Twitter for Beginners - Part Four

We're so close. Next topic, easy search columns in Tweetdeck. There is a + at the top of Tweetdeck, click that and you can add a 'lists' column (we covered lists in part two), or connect with your Facebook/Myspace/LinkedIn account, or you can search for a keyword(s). Here I have searched for RWC (as Rugby World Cup is one of those things that has rubbed me up the wrong way lately):

Which then creates a new column with ALL tweets which have RWC in them. As you can see below, there is mention to ANZ being a major sponsor and comment on the Jeremy Wells ad; using the search term you can monitor what is being said out in the Twittershere - this is particularly handy if you are running Twitter on behalf of a company - and you can find out who is talking about your brand/whatever it is you are looking for, outside of just the people you are following.If however you are looking after an international brand within NZ, use Twitter Search 'advanced search' on the Internet to do a localised search. It isn't fool proof, but will capture the bulk of NZ Tweets. Just centre your search around an NZ town. For example, what if you were McDonalds?This way you can see what people who (when they signed up to Twitter) classify themselves as being in NZ are saying about McDonalds:

Nothing is 100%, but it's better than nothing.

OK - so finally, why does anyone want to know what you had for lunch? Twitter is all about sharing. Sharing thoughts, information, recommendations and (frequently) complaints. If you've had an amazing lunch, Twitter is an easy place to recommend a cafe or restaurant. Similarly, if you have experienced bad service or food it is an easy warning/venting system - and if the restaurant/cafe is paying attention, then they can address the issue, or thank a twitterer for their compliments.

Twitter is all about listening, sharing, networking and communicating with other people - and the brilliant thing, is that it gives you access to a world of people you may never have had the opportunity to converse with previously.

If there is anything I haven't covered that you want to know about, or something that needs further clarification, please don't hesitate to comment or flick me an email. I can't promise that I will be able to answer your question, but I might be able to find someone who does on Twitter.

Now, go forth and Tweet.

Twitter for Beginners - Part Three

Sorry for the delay, but here we go... part three. At the end of part two I said that this was going to "cover tweeting photos, short URLs, Retweets, searches and I will tell you why people do want to know what you had for lunch..." so that is what I am going to do over part three, and part four.

The nice thing about Tweetdeck, I can't promise the other Twitter clients do all the same things, is that it makes Tweeting photos, shortening URLs, Retweeting and searches easy as pie.

First things first, photos. There are lots of different sites which will store your pics and publish them to twitter, I use yfrog but there is also twitpic and tweetphoto, (take your pic - ha ha ha) which allows you to take photos on via phone and upload them or upload straight from a laptop. Within Tweetdeck you can simply drag and drop the pic into the 'compose update' field and within the settings function you can choose which pic client you want to use, after that, it's all automatic.

So the above is a picture that I took today whilst walking up Queen Street, I think the window is going to look great, but I will be interested to see how many of the post it notes last the night...

So I twittered the picture, and one of the people that followed me decided that they wanted to share the picture too, so they Retweeted it (RT). In this instance they commented before they retweeted my tweet:

Twitterers have the option to comment on what they are retweeting or directly retweet it as per:The above is what I see in the web version when someone automatically RT's my tweet. In tweetdeck it looks something like:

However this will not come through in my mentions - which means to find out who has retweeted without editing, you do need to use the web version - unless someone else can shed light on this for me??

Retweeting is a nice way to share information which you find interesting with the people that follow you. Similarly, if your followers find your information interesting, they will share it. If for some reason you want people to retweet you - for example you write a blog, or are using Twitter on behalf of a company and want the information to reach further than just your followers - for the LOVE of all things good please work out how many characters 'RT +@(your)username' takes up and make sure that when you compose that tweet, anyone who wants to RT it doesn't have edit it down before they do so - you gotta make it easy for them.

In Tweetdeck, if you want to RT something - click on the forward direction arrow when you mouse over the users avatar.

If you are including a link but the URL is super dooper long, there is a way around that as well. Tweetdeck again, being the clever little client that it is, automatically shortens your URL for you (but also gives you the option to unshorten it if you want the URL specifically). However, if for some reason you are using the web to tweet and need to get that URL down, then use bit.ly or tinyurl.com to help you shorten that URL. For example, the URL to my blog post for Part Two was super long, but bit.ly shortens it right down:

LOTS of characters to not nearly as many characters. Awesome times.

OK, I think that is enough for one blog post. We're so close... there is just search to go.

Twitter for Beginners - Part Two

So, following Twitter for Beginners - Part one I'm moving onto part two...

One of the many things I like about Twitter is that we're all still learning and over the last year or so, a number of companies have proved this by doing some questionable things on Twitter. My favourite (which I had to add my 2 cents to) was Super Liquor's Twt4Turkey campaign which I think was flawed, and which they refused to apologise for, they simply kept making excuses.

Thing is, because we're all still learning, the Twitter community is quite forgiving. Put your hand up, admit the mistake and move on. For example, yesterday, writing my blog about Twitter I was corrected on one of the terms I used - so I corrected my post; I acknowledged I was wrong and moved on.

The nice thing about making mistakes, it means your learning.

So, how to interact with Twitter in a way that will make it as easy as possible to include Twitter into your life.

Don't use the web to run Twitter. Use a Twitter client. There are lots of Twitter clients that you can use: Seesmic, Chromed Bird (to run on Chrome), Brizzly, and many more no doubt, but my favourite is Tweetdeck.

So when you first download Tweetdeck and connect your account, you are going to see 3 or so columns: 'All Friends', 'Mentions' and 'Direct Messages'. All friends is your feed of all the people that you follow, mentions are when another Twitterer is talking to, similarly with direct messages.

Quick side note on using Twitter:

People can talk directly to you. An @ reply (this is when you use an @ symbol directly in front of a username without a space) is a conversation between one (or many) Twitterer/s and you. Please be aware that if you @ reply to someone, any of your followers who follow both you and the person you're talking to, will get your conversation in their Twitter feed. If you want the conversation to remain private, use a direct message.

EDIT (3/5): If you want to @ reply someone when in Tweetdeck, mouse over their avatar (the picture) and click on the curved arrow - it will automatically put the @username in the text field. Sorry - that was probably an important piece of information I left out. Similarly, for a direct message, when hovering over the avatar, click on the icon that looks like an envelope. This will have a D in front of the username.

So this is what my tweetdeck looks like:

The 2 right hand columns show the way I filter Twitter. When you start to follow a large number of people the tweets can come thick and fast, so you need a way to make sure that you see information that is relevant to you without having to read every single tweet that comes through. So you set up lists:

So I have public lists nz-digital and nz-adagency. Anyone can follow these lists. The other lists, are just for me. There is a grab a seat list (so that i can get immediate notification of grabaseat deals) friends list (for Twitterers that I know personally) then the rest of my lists are separated by topic, food & drink, fashion & magazines and music. These allow me to get a snap shot of what is happening rather than searching for information.

It all looks a little like this:

And within the settings function you can decide what kind of alerts you receive from tweetdeck as per below:

This means that when I get a 'mention', 'direct message' or someone from my 'friends' list tweets - I get a detail notification box:

For all other tweets, I get a summary:

It lets me know at a glance what is coming through and can alert me to things I might want to look at more closely.

Personally, I think that a Twitter client is the only way to absorb and utilise Twitter efficiently. People often ask "how do you have time for Twitter" but the thing is, once this is all set up, I would estimate Twitter takes up less than half an hour out of my entire day. That includes checking Twidroid on my phone on the way to work, whilst at work - which includes checking my search lists (will cover this in part three) - and once I get home. Really, honestly, not that much time.

Right, so I have covered setting up an account and how to use a Twitter client to make Twitter easier, part three I will cover off tweeting photos, short URLs, Retweets, searches and I will tell you why people do want to know what you had for lunch...

Twitter for Beginners - Part One

So I am a bit of a Twitter fiend. I love Twitter, I think it is a phenomenal tool for learning, sharing information, networking, crowd sourcing, news gathering, venting, solving problems, showing appreciation. I use Twitter for so many different purposes, that I often find it hard to explain to people the point of Twitter. I get in a bit of a jumble and tend to not explain it very well.

This way I get to edit, so here's hoping that it goes a little better. Please be aware however, you are going to have to read all parts to this to understand fully why I love Twitter and how you can utilise it best. I'm not sure if it is going to be 2 or 3 part... We'll see how much I can cover off.

So Twitter is classified as a micro-blogging tool. 140 characters to get out what you have to say. In the text message age we live in, this is actually not a hard thing - we're accustomed to abbreviating and finding new ways to express ourselves these days.

So, you set up a Twitter account. Then what? What I hear more than anything else from new twitterers is "no one wants to know what I had for lunch" but actually, they couldn't be more wrong. I promise I will explain why, later. In the meantime, let's say, no, they don't. So what is the point.

Like many things (including Facebook) Twitter is something that takes a little time to get into. At first you feel like a bit of a dick, following people, when you have no followers, and you have to hunt them out, it is all a little overwhelming. Where do you start?

Step 1: Set up your account. You don't need to use your real name in your user name, but I would highly recommend using it when setting up your account. When followed by some random username and fullname which is not recognisable, I pretty much ignore them and don't even bother looking to see what they have to say, which means no returned follow. Because of the number of spam accounts out there, anything that makes you personable (as that is what Twitter is about, having conversations with other real people) helps to build your followers which gives you people to start having conversations with.

I would also recommend that you put actual information about yourself in the bio area (don't use mine as a reference) and utilise the option of including a website if you have a blog or in fact your own site.

Next issue, who to follow? Well, here's the thing. Most people jump on Twitter because someone they know is on Twitter.

Step 2: Find the people who you know are already on Twitter:

Step 3: Once you find them, check out who they are following. If you know them there is a likelihood that they are following other people that you know, or may have heard of. Check under 'following' on the right hand side:

Step 4: If they're a pain in the arse like me who follows like 550 odd people, then see if they have utilised the 'lists' function on Twitter. I find that this is the most underestimated tool on Twitter. What a user can do is create their own list of followers and even people they do not follow and categorize them. In this instance, I have a list titled 'nz-adagency' where I have listed people I follow, and a few others as being in the agency world in NZ:

Say you are also in the agency world, this list would potentially be of interest to you, and you could either follow the list, or all the people on the list.

OK. So, hopefully after those 4 steps you can set up an account and start making your way around Twitter a little. I would suggest sending 1 tweet which does acknowledge that you're just getting started so that when people check you out it gives them hope that there will be more to come.

The next most important thing to do on Twitter as far as I'm concerned, is to download an API so that you don't have constantly log into Twitter on the web (and constantly refresh the page) it is a waste of time and you can make it work for you much better.

I am going to cover APIs and the ways you can use them to make your Twitter experience more seamless in Part Two. I promise that Part Two will be up this week. I'm aiming for tomorrow, but no guarantees.

EDIT: In case you are RSS'ing this and haven't read the comments - apparently I don't mean API, I mean a Twitter client. So, tomorrow - or today - Twitter clients. Yay!

Monica-technological-term-understanding-fail.