By now everyone is talking about Twitter, even on TV, where many television programs and political debates invite users to post their messages on Twitter. There is no celebrity who does not have a Twitter account in which to publish photos or trivial messages that are re-shared thousands of times by fans.
Given all this publicity, many have been, in the last year, new registered Italian users, but, at the same time, the percentage of people who, after registering, abandon because they do not understand how to start and how to use it, is also very high. tool.
Explaining how Twitter works can be, in some ways, not very simple as it is a very different tool from Facebook, not aimed at making new friends or even communicating with your old friends.
A complete guide to Twitter can therefore be useful to start, without demoralizing that you don't even have a follower, and to better understand how to use this special social network.
1) the basic principles: What is Twitter ">, based on their interests, but without reciprocity: I can follow you but you are free not to follow me.
On Twitter, the follower is not necessarily a friend, but can still offer interaction and conversation.
This is the official video where Twitter is explained in 1 minute (activate the subtitles translated into Italian)
The first thing to know to understand Twitter is to understand and master essential terminology :
- Tweet : The 280-character message.
- Retweet (RT) : it is the re-sharing of another person's Tweet.
- Feed : The flow of tweets on the homepage, made up of updates from the users that follow.
- Mention (@) : it is a way to refer to another user with his name in a tweet (e.g. @pomhey ).
The users mentioned receive a notification and can, in turn, reply to the message and continue the discussion.
- Direct message is a private message to another person; direct messages can only be sent to users who follow you.
- Hashtag (#) : to indicate a topic of conversation or participate in a wider debate, you can add the pound sign next to the keyword.
The other users, even those who do not follow you, can discover your Tweet by browsing the various hashtags that actually represent the topics or categories of the tweets.
- Following : the users you are following, whose updates make up your feed.
- Followers : users who follow you.
2) Creation of the profile
After registering a Twitter account it is very important to show up to hope to be mentioned or followed.
Then write a short two-line profile, put a photograph or a representative image and set your real name or a unique and recognizable nickname.
The username is that of your Twitter page (for example www.twitter.com/pomhey ) and must be unique, while the profile name is the one that identifies the person and does not necessarily have to be unique.
For the profile page it is also possible to change the background and change the cover of the header of the Twitter account
3) Following and Followers
Many new users abandon Twitter because they are not followed by anyone.
The fact is that Twitter is not a normal social network where you make friends just to exchange messages with them.
You can also participate in Twitter only by publishing your opinions on other people's interventions and following a particular hashtag, without worrying about the fact that, if you are not followed, what you write ends up in oblivion.
If you are interested in gossip, you can follow specialized journalists and VIPs, if you are interested in technology, you can follow your favorite brand or blog and receive all the updates in your feed and so on.
You can find people to follow in different ways, perhaps starting with people you know and then following users that Twitter automatically suggests.
It is not convenient to follow those who publish 100 messages a day by clogging the feed and not even those who never write.
Conversely, it is possible to be followed by commenting, participating and publishing images, photos, news and comments.
A Following can always be removed with a click if what you are writing does not interest you.
When you notice an interesting message, you can reply to the tweet or add something by clicking on the Reply button and mentioning the author of the tweet.
To call into question another user and attract his attention, just mention him or mention his name in the tweet preceded by an @ (like @pomhey).
In Twitter you can thus get in touch with a VIP or a politician by mentioning him in tweets, and who knows if they don't respond!
4) Retweet
Retweet is a way to share an interesting tweet with your followers .
Thus information tends to spread virally through retweets.
A good use rule is always to mention the source and not to copy and paste a tweet as if it had been thought by your own head.
When you click on Retweet, the tweet is sent to your group of followers, with the photo of the original tweeter next to it and a note below indicating the retweet.
Additionally, a small green icon will appear in the upper right corner of the re-tweeted message.
For each Retweet you can also add a comment that appears as above the original tweet, which appears as if it were a quote.
You can do a Retweet manually, making copy and paste on the box to send a new tweet, adding the username of the original tweeter preceded by RT and @ (for example, RT @Pomhey ).
5) Hashtags
Hashtags are the labels with which to describe a message and indicate the object that is being discussed.
The hashtag is represented by the pound sign "#" in front of a word or phrase (but without spaces).
The words used after the hashtag become clickable on Twitter to read all the tweets that cited that word.
It is a grouping mechanism that allows you to make sense of the general public on a specific topic or problem.
Everyone can create their own hashtag and hope that it will become such an interesting topic to enter the ranking of the most discussed topics of the day, highlighted on the left in the Trends box.
6) Twitter Mobile
With Twitter, mobile applications are more important than those of Facebook and any other social application.
Twitter is real time, it is like a global news agency so the most interesting facts do not come from your room but from what is happening around.
Using Twitter from a smartphone or tablet is certainly more fun and you can search for updates and news regarding the event or the place where you are, participating with your own contribution, even with photos, live.
Twitter is available on both iPhone and iPad, Android and Windows Phone.
7) Become a tweeter or follower?
A user on Twitter can choose whether to be only one who follows the others, perhaps to receive news on the topics of their interest, or whether to be a point of reference for other people, sharing and writing things that may be of interest.
It is useless to follow more than 200 or 300 other users, otherwise your page becomes too clogged and you will lose the most interesting things (therefore you should not think of following people just to hope that they reciprocate).
In Twitter you don't have to write what is being done at all times but you don't have to be a poet or a philosopher either.
You can write about anything, being sure and patient that you will find a group of interested people.
The ideal is to place yourself as an expert in a specific subject (for example, in technology or politics), so as to attract followers.
It is useless to be envious of those who have many followers: it may be that he is a VIP, or a point of reference for a specific topic or, simply, he has used artificial tricks to increase that number artificially.
8) The lists
If you follow 100 different users, they can be grouped into lists based on the topic they are talking about.
For example, I could create a technology list, to enclose all my following which deal with computers, IT or electronics.
A list has its own specific link that shows a feed of updates.
A list can also be followed by other users.
To create and organize lists you can click on the little man in the upper right corner which is the main menu of Twitter.
You can deepen the discussion in another guide on how to use Twitter, searches, lists and filters
Remember that you don't follow someone on Twitter because they are nice or because they are friends, it is about involving interesting people from all over the world, without having to know who they really are.
Twitter is an experience, the more you use it, the more fun and resourceful it becomes.
Now, follow Pomhey on Twitter and share this article by pressing the Twitter button below.
