TECH POP-UPS

You've heard the entire ruckus about Twitter, but never really got what it was all about. You watch TV every night and see all those words prefaced by You've heard the entire ruckus about Twitter, but never really got what it was all about. You watch TV every night and see all those words prefaced by “#” at the bottom of the screen and can’t figure out why they are there. This post is for you.

Twitter, beloved by the news media, celebrities, sports stars and politicians, is planning to go public with an IPO that cloud raise $1 billion. But in documents filed related to those plans, Twitter disclosed that its audience base is at about 218 million monthly active users. That’s smaller than Facebook’s 1.1 billion or Google+, which has 500 million registered users.

Much of that, analysts say, is because Twitter is a harder nut to crack for many people. So, for today, let’s take a good look at 10 ways to use Twitter effectively:

Head to over www.twitter.com, register and select a screen name. You new Twitter name will be prefaced with an @ sign. Add it to your e-mail signature so people know to find you on Twitter.

Twitter is nothing until you start building a network of folks you is interested in hearing form. Are you a news junkie? Start by getting the news feeds from your favorite news organization, whether that is Express Tribune, CNN, or BBC,. Then go deeper, by following individual reporters as well. Most post not only their own latest updates, but also tidbits and news bites from elsewhere on the Web. Beyond the news, check out your favorite friends, athletes, politicians, musicians, comedians, movie and TV stars. But a word of auction there. Most of the famous folk hire staff to pen their posts, known as tweets.

Let people know about you, with a short, one sentence blurb about yourself, whether that be that you are the CEO of My Company, sales associate for MyRealEstate or a Seattle mom with thoughts on hauling kids. And be sure to include a photo a photo, because a photo is associated with your posts in the Twitter feed.

If you don’t ass the photo, an image of a little egg in a yellow box will show up in your tweets instead.

The art of tweeting requires the ability to be concise. Everything you say needs to be in 140 characters or less – no exceptions. So you need to shorten words with slang, “sez” for “says,” “2” for “two” “w/” for “with”, “+”, for “and”.

The hashtag symbol - # - is what’s used to search for “trending” topics, whether that be “#governmentshutdown” or “#meteorwatch” or simply, “#JustinBieber”. It’s a tool to help you find what you’re looking for on Twitter, and has since been adopted by Facbook as well.

RT and MT. Rule NO. 1 of the successful tweeter in that it’s all about you. It’s good to use Twitter to promote whatever you’re working on, but Twitter works best when you can tip articles from around the Web to your follower. You can do that with a straight link, or retweeting others (essentially, re-posting someone else’s tweet - signified by an “RT”). The MT, or modified tweet, is when you copy and paste a link that somebody else posted, and comment on it as well. Share well, and you will get more followers.

Many businesses are now all over Twitter to monitor what people are saying about them. You might have better lucj getting companies like Verizon to respond for a rep on the phone. Hotels, restaurants, airlines will see what you post, and respond in kind.

It’s easy to pair your Twitter activity with your Facebook account, so you don’t have to double the effort. Just go to Settings (the gears tab on the right) and go to the Profile section to add Facebook.

On Twitter you can communicate directly in private messages, but only with folks who already follow you. So be sure to follow your friends you want to DM with, and get them to respond in kind.

Text and a link are great, but let’s face it, everything looks better with visuals. The images show up as link, but they’re worth adding

  at the bottom of the screen and can’t figure out why they are there. This post is for you.