In the last few posts, you have signed up on Twitter and you have found some followers.

If you have been extra wonderful, you have also tried to reply or retweet.

Now you are ready for the next adventure…composing your own TWEETS!

How to Compose Tweets Even John Tesh Would Love

1. There is one rule:

A tweet can only be 140 characters or less. It includes letters, numbers, symbols, spaces, weblinks and elipses…I love elipses…

2.  Things to tweet about.
a) profession related
b) hobby related
c) life related

You do need to consider your followers and their interests otherwise write your tweets in a diary.

3.  Basic Tweet – Just Words

Hey! What is up with the Oilers? Are they still rebuilding?

Note: This tweet is straight up tweeting…no fancy smancy.

4. Adding a Link to a Tweet

The process can be as simple as…writing a tweet and copying and pasting a link on the end…but often the link is too long. See below.

Hey! What is up with the Oilers? Are they still rebuilding? http://www.jewelsfromthecrown.com/2013/7/14/4521014/realignmentpalooza-edmonton-oilers

You need to get a URL shortener to fix this.

         1. Go to http://goo.gl/
         2. Paste your link into the shortener.
         3. Copy the shortened URL and  add it to your tweet….

Here is the new Tweet.

Hey! What is up with the Oilers? Are they still rebuilding? http://goo.gl/8J2lI9

Yay success!

I think that is plenty for today! Have fun adding links. Let me know if this is helping you.

Next post we will be getting into HASHTAGS…

Twitter Series
Part One
Part Two

Until Next Time,

Lit Maven Out!

Last post we signed up and and found some friends.

Now…what to say?

I thought about this a lot last night and I think before you can understand what to say, it is important to understand how to work with what other people have already said.

Twitter is about engaging with others and not just tweeting about yourself.

HOW TO RESPOND TO YOUR TWITTER FEED – BASICS

1. Understanding your home feed.
1. Your home feed, as you view it on Twitter.com is the conversation of all your followers. This is like having all your friends talking at once, in one long stream of disjointed conversation.

It looks like this

2. Reply

If you think that something is interesting. Click on the tweet messsage. The tweet will enlarge. You will see a series of symbols.

The first symbol is the reply button.

 Reply

When pressed you will get a reply box with the address of the person who sent the message. For example if you hit reply to the message about Kellogg’s Tweet shop (above) you would see this:

@FastCoCreate

Following the tweet address you can fill in a response or comment.

@FastCoCreate I wish I could use social currency to buy groceries.

…or something more interesting.

Then press send. The message is sent back to the person who tweeted it and it is also viewed by of your followers.

3. Retweet
If you see a message in your feed that you think your followers (friends)  would like to read press “retweet”.  The second symbol is the retweet button.

 Retweet

When you press retweet the entire message appears in the status box with a RT (retweet) in front of the message.

Using the above “Kellogg’s” tweet as an example it would look like this:

RT @FastCoCreate Kellogg’s Tweet Shop Let’s You Pay for Food with Social Currency trib.al/z CSZoh

The “RT” gives credit to the person who composed the original message. It is like saying…

 “Hey everyone…guess what so and so said…it’s brilliant. Listen up. Pay attention. He/she has the goods.”

After you press “send” the RT message is sent to all of your followers.

4. Favorite
Sometimes you just love a tweet so much that you need to keep it for later. This is when you select the symbol:

 When you press the favorite symbol, the tweet is saved for later, to find under your twitter profile…under favorites. When you “favorite” a tweet, the person who sent the tweet is notified that you “favorite-ed” it. (Is that even a word?)