How to Twitter

When Twitter was new a lot of people couldn’t figure out what to use it for.  The question What are you Doing? appeared to have no relation to the way popular people used it.  It’s an innocuous question that inspired and yet confused people.  However, because Twitter is so fundamentally simple — especially compared to other social networks — just about anyone could get started with it and use it for… something.

Now Twitter has cemented its credibility and popularity, people are still wondering what to use it for.  As veterans of the service I thought we’d share how we see Twitter used in a meaningful fashion, which will hopefully inspire your own use.

If you like this post, also check out Twitter for your Boss which is a deeper article on helping Twitter gain traction at work.

Retweeting

I’ve seen treatises and manifestos on retweeting.  The truth is it doesn’t matter how you do it — if a friend writes an interesting blog post and you share it with a reference to their account name you’re doing them a favour.  Just remember to say thanks when people share your links this way.

For Casual Communication and Contacts

The type of people who initially disliked Twitter now seem to use it simple for communication.  It’s like a “permanent” IM system.  It’s really useful to print your Twitter account name on your business cards to give out at meetups or conferences — I’ve made some useful contacts and friends this way.  This is of course the true social networking that services like Twitter promised.

Tips:

• Don’t be embarrassed to print your Twitter account name on your business cards
• Consider making “casual” business cards for meetups or conferences — moo.com makes this cheap and easy
• Get used to checking your @replies so you don’t ignore people

Internet Celebrities

We all know there’s celebrities like Stephen Fry on Twitter.  There’s also a lot of Internet celebrities — journalists, programmers, designers, musicians: just about anyone you follow professionally or through a hobby will have an account.

Tips for finding:

• Try to discover people through Twitter search or Google — they’ll link to their Twitter account on their blogs or profiles on other sites
• Searching for real names can be difficult — a lot of people (especially well-known videogame journalists) use crazy aliases

As an Aggregator

We use our Twitter feed, @quiteuseful to share links to things we think are interesting.  There’s a lot of aggregators out there now though, and they’re great if they fit into your interests.  Low traffic human curated aggregators like @quiteuseful are like more accessible, compact RSS feeds.

Tips for finding:

• Search for hashtags based on your interests
• Look for accounts with a topic-focused name, or a name that sounds like a blog
• Check out interesting accounts to see if they provide human @replies — steer clear of bots that blindly retweet based on hashtags