Twitter: A Beginner's Guide - Part 2

In Twitter: A Beginner's Guide - Part 1 we looked at what Twitter is in a non-technical sense and touched on some of the terminology associated with the use of a Twitter account. In particular, we looked at the hashtag and the mention and what these terms mean in a practical sense. In Part 2 I will talk about some of the other basic terms including the reply and the retweet.

So before we start building a following, and perhaps even a fanbase, let's get to it!

The Reply

In Part 1 we ended off by talking about the mention (@mention) which, in summary, is when somebody's twitter account is referenced within the body of a tweet using their username preceded by the @ symbol. In terms of how you will use the reply we are concerned only with a tweet that contains a mention that specifically mentions YOU (eg. "this is a tweet with a reference to @you").

You could be mentioned in a tweet by one of your friends wanting to ask you about something or it could be somebody wanting to make a reference to you regarding whatever it is they are tweeting about. Whatever the case, a mention is good thing! As the saying goes: "There's no bad publicity", and basically a mention can be seen as personal publicity. But more of that in part 3...

So what do I do when I receive a mention? This is where you would reply... By replying you are automatically mentioning the twitter account that mentioned you in your reply and this would then appear as a mention on their account where they would, in turn, be seeing the tweet as a mention. So basically it is a method of communicating directly at somebody (this is what we do nowadays ie. we don't communicate with someone anymore...) and making them explicitly aware of that fact. You could mention more than one person in a tweet, in fact as many as your 140 character limit would allow. So get to it! Make a few mentions of your friends or a stranger (@youngdaemon)...

The Retweet (RT)

So what is a retweet? Well, in its basic form a retweet is when somebody sees a tweet they like and then retweets it to appear as one of the tweets on their Twitter account. Twitter keeps track of how many times a tweet has been retweeted so if a tweet is, perhaps, regarding some popular event, a famous quote or something funny, then many more people might be inclined to retweet it. For example, I might tweet the following: "Busy learning some new things about twitter", and you might decide to retweet it as you are currently doing the same. The retweet would then appear as follows: "RT @youngdaemon: Busy learning some new things about twitter". Notice the use of the RT (retweet) tag and then the mention to credit myself as the origin of the tweet.

What would be the reasons for retweeting (RTing) a tweet? As you might have noticed the first and most essential reason would be to retweet something that you would want to share with all your followers. In the aforementioned case, the fact that you're learning new things about twitter. Or maybe it was a tweet about a news item you are following or an inspirational quote that you would like to pass on.

Another, even more important, reason would be to retweet about something and add your comments to the tweet. Essentially adding value to the tweet or just to put your stamp on that tweet as you share it with your followers. But, how do I do that? You might ask. Simple! When retweeting you have the option to retweet including comments or excluding them, keeping in mind that the tweet is still limited to 140 characters. So, for example, it could go something like this: "Busy learning some new things about twitter", "RT @youngdaemon: Busy learning some new things about twitter. Great tutorial guys, go check it out!".

In summary, we have spoken about mentions, hashtags, replies and retweets. These are the terms that make up the backbone of Twitter.Get to grips with these and you will be well on your way in the Twitterverse!

In Twitter: A Beginner's Guide - Part 3 we will look at how to gain followers and now that I have the basics, what next?