Miss Nicole Jensen

Welcome to the third installment of my Twitter for N00bs series. You can find the intro post here.

Today’s (well, yesterday’s really. I had a day off.) is all about proving yourself to the Twitter community once you’ve done that other stuff I’ve talked about.

• Be concise. Obviously you’ve only got 140 characters to work with, and if you’re hoping or expecting (you cocky thing, you!) people to retweet you, leave 20-30 characters space so they can credit you without altering the content.
• Variety. It’s cool that you’re linking to your blog, but don’t do just that; interact! Ask questions. Share a joke. Share a picture. Just don’t do only one thing (unless you’re a specialist account for a particular company or reason, but even then they’re pretty boring after a while). Even @MyToaster pipes up occasionally!.
• Show your stuff. You know a whole lot of stuff about law? Construction work? Kittens? Show it! There’s a phrase called “thought leadership” which is quite relevant here in that you can make a name for yourself by being the go-to person for your passion or area of expertise. Share what makes you tick.
• Hashtags are awesome! This is the aspect of Twitter which I am most asked about; “what are those damn hashtags all about?” I don’t even  fully understand them myself, but there are plenty of places about which will tell you. Just don’t use too many in one tweet. It’s annoying.
• Know how to Retweet (RT). I am tempted to write a whole blog about this entirely, but I won’t because it’s over-thought. The commonly accepted format of a retweet (crediting someone with content) is:

RT @username: CONTENT

not

CONTENT. (RT @username)

Feel free to use “via” in place of “RT” when you are not quoting them word-for-word. And please take out extra usernames if there is a chain happening. Usually the username closest to the content is the original author.

• Ask yourself: does anyone really care? It’s as simple as that.
  

Okay, I’m done; this is my simple list. Any more to add? Come on, people! I’ve only just wet your tongue with this stuff!