on the right of your home page. (I don’t favorite often.) Twitfave lets you see which of your tweets people have favorited.
• #Hashtags are a tag to help group tweets about a particular event or topic. The tag is designated by # in front of a word (sometimes a couple words without spaces). For instance, I am using #kirkwoodsm for this course. So when you go to search.twitter.com and search for #kirkwoodsm, you should see tweets offering advice. When looking for information on a topic in the news, you might want to try multiple hashtags because they occur spontaneously. For instance, on the flooding in Fargo earlier this year, I found lots of messages using #flood09, #redriver and #fargoflood.
• Reply means to respond to a particular tweet. You can reply by starting a tweet with @username. Or if you click the arrow to the right of the tweet (your cursor must be over the tweet for the arrow to appear), Twitter will fill in the @username start in the window and also link to that tweet (in the “in reply to” type below a tweet), which helps other tweeps (and sometimes the person you’re replying to) understand context. You can read your replies (and any mentions of you) in the @username link in your right rail (helpful when you don’t want to catch up on all the tweets you’ve missed on several hours away from Twitter, but don’t want to miss something about or directed at you).
• Retweet means to pass along something you read from one of your tweeps. You start a retweet with “RT @tweep’sname.” You don’t have to retweet verbatim, though you may if you have room (if the original tweet was the full 140 characters, you will need to condense a little). For instance: “RT @stevebuttry is about to start Kirkwood course, Using Social Media for Business.” Links are a great thing to retweet. Don’t feel the need to repeat your tweep’s comment about the link. Retweet the link with your own comment. Generally, if you use “RT” in the front, you are using the other person’s words (with some condensation). If you are passing along the link but the comment is all yours, retweet by using “via @username” at the end to credit the other person.
• Tweeps are the people who follow you.
• Tweet, when you post something to Twitter, this is formally called an update, but is better known as a tweet. Can also be used as a verb. Tweets are limited to 140 characters, including spaces.
• Tweetup means some tweeps are gathering physically, often at a restaurant or bar. Join a tweetup in your community sometime.

Linking

One of Twitter’s best uses is to share links to interesting blogs and other web content with people who share your interests. This blows away the argument that Twitter’s 140-character limit leads to shallowness. Your tweet may be little more than “read this” (though I usually make a comment) but if the link takes someone to a blog or site that offers depth and substance, you share way beyond the 140 characters.

• Compress links. Don’t waste your precious character limit on huge URLs. Cut and paste the URL you want to share into one of the web sites that compress URLs for you: tinyurl.com, is.gd, bit.ly or snurl. It couldn’t be simpler: Paste the long URL into the window at the condensing site, hit return and you get your compressed link. With bit.ly (and probably some others), you can later check how many people have clicked the link by adding “+” to the link.
• Write a headline. Tell people what you thought about the link you’re passing along.
• Share links liberally. If you read a good blog or see something online that’s thought-provoking or funny, tweet a quick link to it. You will find that this sharing of links among colleagues is one of the best uses of Twitter.

Your first week on Twitter

I didn’t understand Twitter until I spent a week Twittering pretty seriously when I was at the American Press Institute. I wrote about that week in a couple of blog posts before and after the week. My recommendations for understanding and getting up to speed:

• Tweet about 10 times a day when you’re getting started. That will help you learn Twitter. Then you can speed up or slow down to the pace that’s right for you. (And the right pace is probably an uneven pace – slow when you’re involved in boring meetings, lots of tweets when you’re twittercasting an interesting conference.) A tweet doesn’t take very long, so 10 tweets a day is not a large time commitment.
• Follow about 10 new people a day (many of them will follow you back). Adding too many followers too fast can be overwhelming. But as you add followers, you will get a broader range of views and experiences from your community and your colleagues. I recommend following a mix of people in your community and colleagues around the country (and beyond). Try about 10 new follows a day for the first week, then find the right growth pace for you and your business.
• Reply to some tweets and send some direct messages. Twitter is really about interacting with the tweeps, so you need to start having that experience right away.

What should you tweet about?

As with any other writing format, each tweep develops a personal style. Find the right style for you. Some suggestions (reject any that don’t work for you):

• Don’t really answer the question. Twitter’s basic question “What are you doing?” isn’t really answered in most tweets. No one really cares that you’re eating breakfast, unless something funny happened or you read an interesting story at breakfast or found a great new place for breakfast. Last week at a conference, I tweeted that I was having breakfast with a couple journalism professors and got two responses (one by DM) on Twitter and four on Facebook. So some people did indeed care about what I was doing for breakfast (I didn’t mention what I ate). Mathew Ingram suggests not answering “What are you doing?” but rather “What am I thinking?” Or, I would add, “What do I want to know?”
• If you blog or update your web site, tweet links to new posts on your blog (and then check to see how many page views come from Twitter – and Facebook if you’re using the Twitter app there). If this is all you do, not many people will follow you, unless they really like your blog. But if you are contributing regularly to Twitter discussion, a link to your blog if always appropriate.
• Retweet links when someone in the community tweets a link to something interesting or when a colleague tweets a link to a blog you fon und interesting.
• Reply to people who tweet about your company or product, asking if you can address a complaint, thanking for a compliment or otherwise engaging them appropriately.
• When you have something funny or insightful to say, tweet.
• Don’t tweet when you really don’t have anything to say.
• Don’t be too serious in your tweets. Twitter is a bright and breezy communication tool and you’re not going to fully understand it if you don’t experience it the way your tweeps do.
• Don’t tweet about private matters (unless you DM, and even then, be careful). Even if you have a small circle of followers, your tweets can be visible to the public unless you protect them. And if you protect them, you really limit the business use of Twitter.

Consider the appropriate Twitter use for your business or profession

Twitter has a variety of business and professional uses. I have asked several Cedar Rapids area tweeps to share their advice for how they use Twitter in a variety of other businesses.  I will give you some of my tips for journalists. Consider whether some similar uses might apply in your work:

• Reporters should follow the feeds of people on their beats. In Cedar Rapids, a couple of county supervisors Twitter regularly, as well as a local state legislator, the county auditor, the art museum director, a local festival director and the director of the downtown business district. Several local institutions, including the city, and business people have Twitter feeds, too. On virtually any beat, some people are Twittering and reporters or bloggers covering those beats should be following them and interacting with them.
• If people in the community follow a journalist on Twitter, they are a quick resource when you’re seeking sources, examples for a story, questions to ask in your reporting or even story ideas. A quick question to your tweeps will frequently bring a response that helps for a story. I have heard lots of examples from my own staff and other tweeps about how this works. Keep in mind that you are crowdsourcing to a small segment of the population, so don’t use this as your only crowdsourcing tool. Take the steps to seek diversity in your sources. But Twitter is a good place to start (and Twitter may help diversify your sources, because the tweeps may be younger than your average news-story source and less likely to interact with the print edition).
• Twitter is valuable for story ideas, either to ask people about a good angle to take on one of those routine or annual stories or simply to follow the community chatter on Twitter and be alert for tips and ideas as they pop up.
• Tweet live coverage of an event, either on Twitter alone or as a feed into CoverItLive.
• When you post to a blog or post a video, story, photo, slideshow, multimedia project or database online, tweet a link and, if you’ve been active enough to develop a lot of followers, you’ll see a bump in traffic coming directly from Twitter.

Breaking news is probably where Twitter shows its greatest value for journalists. You might find it helpful in your field, either to stay abreast of the news or to react to news affecting you directly. My tips for journalists using Twitter to cover breaking news:

• If you’re following lots of people in your community, you may see tweets from some eyewitnesses or some people feeling the impact.
• You can use Twitter Search to search for keywords that might be likely to pop up in tweets about the breaking story, such as “flood,” “tornado” or “crash.”
• You can use Twitter Search to find hashtag discussions already forming around the event, again trying different keywords.
• Search also for photos posted on Twitpic.

Twitter tools

The array of Twitter tools available is too vast to keep up with and I won’t cover them all here. But some basics:

• Twitter Search, by which you can search for the most recent tweets of any terms and also see links to the hottest discussions on Twitter (with an advanced search function to help narrow the search).
• Twitpic, which lets you post photos from your computer or cell phone and tweet links to them.
• Tweetbeep and Tweetscan, which let you search for terms and send you email alerts when someone tweets about you or a topic you care about.

Ethical issues

Journalists face a variety of ethical considerations when using Twitter or any new tool. I will review some of the issues I encourage journalists to consider and I hope you give the same consideration to the ethics of your profession or business, however different or similar they may be. The principles of journalism ethics – seek the truth and report it; minimize harm; act independently; be accountable – don’t change, but social networks present unfamiliar circumstances for making ethical decisions. Some matters I encourage journalists to consider and discuss (and some of my thoughts about other businesses, but don’t necessarily follow my advice; decide what’s the appropriate way to act in your business or profession). If you aren’t the boss, it might be a good idea to discuss these issues with your boss:

• Identification. My view is that if journalists might ever use a profile professionally, they should identify themselves by name, position and affiliation. I blogged earlier this year about a journalist in the community who didn’t identify herself (now she does). You need to decide how and whether to identify yourself and your business in your profile.
• Personal vs. professional. Decide whether you should maintain separate personal and professional Twitter accounts. Some journalists do and I respect their decisions. I don’t keep separate accounts. My view is that we need to learn how to use social media tools the way the world uses them and lots of people mix the personal and professional when using social media. So I use my Twitter account for personal and professional communications, but I do so knowing that people are always viewing me as the leader of the content operation of Gazette Communications. So I always conduct myself professionally on Twitter, even if it’s a more casual, personal and fun version of professional conduct than I’m used to. Personal communication helps build the connections that make Twitter a strong form of community connection. I got lots of responses on Twitter and Facebook when I tweeted about my nephew’s leukemia treatment. Again, decide what’s the right personal/professional balance/mix/separation for your business or profession.
• Verification. Reporters should be as careful and skeptical about facts they learn and contacts they make through Twitter as they would be about facts or contacts encountered elsewhere. If accuracy is important in your field, you should be similarly careful.
• Language. The language of Twitter can get pretty casual and foul, with abbreviations such as WTF and BS thrown around casually. If such language is not appropriate in your business or profession, be careful about the language you use.
• Opinions. The Twitterverse can be pretty opinionated. Consider whether opinions should be acceptable in your tweets (and what kinds of opinions) and whether any particular topics might be off-limits for opinionated tweets.

I posted the handout, Journalism ethics in social networks, developed for a seminar for journalists, on my blog. Again, you might want to consider the same issues and how they apply to your business or profession.

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