Twitter : What’s it worth to ya?

Well, let’s see….. twitter is fast becoming the new social forum of the year 2009. So I’d say it’s pretty darn important to jump on the bandwagon and count yourself in.

Twitter is a unique kind of communication and once you’re INTO it on a daily basis you’ll understand how amazingly fast your messages can be put out there. Not only that but you will receive blasts of information that may be useful for you.

Take it from me, I like the old style forums where you answer and receive messages in a “Word doc” like thread from others that you have waited for a reply. It is a great way to bond, swap ideas and do business. But with twitter you can achieve the same results… but faster.

For one you can use #hashtags in your tweets. #Hashtags mark any topic you want to tweet about and give others a place to tweet information or comment back about a specific topic. ie. > #design or #iphone Just try typing in your twitter search box #design and see what comes up… amazing! An entire conversation of individual tweets that you’ve been directed to by entering a #hashtag.

#Hashtags are only one way you can communicate to other tweeple. An easy and obvious way to tweet is right from your home tweet page. You have the option to “directly reply” to another tweeter by using their tweet name ie. @TheMerryBird (that’s me!)

Gaining more followers is the goal on Twitter. I’m finding the top tweeters that have thousands of followers often RT. RT is short for Retweet. When you RT you are basically reading information from another tweeter and think it’s important enough to share with other tweeters, so for example if you like this very article link -- RT @themerrybird Twitter: what’s it worth to ya? -- you RT it so another fabulous twit can have the information. RT basically moves the first twit with the idea around but also lends to exposure of your own Twitter page where tweeple will most likely want to stop in and read your bio. (don’t forget to fill in your twitter bio!) Try following top tweeters and see what they are up to. The number one tweeter is @BarackObama – over 150,000 followers.

There are many facets to twitter but some handy dandy tools like mycleenr.com can take an overview of your followers and tell you how often they tweet and the last time they tweeted. If you see a follower in your list that hasn’t tweeted in months then…delete them as they are only dead wood, of no use, incognito, Finished!



Another useful place I’ve found on twitter is their very own HELP button! Once opened you can see a list of useful places to visit that will inform you about the ups and downs of twitter. For one, status.twitter.com is a worthy stop as it informs you to what is happening with twitter on a technical level. The issues that may arise in front of you may really happening everywhere so don’t think your PC/mac is the only one with a whale of a day. For example, the latest crush on twitter was the follower counters weren’t registering new follower numbers or losing thousands of them all together. Devasting to the twitterer that built thousands of followers… hey it’ll come back!

Twitter can be used in a multitude of ways you only need to open a twitter account and explore – I’ve just brushed the surface… go follow me and tweet me a message. Let me know what you find! @themerrybird