Twitter – What are the symbols for?
February 10, 2010 by admin
Filed under Social Media
So far we have discussed “What is Twitter?” and “How to Set Up a Twitter Page”. Now that you have your account up and running it is time to start using it!
There are several tags you can use in Twitter to do a multitude of things. There are really only three things you need to know how to do to use Twitter effectively.
@ Reply – An @reply is any Twitter update that begins with @username
People say lots of things on Twitter, and sometimes you want to say something back. In fact, early Twitter folks wanted to talk to each other so badly that they started using the @+username+message to designate their message as a reply to another person.
Since people loved using it so much, they made it an official feature. You can start a tweet with @username and it will appear in the person’s replies tab. You can also reply directly from someone’s tweet: every update has a curved arrow, just click it to and they will automatically add @username to your next tweet. Now you can send a reply to the author of any tweet just by clicking a button!
#Hastags – a #hashtag is any Twitter grouping done by keyword
Because Twitter provided no easy way to group tweets or add extra data, the Twitter community came up with their own way: hashtags. A hashtag is similar to other web tags- it helps add tweets to a category. Hashtags have the ‘hash’ or ‘pound’ symbol (#) preceding the tag, like so: #traffic, #followfriday, #hashtag.
If you add a hashtag to your tweet and you have a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your tweet. Although any keyword with a # in front could be considered a hashtag, there are many commonly used hashtags. Because of this it can be a great idea to add “key” hashtags to your tweets to try and spread the word of what you are tweeting about!
RT Retweets – An RT is the resending of an original tweet to all that are following
Sometimes you come across a tweet that you just have to share- tweets can be a big deal when they’re newsworthy, informative, or even just really funny. Twitter’s new retweet (RT) feature helps people quickly share information, which is pretty much what Twitter is all about.
For example if you are running a contest, ask offer those that are entering an additional entry for “retweeting” the contest. Then you are just tweeting to your followers, when they retweet it goes to their followers as well! You can track your retweets by clicking on the “Retweets” to the right of your Twitter page.
Now start Tweeting!
