By choice, I'm pretty much always connected. How I don't need glasses is beyond me! But this is where I talk about the discoveries I find while I'm here.

Some aspects of social media can seem a little intimidating. It’s a lot like the first day  of school; everything’s new, there are kids in the hallway using words you’ve never heard before, and you’re just not quite sure who to talk to or where to go. Don’t worry! You’re not alone, and luckily it’s pretty easy to get ramped up.

First Things First—What is Twitter and why should I care?

Twitter isn’t just a cute way for keeping in touch instantly with friends on mobile phones anymore. For some, it has ramped up quickly as their search engine of choice with its human-driven results and filtering. For others it has been a lifeline during times of crisis (e.g., Iran elections, Mumbai hotel attack, etc.)

A plethora of third-party Twitter apps allow you to find friends and customers all over the world with similar interests and keep up with them in real time.

Twitter 101-The Basics

1. Go to Twitter.com and click “Sign up now”
2. Fill out the information and you’re ready to dive in
3. Choose a name that is easy to read and memorable. You may also want to consider the shortest possible version of your name because as you gather a following people will want to pass on your content in the form of a Retweet (RT), which will include your name and thus, eating up some the 140 character count limit.

(You can set up multiple accounts just be aware that you must use a different email account for each username)

So you have a new Twitter account…now what?

1. Decorate your new home. You can customize your page with their free backgrounds or you can create your own. As a business you will want to brand your page but be aware that for a majority of users you will only have a 66px wide column to brand on the left side of the main Twitter content. This usually means that horizontal logos will need to rotate counter-clockwise 90º in order to preserve legibility.
2. Make your mark. Add a photo to distinguish yourself. This may seem menial but this is how most people will come to recognize your Tweets. Do this by going into “settings” which is represented by a person icon at the upper right corner of the page. Select “settings” from the dropdown and then navigate to “Profile.”
3. Start building your network. Find people you know who are already on Twitter and let them know you’ve arrived! At the top of the page click on “Discover.” In the upper left corner take a look at the suggestions from Twitter under “who to follow.” You can also import e-mail lists, contacts, and you can find friends using search.
4. Seek & ye shall find. The best way to build a list of interesting people is to go to the Twitter search engine at search.twitter.com and plug in topics relevant to your audience. This will display Twitter users who have mentioned your search term. From here, you can choose whether or not to follow.

Tweet Speak

This is usually the most intimidating part about Twitter…the lingo. People LOVE to integrate all forms of the word Twitter into new words or actions specific to the site. Like everything else, some people take it too far. (Twitterverse, Twittershpere, Tweeple, Twopic, Twitterati etc.,) A fun list of Twitter words is available for you to enjoy via the website Mashable

For example:
A Tweet is simply a 140-character post. Tweets are the building blocks of Twitter.

Followers are people you choose to keep track of. Many people try to collect as many followers as possible but if you want to have an impact it’s about quality not quantity. Remember, this is a tool people use to communicate.

@ Replies

If you want to send a Tweet (a message) to a particular person just add “@” to the beginning of their username within your Tweet (e.g., @cmortensen, @vodori, etc). Note that when you start a tweet with the “@” symbol only those following you and the other party you are replying to will see your tweet. To give your tweet more exposure re-write the sentence so that the “@username” appears later in the tweet.

For more on @ replies see another post I’ve penned specifically on the topic.

Direct Messages

You can also send private messages to people on Twitter by adding “D” before the username. The only stipulation here is that you both have to be following each other. This helps ward off spammers.

Hashtags

Another great things about Twitter is that you can follow conversations on particular topics by using Hashtags (#). Hashtags are a sort of shorthand best explained with an example. If you are watching a webcast, say from Inbound Marketing University and you want to know what everyone else thinks about the class, simply search using the hashtag #IMU. The “#” symbol always precedes the phrase, which can be either short or long. Some common ones are #SMM- for social media marketing, #fb- for Facebook, #job, #quote, #fail.

To see the most popular hashtags look at http://hashtags.org/

Twitter Tools

Interestingly enough, while the Twitter.com interface has undergone many improvements and increased functionality, most Tweets don’t come from Twitter at all. Instead, they come from third-party applications (aka-clients). There are many to choose from and each one has its perks. A few free examples to begin with for more robust publishing are provided below:

• Publishing
  • TweetDeck
  • Hootsuite
• Simple Twitter data
  • Twitter Counter
  • Tweet Stats
  • Twitter Grader 
  • Twinfluence