Why Twitter Deserves Your Attention

Joining the Conversation

Once you find people on Twitter who share your interests, the next step is to start to interact with them, either directly or indirectly. The most basic form of interaction is the simple “retweet.”

When you see a post that you think your followers would benefit from seeing, you can retweet it, either by clicking on the retweet button inside the tweet or by writing the letters RT in the beginning and posting it again. That serves as a virtual endorsement of the message and lets your followers know that you support it.

The more you retweet other people, the more likely they will be to return the favor, allowing you to reach their followers as well as your own.

If you find someone you want to communicate with directly, you can send him or her a direct message. Direct messages are only permitted between people who follow each other. When you send a direct message, only the recipient of the message will be able to see it.

A more social form of communication is known as the @message. It is a public message directed at a particular Twitter user. If someone wants to message HonestReporting in a public way, he or she can start the message by writing @Honestreporting. HR would then be alerted about the message through email, and it would show up in the “mentions” section of Twitter.

You can open a dialogue with someone though the @message or you can reply to someone’s tweet. When you use the reply function, Twitter automatically starts the tweet with an @messsage directed at the person you are replying to, letting him or her know about the reply.

There are many more abbreviations you might find in an average tweet, along with shortened spellings of words so that the largest number can fit in within the 140 characters. Here is a list of the most common abbreviations.

You may also like: Social Media in a Nutshell – Part Two: Facebook

A Good Review of the Basic Principles 

As with most things on the Internet, any questions that come up while using Twitter can usually be answered by doing a Google search of the issue. It is also relatively easy to find Twitter tutorials on YouTube.

While there are many others, the video below does an excellent job pointing out the basic principles of Twitter while showing you the site itself. It is definitely worth a few minutes before getting started.

And when you do get started, don’t forget to follow HonestReporting and Media Backspin, the Twitter account associated with HR’s daily blog. And let us know you joined. We’d love to hear from you.

So head to www.twitter.com,  go an open up your Twitter account right now and start tweeting for Israel!