Twitter Tips and Tricks

It's the post of the week that you all have been anxiously anticipating!
Since I know last week I converted you all to Twitter you'll need to learn how to use it :)

I'm going to start by answering some of your questions from last week.

Remember Tweet Deck?


It's your friend.

1. I'm getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people I'm following. Any ideas on how to trim that down? I'm so glad you asked. It's easy to feel guilty when people are following you and you aren't following them in return (and sometimes it's plain rude) so how can you see who you want to see and not feel overwhelmed by how many people you're following?

LISTS.

Think of them like the new groups in Facebook. Pick the people you want and throw them onto a list. I would suggest having several different kinds of lists to keep easier track. One for people you like to stalk, one for bloggers you like to retweet etc.


The best part about lists? You can throw people on there that you don't follow. See, Twitter has nit picky little thing where you can't follow more than 2,000 people if 2,000 people aren't following you.


But wait, what? You say I have secret crush on Justin Bieber and I want to follow all of his annoying groupies! Throw them on a list.

Or, more likely, you have slew of literary agents you want to watch, but they're keeping you from following more people - throw them on a list too (I would suggest this following or not).

And, guess what? All of your lists can be organized into columns on tweet deck, making it even easier to keep track.

2. What's the big deal with Hash Tags? I still don't get it. Hash tags are a must in the twitter world, if you're not using hash tags you're not reaching all of your potential audience.  Certain Hashtags like #yalitchat have specific chat times where you can connect with others who write and read YA. When you utilize this the increase you'll get in friendship and followers is astounding!


3. What's up with all fancy stuff? I just want to know how to talk to people. Tweetdeck is great for that too. See something you like? Just hover over the person's picture and Tweetdeck gives you lots of options.

Here's an example of a tweet -

and here is an example of what it looks like when you hover over the picture.

 

Say I want to reply to this tweet - I hit the little back arrow. Say I want to direct message this person, I hit the little envelope. Say I want to retweet this to everyone, I hit the forward arrow.

The little gear gives you a bunch of options, but I only ever use it if someone has written a tweet in a different language and I want to find out what they are saying. You just hover over the gear scroll down to 'tweet' then click 'translate'.

Not replying to someone? Use the @ sign to talk or a D before their twitter handle to direct message them. If you use the @ sign first, only people who are following both parties will see the tweet. If you put anything before the @ sign (a period or a word) everyone following you will see the tweet. Make sense?

This also applies if you are forwarding your tweets to facebook. If you use the @ sign first it won't show up on facebook, but if you use it after something it will.

I think that about covers it. Is there anything you want to know about Twitter? What's your favorite trick?