A Beginners Guide to Twitter (Part 3)

In part three of this series we will be going over Retweets, Hashtags, link shortening, and some third party tools to help you with your Twitter Marketing success. If you have not started using Twitter yet, be sure to read the first two parts of the A Beginner's Guide to Twitter (Part 1) and (Part2) which goes over setting up your Twitter account, and the basic functions on how to use Twitter.

Let's start with Retweeting.

Retweets

While using twitter you may come across tweets that you like. They can be topics that you feel should be shared with your followers, or it could be a tip that you want to forward to your followers. You can also find tweets that you may want to respond to. This is where "Retweets" come in. Twitter's Retweet (otherwise known as "RT") feature allows you to quickly share that Tweet with all of your followers.

Retweeting is a very simple process. When you find a tweet that you want to share/forward to all of your followers, you simply hover over the tweet, and find the Retweet icon highlighted on the bottom part of the tweet. The icon is not visible until you hover over the tweet, so be sure to give it a second if you don't see it right away. When you click on the icon it will ask you to submit, and it will then Retweet the tweet to your followers.

Retweets can be tracked like most things in twitter. If you are interested to see "RT's", you can see them by selecting the "Retweets" tab toward the top of the page. You will then have a couple options. You can see all "Retweets by you", "Retweets by other", and "your tweets, Retweeted".

Hashtags

Hashtags (#tag) are another great tool to use in twitter. The common use for a Hashtag is to develop or continue a common topic for the community to track easily. Users can use search.twitter.com to keep up to date on a particular topic, or they can use it to track trends in the community. A Hashtag added to a tweet acts as a way to create categories, groups or topics for tweets.

A good example of a Hashtags use would be a group of people that are attending a seminar or workshop. While attending the event they tweet notes, or about there experiences and add a #eventname to their tweet. Doing this allows an easy reference to updates about the event. Event organizers can use this to keep an eye on trends about the event, as well as use it as a promotional tool.

Hashtags are commonly used in the news industry as well to keep people updated on daily happenings in real time. The fires in San Diego a couple years ago are a prime example of how Hashtags are used. Anyone looking to get updates on the fire would search for #sandiegofire and they would instantly get a list of the latest tweets with real time updates on what was happening.

Hashtags can also be searched for in most search tools now days. Google gives real time results for Hashtag searches. Try a search for #wonders in a separate window. You will see the "Realtime results for #wonders" towards the bottom of the page.

Link Shortening

Straight from support.twitter.com:

"There are a variety of websites that can shorten your long links, making them easier to fit into Twitter's 140 character limit. These services can provide you with a shorter version of any URL you want to share. Then, you can use the shorter version in your Tweet, and anyone who clicks on it will be redirected to the longer URL. It's that easy!"

There are a number of different tools to use for shortening your links. This is important as you always want to get your message across and not lose characters due to length of the link.

Two common places to get your links shortened are:

* http://bit.ly

* http://tinyurl.com

Consider third-party applications.

An entire market has been developed around Twitter. Most of the desktop applications to manage your twitter account also have built in link shortening, so be sure to look for that as well. Some of the most useful applications are:

Twitter for Facebook application. This application automatically syncs your tweets with your Facebook status. Once set up, you will never have to make another Facebook update as it will be updated every time you tweet something.

TweetGlide. This is the application that I use to manage Twitter on my desktop. It's a great application as it allows you to organize your followers by groups. They are set up in a column formation which makes it easy to see your @Mentions, Direct Messages and anything else that you want to keep on top of. TweetGlide is also a great tool for businesses and Internet Marketers as it has a built in advertising platform that allows you to help build traffic to your sites. It's a great FREE tool that you should definitely check out.

Twitter is one of those applications that are best learned by using it. The best thing to do is to just start trying it out. You can't really make that many mistakes. Try to remember that Twitters main purpose is to enjoy the adventure of communication with people online. Building a relationship with your customers and people you meet online is a rewarding thing.