Your Nisaba's friendly guide to Twitter, part one: the very basics

In which the mere mortal Emma introduces the anatomy of Twitter.

On many occasions I’ve wished I had a blog post to send my Dad or other lovely people to when they’ve asked me what Twitter is all about. I decided to write it myself, but first:

DON’T PANIC

Everything is going to be okay. I’m not going to bamboozle you with jargon, or try and convince you that Twitter is ‘amazingandwhyhaven’tyougot20,000followersalready?’ like some people said to me about two years before I even went near it.

No siree Bob, none of that stuff and nonsense here at Your Nisaba. This is a relaxed, gentle guide for people who:

• Have heard of something called Twitter but not dared go there
• Signed up, spent twenty minutes saying “What the hell is all the fuss about?” and never went back
• Are some days/weeks/months in and still feeling out of their depth
• Are so convinced that Twitter is a complete waste of time they don’t want to risk getting sucked in

That’s all fine. If you’re a twitter expert you can hang out with me in the comments and put me straight if I make a mistake!

Over this series of posts on Twitter, I’ll be covering:

The basic anatomy of Twitter
How to get started
How to find people to follow
Programs that people use to make Twitter easier to interact with
Twitter etiquette
How to get the best experience from Twitter
How Twitter can be useful to your business

So what is Twitter anyway?

Twitter is what many people call a ‘micro-blogging’ service. But ‘micro-blogging’ is just teeny bit too jargony for this post, so let’s take it to plain English:

Twitter is a service that enables people to communicate rapidly with many people at once, in 140 characters or less. In fact, it’s only a sneeze and bless you away from mobile phone texting in terms of text based rapid communication. Instead of your text reaching only one person, on Twitter it can potentially reach thousands all at once.

Ok, so why is that important?

Well, Twitter is one of those things that unless you get into it, it’s hard to appreciate its worth. Let’s take texting again; when texting became available on mobile phones, many people just couldn’t understand why people would text instead of call. Now look at where we are. Millions of text messages sent every day. For now, let’s just assume that Twitter is worth some perseverence, and I’ll explain why later on.

The basic anatomy of Twitter

Before I explain anything about how to use Twitter, let’s get the basic terminology laid out, nice and simple.

Username: Twitter usernames always begin with @ for example mine is @EmApocalyptic

Tweet: A simple message of 140 characters, can be both a noun and a verb. e.g. “Holy Moly, I just sent a tweet” and “Purple squirrels? In Somerset?! I’ve got to tweet about that!”

Followers: People who have actively decided to see your tweets; whenever you type in a tweet and press return, your tweet pops into the place they view tweets.

Following: This is the reverse of followers; the number of people whose tweets you have chosen to see.

Replies: If you want to respond to a particular person, simply put their username at the beginning, e.g. "@EmApocalyptic Purple squirrels? Have you been on the de-caf tea again?"

Re-Tweet: Placing ‘RT’ in front of something someone has tweeted and re-sending it. (Why this matters is covered later in the series) e.g. “RT Purple squirrels? In Somerset?! I’ve got to tweet about that!”

Direct Message: A message sent from one user, to one recipient in private; it isn’t visible to anyone else. Simply place a D in front of the recipient’s name, without the @ e.g. “D EmApocalyptic Seriously though, maybe you need a psychiatrist”

How all of the basics work together

If you send out a tweet, only your followers will see it. And thank goodness, frankly, as there are thousands upon thousands of tweets flying around all the time, so choosing who to watch is a good thing.

If you reply to someone (placing @username in front of your tweet) only that person and anyone else who is following both you and that recipient will see the reply. No-one else will, not even your followers.

I learnt that lesson very well when having a lovely chat with @twitchinggrey back when I was new to Twitter. I was describing the passionate internet crush I had on someone, not realising that he was also following Twitchy. Oh dear. Crush in plain view. It was all innocent stuff I had already said to him, but I still went red!

When you re-tweet something someone else has tweeted, all of your followers will see it.

It gets a little bit more involved when applications such as Tweetdeck and Twhirl are used, but I’ll tackle that in another post.

So that’s the very basic anatomy of Twitter covered. Are you still with me? In the next post I’ll talk you through getting started, and give you some pointers on how to set everything up in such a way that won’t put people off following you. Oh, and if you have any questions about what I’ve covered so far, then please do ask in the comments. I’m here to help make all this stuff easier.

Nisaba be praised. (What’s this about?)

P.S. If you liked this, you will also like Your Nisaba’s Notoriously Nice Newsletter. You get a free guide to generating positive online PR stories too!

Tags: micro-blogging, twitter basics, twitter etiquette

Posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 9:41 pm. Filed under Social Media.