Teh Chad

Who is that infamous “RT” guy that is in every single Twitter post in my feed?
Social media is fantastic for sharing information and connecting with people. Whenever we see something useful, we often want to tell our friends.

On Facebook, we can click the little share link on most posts. However, Twitter uses a little different lingo.
The joke behind Twitter is that a little bird told me. Ergo, the bird tweets things to you and you hear it from a little bird. Silly, I know, but that’s what they did.

Sharing things on Twitter is actually really easy; the terms are just different. To share something verbatim with your followers, you can simply “retweet” it. When using Hootsuite (look it up, srsly), a “RT” is posted in front of said tweet to be reposted. This just tells your readers that this came from someone else.
Does this make sense?

@tehchad25

A friend of mine brought up some good questions that, I believe, most people may not know.

1 How do you tag a bunch of people?
When you find something interesting that you would like to share with someone, you will need to start using the @ sign. You might notice in the end of my last post I put “@tehchad25.” This is my username and you can insert this into any tweet and I will get what is called a tag or mention.

2 How can you sort through and see when people are talking to you?
In Twitter, you can sort out lists. Check out Hootsuite (which I highly recommend) and you’ll have a fantastic tool that does this really well. One list I have, and I believe everyone should have, is the mentions list. This allows you to see all tweets that have you tagged in them and create good conversations. It also, more importantly, allows you to read whatever people are saying about you. This is great for PR in that people can see when you are communicating with someone who may be frustrated or excited about your service/product/etc.
When you follow someone, you can easily add them to a given list that you have created.

3 How do my followers know my tweets have value when they have so many coming in?
This is something that you cannot control. You can encourage people to ask questions (as I have a tendency to do) and keep learning. But when it comes down to it, you can only lead the horse to the water. One thing I like to do is whine and then show people what I believe to be the correct way of doing things regarding said whine. This was the basis for my last post.

Does this make sense?

@tehchad25

Many things in this world are annoying. Few people actually do things right. Hopefully I can impact one person here.

One of the better examples of a twitter fail happens when a user just wants more followers and doesn’t want to give them any value. In this situation, the tweeter tags a bunch of random people and throws out a link. There is no actual thought; no real description; no VALUE. In my humble opinion, this is just the newer form of junk mail and it is a waste of everyone’s time.

How do we do this correctly? It’s really very easy! Treat people like you want your friends to treat you. Say hi! Once you know something about them, start opening your eyes to things that you know would interest them.

A good example of this would be:
@personthatIknow Hey, here’s a cool article/post/gallery/whatever about your passion of kayaking/real estate/xyz mountain in Alaska/etc. http://bit.ly/********

Once this is done a couple of times, you have what is called a “relationship.” When people who follow said person see you reaching out on a real level and giving valuable information…. GUESS WHAT??!??! They will come to you! Weird. I know.
Does this make sense?

@tehchad25