The Buzz Bin

Photo courtesy of dearbarbie

By Jenn Riggle

The end of the year is a good time for reflection. And since Christmas Eve marks my one year anniversary on Twitter, I thought I’d write about the tips and tricks I’ve learned about the social network over the past year:

Three is a Magic Number: Like exercise, walking your dog and drinking water, it takes time to add anything new to your already busy schedule. That’s why it’s important to make a concerted effort to tweet at least three times a day during the week. To do this, I’ve created a tweet schedule: 1) send out my first tweet early in the morning when I’m checking my e-mail and catching up on the morning’s news; 2) send out a second tweet during lunch, when I’m reading list serves that populate my e-mail box; 3) send out a third tweet sometime during the day, whether it’s an observation, conversational tweet or another article that interests me. Granted there are days when I tweet more than three times, but by scheduling tweets into my day, I don’t go days without tweeting, even when work and life get crazy.

The Power of Hashtags: A hashtag is any word in Twitter that is immediately preceded by the ‘#’ symbol (a.k.a the hash). By using a hashtag, you’re signaling that you want people to find your tweet and associate it with other tweets with the same hashtag. While this may seem esoteric, hashtags are a great way to target your tweets so they reach a specific audience. For example, #hcsm is the hashtag for healthcare communications and social media, an active community of healthcare marketing folks who meet every Sunday night from 9-10 p.m. Eastern. By adding the hashtag to your tweet, you mark it as being something that would interest this group. The same is true if you mark your tweet with #social media or #parenting – you’re labeling your tweet as something that will interest people who follow these topics.

Direct Messages Are More Than Spam: For a long time, I thought Direct Messages (DMs) were just the annoying automated messages people sent to thank people for following them. However, recently I learned that while Twitter is all about conversation, there’s a second level of conversation happening behind the curtain. If you follow someone (and they follow you) you can send direct messages to each other. This is a great way to send personal message to friends, pitch a story idea to a reporter (provided they follow you) or have a side conversation during a seminar where people are “live-tweeting.” It’s amazing the snarky comments and giggling going on behind the scenes.

Sharing Is A Good Thing: You’ve probably watched the Verizon commercial that shows teens telling their parents they’re frustrated that their mom writes “I love you” all over their Facebook wall and their dad tweets about sitting on the porch. And while status updates are fine, they can make a boring Twitter stream. Instead, it’s more interesting to use Twitter as a way to share interesting articles, observations or engage in conversation with colleagues. I’m a news junkie who loves to stay on top of the latest news. There’s no way I can possibly read everything, so I use Twitter as a way to supplement my reading and find articles I wouldn’t find otherwise. And by the same token, I share articles I find interesting with my followers.

Why It’s Important to Retweet: Social media is all about listening. And retweeting is a great way to show you’re reading what other people are saying and find it worthy of sharing. Don’t feel bad that you didn’t find the article first – simply put a RT before the person’s Twitter handle (i.e. RT @riggrl) either before or after the tweet so you can share information with your followers, while at the same time acknowledge the person who sent the tweet. It’s great to see people share your tweets, so be sure to do the same for others. It’s also a great way to begin to form a relationship with other people on Twitter.

Sometimes You Don’t Have Anything Clever To Say: And that’s okay. I’m not sure how coherent I am at 5 a.m. But if you work in PR and marketing, chances are, you spend a lot of time reading. That’s why I love sharing news stories with others. Or it’s another great reason to retweet someone else’s comment or tweet. Or maybe you can dust off your copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and find an interesting quote that is relevant or thought-provoking.

TweetDeck Can Change Your Life: Until I started using TweetDeck, it was nearly impossible for me to track conversation about topics that interest me or see what my friends were tweeting. TweetDeck has made Twitter more manageable, allowing me to create lists of people who I think are interesting and follow hashtags so I can see what’s being said about an issue. Now I feel like I’m managing my Twitter usage, rather than the other way around. I imagine there will be a new paradigm shift once it’s easier for people to follow the public lists people have created and I’m excited about that prospect.

Manners Are Important, But You Don’t Have To Thank People for RTs: There are a lot of people who thank people for retweeting their messages. And while this helps to add content to your Twitter stream (and hopefully attract more followers), some people view it as spam. I read an interesting article by Valerie Merahn Simon that said that people RT information because it teaches them something or provides interesting perspective and that they are sharing the information because it provides value, not as a favor – so people shouldn’t feel compelled to thank others for RTs.

Do you have any other Twitter tips and tricks or words of wisdom? I’d love to hear them.