Twitter Tips - How to Twitter and Why You Should Twitter.

I actually only got started on Twitter a few months ago, but had no idea at the time why. It sat there vacant for some time and I can't even remember why I decided to get back into it, but it was around December of 2008. A couple months ago as I write this.

I gave a tweet and a few people started following me. So I tweeted some more and more followed. The addiction began. :-)

I started reading some interesting posts and, what was really interesting, was seeing some people whose newsletters I had been reading placing their posts on Twitter. Seeing they were no different from me. They had kids or grandkids, doctor appointments, computer problems, and on and on.

I started following Lebron James form our Cleveland Cavaliers. He doesn't follow back and never replied to a couple messages, but occasionally there is a tweet from him.

So that's the basic idea. You find people to follow, people follow you, you tweet, they tweet, we all tweet for .... whoops. Got into the wrong saying there.

How do you find people to follow?

Generally you want to follow people who have interests similar to yours. You probably have a lot of interests so will be following people of all kinds. Golfers, internet marketers, fitness enthusiasts, and more.

Head over to Twitter Search and type in your interest. Golf, for instance. You will see a lot of posts related to golf. If any sound interesting, check it out and see if that is someone you would like to follow. Click Follow under their name and bingo bango - you are now following them.

Some people will automatically follow you back. Some will see you are now following them and will see if they have an interest in following you. Some will never know or care you are following you. :-) Don't take it personally.

Now when they leave a post, you may decide to reply to it. For example, they say "It's awfully cold here today" and you click reply (look to the right of the post for the reply button) "Yeah. We have ice on the roads today". You may get a reply back or not.

It's easy to reply. Put your cursor over the post and look to the right. At the bottom is a symbol - a half circle arrow. Click on that and @twittersname will be in your writing space. Just type in what you want to say same as usual and your reply will go out to that person.

Now personally, if they ask a question and you take time to reply, and they never acknowledge that, I find that rude. If you reply like above, they can reply or not reply. But if they ask "What do you think the Dow Jones will do today? and you answer "I look for a huge drop", they should reply back and acknowledge you. Even a "i agree" or something is polite. That's really what Twitter is about.

It's also how others find you. You can gain a good reputation as well. That will be important when you occasionally put a link in to your website or blog.

I mentioned this above but I will go over it. When someone tweets and you want to reply, simply go over to the right side of the tweet and click on the bottom symbol, which is a half circle arrow.

In the box you write your messages in, @tweetsname will appear with a blinking cursor next to it. Type in your message as usual and click Update. The message will now go out as normal to your followers, but the person who sent the tweet will now get your reply in their Replies box.

This is something I did not know. You click on that Replies box and any replies to you show up. This is nice because if you want, you can now reply back to that person. At first I didn't realize that and missed replying back unless I was on Twitter when the reply came through.

Here's a real handy tool that I'm betting many people overlook.

Tag your favorite posts as a favorite. Some may send you to a blog you enjoy or show a tip you want to remember. You easily Favorite that tweet and view it anytime.

Here's how it works. You read a post you enjoy. To the right of the post is a star. If you click on the star, the post is saved into your Favorites folder, much like when you bookmark a page. You will see that folder on the right side of your Twitter page.

If you ever want to get rid of it, go into the Favorites folder and go to the right of the post and click the star. This time it will unfavorite it and it will disappear.

This is real handy and I'm betting you will find good use for it.

I was curious. I was going through my list of people I was following. Direct Message was there for those who were also following me, but then I noticed Nudge beside some of the direct messages. What?

So I clicked it on one of them and got a message back from Twitter saying I had nudged so and so. Uh-oh. Hope I didn't piss someone off. :-)

Here is what Twitter says about Nudge - - -

"A nudge is a friendly note sent to a Twitter friend's phone, reminding them on your behalf to update your Twitter profile. If you've got a phone registered, your notifications are ON, and someone thinks it's been too long since you last updated Twitter, you may receive a message saying, "You've been nudged! Biz wants to know what you're doing. Reply to this message to update your Twitter friends." Visit a friend's profile page, and nudge them if you see that they haven't updated in awhile. The nudge link is located on followers' profile pages in the right hand sidebar, under the actions section."

So it looks like they signed up for it when they registered their phone. However, I still don't know if clicking that might irritate someone, so I plan to leave it alone for now.

Tetweeting is probably one of the best compliments you can give. You find a comment you like and think your followers would enjoy readying. You retweet the comment.

First copy the comment to your clipboard. Now click on the reply button in the post. Your reply box will show @tweetersname - In front of the @ symbol, type RT and a blank space. After the tweeters name - leave a blank space and paste the message you copied.

That's it. Some people are so grateful when you retweet one of their messages, they will send your name to their followers on Follow Friday, recommending they follow you.

There are a lot of good, interesting people on Twitter. I enjoy the experience. I enjoy hearing from "Best Damn Sports Show", for instance. I watch it and it's cool to know they take time to answer you.

But some people play games. For instance, they follow you. You follow them back and they unfollow you. What's that all about? Maybe you have posts they don't like or they find you boring. That could always be the case but - they unfollow you and you haven't posted, or have made only a post or 2?

I think it has something to do with getting a high Twitter grade and I'll explain that later. However, here's a little something I just found out. Click on Following at your Twitter page. Look at the people you are following. If it says Direct Message under their name, they are following you. Now it really isn't worth worrying too much about this, but I have seen numerous posts where people have wondered about this, so I'm passing it on.

Now I mentioned I follow people who do not follow me just because I find what they have to say interesting or informative. I mean c'mon, Senator McCain is not going to follow you back.

Then there are others out there with a type of pyramid scheme. You follow someone and your name gets put on a list with 5 or 6 other people. You get moved around on the list so when someone follows someone on that list, they follow you as well. You load up with followers.

My advice is to stay away from these schemes. It's not what Twitter is about and I have found there are numerous posts that feel that way as well. There's always going to be people who find ways to manipulate the system. Avoid them.

Listen, there are legit ways to gain followers. There is Follow Friday, when twitterers recommend to their followers that they follow so and so. That's legit. Or you find someone you really like and you send a post to your followers and tell them to check this person out. It's nice when it happens to you. :-)

It's great getting a lot of followers but do it the right way.

Twitter Grader gives you a grade for your Twitter name. I have no idea how it works. But you can go over there and enter your Twitter name and get your grade.

My FinanceTude grade last time I checked was 93.

You can find out who the Twitter elite are. Make a Twitter badge to show off your grade.

There's a Tweet button maker.

Check it out. It's a freebie.

This is something many spammers do on Twitter and I really did not understand why until I came across the following article . . . Follow Tactics.

I knew there were people who followed you and then, once you followed back, would drop you. Not completely sure why that was. But some names I would see follow me again and I just ignored them as I had already unfollowed them.

Now my list isn't up with the biggies, so it's pretty easy to go through it and see who unfollowed and simply unfollow them. Yes, I follow some people who do not follow back but only when I feel they have something to teach me.

Read this article if for nothing else, to make sure you don't get caught up in this sort of tactic.

From some of the posts I see, there are too many people worrying about how many followers they have or that they may tweet something that will cause them to lose followers.

Don't! If you have followers that don't like what you say, they are free to unfollow you. Do not take it personally. Twitter is a means for you to keep in touch with friends and followers. The more you have, the more likely it becomes that some followers are going to drop you.

Guess what? You will most likely drop some people you are following as well. Maybe they tweet too much, try to sell too often, or whatever. That's what Twitter is about. My advice is to spend less time worrying about the number of followers yo have and to spend more time enjoying tweeting.

Direct Messages possibly needs a bit of explanation as to what they are if you are new to Twitter.

If you are following someone and they are following you, Direct Messages can be sent that won't appear in the Twitter timeline. They are essentially private messages between two people. If you are an infrequent user of Twitter, it may be worthwhile to switch on receiving notifications by email so you can respond. Otherwise leave it off as it will just fill up your mail box with more clutter. Most are only short advertisements anyway, or auto thank you's for following them.

You can also click on Following to see if anyone you are following has decided to unfollow you. If you see Direct Message under their name, they are following you. If not, they are not. If you followed them because they followed you, you can easily unfollow them at this point.