With Oprah jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, the social status update service has gone mainstream. Here are a few general tips for those new to Twitter.
- Use as short and easy to remember username as possible.
- Add original picture and background to your profile.
- Retweet tweet messages if you find them meaningful, insightful, or to show appreciation.
- Always give proper credit for retweet and leave message intact as much as possible.
- If you can’t tweet anything nice, retweet somebody else.
- It is best to retweet the source, not a retweet of a retweet of a retweet etc.
- Don’t tweet anything your wouldn’t say in person.
- Use hashtags to add context, additional information to your status update.
- On Friday list fellow twitterers that reply to you using the hashtag #followfriday.
- Follow as many of those that follow you, but beware of SEO, marketers, bots, and spammers.
- Celebrities won’t follow you, but follow and engage those that celebrities actually follow.
- Follow those near you and attend tweetups.
- Use Twitter clients such as TweetDeck, Twitteriffic, or Twhirl.
- 140 characters force you to keep it short, be sure to keep it succinct.
- Reply, retweet, and converse with your friends and followers.
- Be humble, no matter how many follower you have, don’t call them your followers.
- Mark tweets that you enjoy as your favorite.
- If nothing else, just add value.