Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Twitter 101: An Experience

My dear friends. I have been terribly occupied the past several weeks. Where does the time go? I'll let you know when I find out.

It brings me great joy to be able to sit down in front of the typing machine and share the thrilling adventure I have undertaken between now and my previous posting here. A local community college offers a four-week night class that gives you all the tools you need to be a better Twitter writer. Tweeter. Tweet maker. All of the above.

And because I like all of you so much, I'm going to give away some of these tips and tricks to my precious readership. The only cost of admission is a few minutes of your time, and the patience to stay focused -- my writing can get a little off-topic from time to time!

Tip #1: HASHTAGS AND WHEN TO USE THEM

Hashtags are like bacon smothered in honey. I can't get enough of them. The more you use, the more likely it is that someone else will #search and #find your #tweet.

My goal is to have 10,000 followers (at least), and I am absolutely certain that the more hashtags I can jam into my tweets, the more followers I will obtain.

Because people search for words and letters using the hashtag, it's imperative that every tweet contain at LEAST one hashtag. I'm going to make it a personal goal to use at least eight per tweet.

BONUS TIP: Use hashtags to spruce up and add a little color to what some might perceive as an otherwise mundane collection of words.

I can't think of a more fun and cute way to tell everyone you're a little sleepy today.

DOUBLE BONUS TIP: Use hashtags to comment on your tweet -- in the same tweet!


Astute readers may think these bonus tips are mere copies of each other. Please re-read the bonus tips repeatedly until you see the difference. Do not move to the next section until you've reached that conclusion. I'm watching you.

Tip #2: A LITTLE TRICK TO MAKE YOUR TWEETS INTERESTING

I cannot believe I didn't think of this myself, but there is a very subtle way to make your tweets more interesting and catchy than the usual boring business that you see out there from a lot of common folk.

The trick here is to use hyperbole as often as possible:

Obviously, there are some things that are better than getting the card you want on your first thumb into the library card drawers, but on Twitter, you're in it to win it (my high school track coach once told me that). Everything is the best thing ever, at least at that moment.

Tip #3: RETWEETS AND FAVORITES

Retweets are easy. Just hit the button that looks like a square-shaped recycle bin symbol.

But you can do better than that! Thanks to TweetDeck (a handy Twitter client), you can do more than just retweet something.

When hitting the retweet button in TweetDeck, you are presented with the option to "Edit & RT." Do not pass up this option to edit, and insert in some fun commentary:

And then there's the favorite button. I don't like this part of Twitter. I'm either in love with it, or I don't care. Using the favorite button is somewhere in a grey area between those two places, and I'm not interested in visiting.

Here's a great example on why you should avoid the favorite button. Let's take a look at the Miami Herald reporting an incident in Tampa today:

Why are people (39 as I post this) calling this a favorite of theirs? I will block these users when I figure out how to do that.

Anyways. My Twitter usage is going to see a real spike over the next few weeks. I will come back sometime in January with a report on how many Twitter followers I have gained since today. Right now I only have one. Look out, guys!
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