Twitter is the biggest online conversation happening and while it may seem like a lot of noise, when you look a little closer, you will find amazing conversations happening around the issues we most care about. It’s time to twitter for a better world. —Joellen Raderstorf, MAU ED and co-founder
Join MAU each Thursday for a tweetchat (an online chat in 140 character tweets) at 1pm ET, 12pm CT, 11am MT, 10am PT. Join at: www.tweetchat.com. Enter MAUact at the #hashtag and you’re good to go. The chat lasts for one hour, and it’s okay to watch without adding, but don’t be shy for long! To get started: Go to www.twitter.com and sign-up. To find followers: start by following @mothersactingup, then look at @mothersactingup followers and troll for the most interesting people. Follow them. Post something everyday, and respond or retweet someone’s comments everyday. Stay tuned for upcoming MAU tweet trainings! Now read the following Top Twitter Tips from MAU’s Twitter Research Goddess, Hanna Lynn Johnson:
Use a picture of you as your avatar~twitter is all about who YOU are. The more authentic your presentation of yourself, the more authentic conversation will be generated.
Fill out your profile~fill it out with as much genuine information as possible. This will help like-minded folks find you, and will show that you’re a real person, which helps when people are deciding whether or not to follow you…if you have a website or a blog, include it!
Follow people you find interesting~use twitter’s “find people” search function, follow people whom people you admire are following, invite your friends via email…if you’re not interested in the people you follow, twitter won’t be interesting.
Be engaging~it sounds obvious, but when you post things you find valuable, chances are other people will too…when you post what you had for lunch, odds are, not so much.
Take risks~jump into conversations with strangers, ask questions, answer questions, share! That’s the whole point.
The shorter your username, the easier it will be to re-tweet your tweets.
Use 1st person twitter posts~these aren’t Facebook updates, tell people what you, as in “I”, are doing.
On twitter.com there is a right sidebar which reads @username~click it to see who is mentioning and re-tweeting you.
Avoid TMI~it’s great to share personal details and information to make your account personable, but be careful not to share too much information…don’t forget it’s a public forum, anybody could be reading.
Take advantage of the URL shortener~tweet deck has an app (application) which does this for you, but if you’re using good old fashioned twitter and you don’t want to waste precious characters with lengthy URLs, just go to bit.ly to turn your cumbersome URL into a teeny, tiny ones.
Check out Twitter software to make managing tweets more manageable! Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop are great for computers, check out tweetdeck or tweetie for the iphone and ubertwitter for the blackberry.
For more info, check out http://twittercism.com/twitter-101/
[...] here for Top Twitter Tips from MAU’s Twitter Research Goddess, Hanna Lynn Johnson [...]