a twitter sidenote...

Anyone that knows anything about developing a blog following will tell you to find a theme and stick with it. I've never been very good at that and tonight is no different. I'm going on an educational rant about twitter... 

I'm not a twitter expert. I don't have anywhere near the following of anyone who is somebody in twitter terms. On the other hand, I have been on twitter longer than most and was tweeting before anyone was really listening. I've watched it grow and change and I'd like to think I get it. With that said... here are my tips of the trade... some things I think are essential for anyone, but especially for people using twitter for work or to develop a brand. 

1. The period. If I'm following you and you start a tweet with @justinbieber and I don't follow him, your tweet won't show up in my feed. I could still go to your "profile" (twitter.com/username) and see the tweet so it's not really private, but unless I'm checking profiles often (most people don't) I won't read it. That's helpful when you're having a conversation you may not want to broadcast (maybe you don't want me to make fun of you for tweeting Justin Bieber) but if you're trying to get information out, you're missing your audience. I've seen this most often with institutions or teams starting their tweet with a handle and making an announcement. If the Ravens tweet (without quotes) "@raylewis is retiring at the end of the season" only people who follow @raylewis will see the tweet. Of course you hope your audience is already following him, but it can be part of your marketing to get your news out... and his handle so all of the people who aren't following him will see his handle and start following. 

Opportunities: 

- Start your tweet with anything else... "Today @raylewis announced he will retire at the end of the season."

- The big trend now is just to start with a period. ".@raylewis is retiring at the end of the season"

2. Hashtag interruption. I would guess the most common complaint about hashtags would be their length. If I have to read it three times to understand it, it's too long. My biggest hashtag pet peeve is all those hashtags that are interrupted by punctuation. Part of this depends on your intention with a hashtag. Sometimes we just use hashtags to imply sarcasm or some kind of humor. The greater use comes in when you're developing a brand or trying to create community amongst your fans. If I tweet about the Tennessee Lady Vols and use the hashtag #LadyVols I can search for or click on the hashtag in my tweet and see everyone else in the world (with public accounts or people I follow) who has tweeted using that hashtag. Some sports teams have tried using a different hashtag for each game and I think that's asking a lot of your fanbase. I'd recommend keeping it simple. But back to my interrupters... too often I see people use a hashtag like #TexasA&M. As soon as you put the & you're breaking the hashtag. Now you can still search for everyone who has tweeted #TexasA&M, but if you try to click on the hashtag, you're going to find everyone who tweeted the hashtag #TexasA. 

Opportunitities: 

- Keep your hashtags simple. The shorter the better. 

- Don't use punctuation!! 

3. The mute blessing. I use echofon on my iphone to access twitter. As a disclaimer, I've never used the general Twitter app and I haven't tried any other apps, so there might be some advantages to something else, but I'm a huge fan of echofon. The biggest reason... the mute option. I follow more than 300 people/organizations and I'm sure more than half of them are people I've never met. If any of these people tweet ridiculousness I can unfollow them... no harm, no foul. If one of my friends/acquaintances starts tweeting ridiculousness, I don't want to unfollow them and potentially offend them or miss out on something, but I don't want to be brought down by their mess so I can mute them on echofon. Muting allows me to still click on their profile and read their tweets, they don't know their muted, but I'm not depressed by their negativity or repulsed by their vulgarity. Again... no harm, no foul. 

Opportunities: 

- Mute until your heart's content and then find some positive, funny, encouraging people/organizations to follow! 

- My other favorite trick is to block people's retweets. Some people retweet too much or retweet accounts that are offensive or stupid. Most often I block retweets from celebrities who just retweet annoying fans asking for retweets. If you log onto twitter from a computer and go to the account's profile and click the drop down head and shoulders, you can turn off retweets for individual accounts. 

4. Bloggers' replay. This one is just a personal pet peeve that real bloggers would tell you to ignore me, but... I can't stand when bloggers tweet their post more than once. I'm sure the strategy is to make sure you reach your entire audience, but I check my timeline all the time so I see them all... you can't miss me. My biggest frustration is when a blogger tricks me and rewords the teaser in a way that makes me think it's a new post when it's really the same one I read last night. 

Opportunities: 

- Completely ignore me and keep blasting your followers so they read your blog. 

- Tweet your blog post at a time when the majority of your followers are awake and checking their twitter. Friday night at 8 p.m. might not be a good time if everyone's out living life off of social media and Tuesday at 7 a.m. might not be great if everyone's still sleeping and your tweet gets buried when they wake up. 

- I have a ton of respect for those who acknowledge they're posting it again (and keep me from getting faked out :)... "In case you missed it last night, here's my new blog..." or "Here's my latest blog post for the afternoon crowd..."