by Richard Bashara

Created on: May 04, 2009

You've probably heard a lot about Twitter, especially if you watch Oprah. So what is this micro blogging thing and how can you use it? Read on to find more than a few things the casual internet browser, as well as the major corporate player can learn from using Twitter.

Twitter allows you to sum up what you are doing. We use the words "sum up" because Twitter only allows you to use 140 characters, including letters, numbers and spaces. The whole point of this amazing tool is to share the various projects and slices of life you find yourself getting mixed up in. We will be talking about the well constructed tweet as well as a few other basics you can utilize by simply getting an account and signing into the service.

A tweet is the action of sending a message via Twitter. Tweets are brief, but you can think of them like a parlor game. This is not the first time these comparisons has been drawn, but imagine a large cocktail party, so large, that it has to be hosted on the internet.

Your tweets are like your way of making conversation with other users. Just like you may want to acquaint yourself with the host of your cocktail party, you may also look for prominent tweeters to follow. Twitter gives you a small selection of these major tweeters when you sign up. If any of them spark your interest, we recommend you follow them.

The follower can view your feed and see what you are doing. You can also follow people you may find interesting. One of the reasons you may follow someone would be for conversation sake. When a user says something, you can respond by replying to them. A @reply signals to Twitter that you are speaking to that user.

Sometimes, parties break up into smaller groups, but you can easily track those groups with Twitter! You can create or join smaller threads by using a hash tag. #Hash tags help track conversations occurring on twitter. You can use the search and trends bar on the right to track multiple trends and see which #conversations are popular. If you ever find yourself at a loss for people to follow, you can always find new followers by jumping into existing #threads.

Since you have such a small space to get your point across, you will want to put some thought into the things you say. We do not care about your bodily functions (in fact we find them gross). Play by plays of your life, and link spamming are also not great tactics.

These are only rough guidelines, but the point is to avoid mundane or disgusting conversation. You wouldn't tell your friends that you had a horrible case of the runs last night, so why would you tell it to Twitter? Twitter is a chance for you to share your interests and find like minded people.

Often times people you follow will not immediately follow back. This can be a difficult problem to overcome if you do not know how to engage the user. Find something that they said that you can comment on and retweet them. RT'ing someone is the action of posting their message for your followers to see. Remember, just because someone is following you, doesn't mean they can see what your other followers are saying.

The trick is to get in and get your hands dirty. You've got to start things off by finding a good group to follow. Once you've developed a firm foundation, use @replies and #hastags to engage in conversation with others and watch your followers grow! It's really amazing to log in one day and have hundreds of followers!

Visit Twitter.com for a helpful video on how the whole thing works.

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