Introduction to Twitter & Twitter Glossary

There are two parts to this Blog Post: The Introduction to Twitter and the Twitter Glossary below it.

Introduction to Twitter

Twitter is a powerful way for you to interact with your constituents through social media. In posts (known as "tweets" by users of twitter) limited to 140 characters or less, your nonprofit organization can keep followers informed of day to day activities, major accomplishments, and ways volunteers can get involved with your mission. Unlike most websites, where information is on a 1-way avenue (from the organization to the consumer), social media tools like Twitter provide a 2-way avenue of communication. An organization can share information with its followers, and vice-versa. Followers can ask questions and provide helpful resources to the organization. And most importantly, the consumers (followers) are listened to in a way that a website feed-back form can't provide.

Twitter should never be used to (only) sell your product(s). Rather, an organization's tweets should engage  with the community of followers like a conversation. Tweeting links to your website is OK. However, there should always be a purpose to the links one tweets. If all you do is try to sell your product, you won't gain many followers, and people will consider your tweets as spam. Avoid the temptation to spam, and tweet (and retweet) responsibly!

After one signs up for a user account, a unique name is chosen by the individual or organization. Identified by the @ sign (for example, our twitter account is @SmoothStoneServ), people can then follow you and communicate with you (when someone puts your username in a tweet, it's known as "mentioning" you).

Twitter can also be used to disseminate information very quickly. A good way to share information about a specific topic is to use a "hashtag" (which is formed with the pound sign, plus the keyword - like this: #keyword). For example, after the recent 5.8 magnitude earthquake in northern Virgina last week, Twitter announced that within 1 minute of the earthquake, 40,000 tweets had been tweeted with the #earthquake hashtag. Twitter is also used extensively among Emergency Management professionals. For example, I (@DavidMWhite) have interacted through Twitter extensively with a group under the the Crisis Commons umbrella to use technology to help with responding to natural disasters.

Because Twitter limits one's tweets to a maximum of 140 characters, each tweet must be concise, helpful, and to the point. As a result, when tweeting or retweeting something, it's common practice to use acronyms. Below are some of the most common Twitter definitions and acronyms:

Twitter Glossary (Terms and Acronyms appear in alphabetical order)

1. Direct Message - This is a private message (limited to 140 characters or less) between the sender and the receiver. No one else can see it.
2. Follow - This is when someone subscribes to a Twitter user's feed. Once they do this, the follower will see all of that author's tweets in the default timeline.
3. Hashtag - A very important way of "tagging" a tweet with 1 or more topics that people can find easily by searching that hashtag. For example tweets about Chattanooga, TN (which is where we are based) are typically tagged with #CHA, or tweets about nonprofit technical topics might be tagged with #nptech.
4. Mention - This is when someone 'mentions' another Twitter user in a tweet.
5. MT @user: (Modified Tweet) - This is used when people repost someone else's original tweet, but modifies it. If you were writing a paper, this would be known as a paraphrase.
6. RT @user: (Retweet) - This is used when people repost someone else's original tweet. It's good to give the original author credit. Just like in your papers and professional reports, don't plagarize!
7. Timeline - A user's "feed" of tweets posted by every other Twitter user that the user follows.
8. Tweet - A Twitter user's post / status update, that is contained in 140 characters or less.

Have questions or comments? Please post them below! And remember to create your user account at http://www.twitter.com and to follow @SmoothStoneServ!