Tag Archives: Twitter

Twitter, Twitter Basics

Mastering Twitter – of hashtags and @ symbols

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Twitter Week continues with an explanation of the various icons and short forms you’ll encounter there. Off we go!

What’s this @ thingy? Twitter is based on both single tweets and directed tweets. If you want to send a tweet to another Twitter user, you direct it ‘at’ or @ them. When you first sign up, you get to make up your very own ‘@’ name. There are millions of variations, some of which use the person’s real name, while others highlight a person’s interest or company name. An example of this would be ‘@HomeDepot’. This is a real Twitter account used by Home Depot in the U.S. If we wanted to send a message or mention something about Home Depot in a tweet, we would type something like: ‘Wow, there are some really good flooring deals @HomeDepot!’ or ‘@HomeDepot has some excellent prices on lawn seed!’. You can, of course, send a message like this: ‘Customer service sucks when you shop @HomeDepot’.  If you tweet something like this, Home Depot will probably respond, asking you what the problem is.

 

Hashtags: If you’ve just started using Twitter, you’ve missed the heyday of the ‘hashtag’. When Twitter first started out, these tags were very popular. Now, since everyone and their dog started using them to highlight tweets, speeches, even Facebook statuses, they’ve fallen by the wayside. Sure, you’ll still see them but twitter experts don’t use them very much at all now. Facebook, a late-adopter, has started allowing them but, as usual, Facebook is a bit too late.

So what were hashtags used for? In the Twitter stream of babble, hashtags were a way to group tweets together. Let’s say George Clooney finally gets married. Tweets about this could be grouped by hashtags that read:#clooney or #clooneyhitched or #hellfreezesover, things like that. (The last one was a joke, by the way.)  Anyone who wants to join in this ‘George Clooney gets married’ conversation would use whichever hashtag was trending at that particular point in time. Remember trending? That’s when something becomes popular on Twitter. Different things trend in different areas. In the U.S., #clooneyhitched might be trending but not in London or Moscow.

As far as hashtags go, you can make up your own, hoping that someone will pick up on it, or you can see what trending in your area and add to the conversation.

Here are the hashtags and topics that are trending in Paris at the time this post was written:

Photo of Trending in Paris
Some topics have hashtags, others don’t.

Trending: Popular topics, trends, are a way to keep up with the cutting edge on Twitter. Trends can change almost instantly, much like the wind. If you thought your local news team was fast, Twitter is much faster. As a matter of fact, news teams all over the world get their feeds from Twitter now, hoping to catch the big stories ahead of everyone else.

Here’s how to find out what’s trending on Twitter. See the photo above this? Click on the word Change to bring up this menu:

Photo of Trend Menu 1
Click ‘Select your location’ and see what’s popular in your part of the world.

Just as you can follow your favorite celebrities, you can also check out what’s popular or trending in other parts of the world. During the Arab Spring, Twitter was the main source of information during that turbulent time in the Middle East.

Putting it all together: Now that you know about hashtags ,@ symbols and trending, why not do some research to find a trend in your area? If you’re brave enough, use a hashtag to add your two cents worth to the conversation. Lastly, if you have nerves of steel, find an account and direct a tweet at them. No worries here, if the person is very popular, they probably won’t even read your tweet. Then again, if your tweet is witty enough, maybe they will ‘retweet’ your tweet. More on that tomorrow. For now, get started with your homework.

Thanks for reading! Keep up to date with all of our posts and tech tips by Liking us on Facebook. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook 

Biggest Twitter No-no, Twitter

The Kiss of Death on Twitter

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If you use Twitter, here’s how to lose followers. It’s easy, foolproof and quick. OK, we’re being sarcastic but, believe us, if you do this kind of thing, you’ll lose followers quickly. One of our most trusted ‘followees’ on Twitter has recently started using this technique. Yes, we’ve complained to him but to no avail. We haven’t ‘unfollowed’ this person but we don’t click on his links now. His politics matched our politics too!

If we post a link on Twitter, it’s either to an article that we’ve written or to something that someone else has written or photographed. That’s obvious, right? We don’t post links to anything unless it  takes you directly to whatever it is that we want to share.

The problem comes up when a Twitter user creates an intermediate site. Instead of simply sharing their own posts, they steal a headline from another site, post it on their site and link to the original post. On Twitter, they tweet the link to their site, forcing you to go there first. Of course, they get the benefit of your visit while wasting your time. It’s a cheap, smarmy way to drive up numbers on their site. This is how it works:

Here’s an example of a tweet:

Photo of Cheat 1
You can’t see where the link takes you.

 

This is a standard tweet, a few words describing the subject, followed by a link. If you don’t know about that link,http://bit.ly,  it’s one that has been shortened by the bit.ly website  in order to take up fewer letters on Twitter.

Now, the problem is that you, the user, can’t see where that link leads. Since the words “New York Times (blog)” is mentioned, you’d assume that the link takes you to the New York Times, wouldn’t you? Sadly, it doesn’t. This link takes you to the user’s site first, then, if you’re not too ticked off at being misled, you can head over to the real, original site, in this case The New York Times. Here’s where the link goes:

 

Photo of Cheat 2
Does this look like the New York Times?

 

This is the user’s site, not the New York Times. You’ve been hoodwinked into driving up the user’s numbers by simply following a link that looks like it leads to the New York Times. To us, this is no different than spam. On Twitter, you have to take care of your followers. You should never mislead them, trick them or, in this case, obviously try to deceive them. To us, it’s the kiss of death.

TIP: Twitter uses its own link shortening tool. Unlike bit.ly, Twitter’s link shortener does not mask the name of the site. From the photo above, can you tell where the link leads? No. If this user had used the Twitter tool to shorten the link, you would easily see that it does not lead you to the New York Times. Is this an accident? Again, no. The user knows exactly what he is doing. His intent is to hide the fact that you are going to his site first. He’s wasting your time.

Consider this a rant but also consider how your time is being wasted when this happens to you.  Help us all by not clicking on misleading links like this. Every time you click, you’re helping to perpetuate this kind of activity. We’re going to lobby Twitter to ban users who do this kind of thing. Twitter is very good about enforcing its anti-spam policies. Let’s see if we can get them to ban this stuff, too.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Biggest Twitter No-no, Twitter

Biggest Twitter No-no – do this and you’ll lose followers

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We love Twitter! We really do but there is one big Twitter no-no that bugs us more than any other. Read on to find out what it is. Trust us, if you do this one thing, you will lose followers.

Let’s say you have a website, something like this one. You decide to Tweet links to the site. We do that here at Computers Made Simple. We don’t tweet for every post we add but we do for most of them. We tweet links to this site, to a post that offers information that is helpful. That makes sense, right? Let’s see what some unscrupulous people do.

1. This Twitter account tweets links. Here are some examples:

Photo of Twitter links
See the links that are in each tweet? Let’s find out where they lead.

 

2. You would think that these links might lead to the site that has the information on the story that the tweet is about. Wrong!

Photo of tweet site
The link in the tweet leads to the poster’s site with yet another link to the content mentioned in the tweet.

 

How frustrating is that? You click on the link in the tweet, thinking that it leads directly to the story described in the tweet. Instead, you are lead to the site owned by the Twitter account which posted the tweet. You have to click on the words ‘View Story’  to get to the information referenced in the tweet. The posting profile gets hits on their site but your time is wasted. See the ads? They are all over the place. We’re surprised that Google and Twitter allow this kind of activity but it seems that they do.

If you’re going to tweet links, make sure that they are direct links to the information you mention in the tweet. Don’t aggravate your followers by wasting their time like this.

Thanks for reading!

Hootsuite, Schedule Tweets, Twitter

Schedule a Tweet in Hootsuite

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One thing you can’t do on the main Twitter page is schedule a Tweet for a later date. If you’re going to be away for the weekend or head out on a holiday and you still want to maintain your Twitter presence, make sure you get Hootsuite in order to schedule Tweets for when you’re away. You can also schedule Tweets to be sent when you’re asleep, too. Here’s how to do it:

1. Look up at the top for the icon that looks like a calendar. Click it.

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 1
Look on the top for the calendar icon.

2. There are about seven things to do in this menu.

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 2
This is the menu that pops up. Everything you need is here.

3. Type your Tweet in the space provided, where we have typed ‘The tweet goes up here’.

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 3
Type your Tweet in the window as we have done.

 

4. Check the ‘Email me when the message is sent’, click on the month and date and, lastly, the time you want it sent. They say that the best times are between 3 and 5 PM Eastern time if you want to hit the big eastern North America market but this is only important if you’re trying to build up a business presence on Twitter.

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 4
Date, email confirmation, etc. It’s all here.

 

5. Finally, make sure you check that all the circled areas are filled out. If you want to insert a link, Hootsuite will shorten it up for you, just insert it in the box provided. Make sure you choose which account you want to send the Tweet from as well as which month and which date then decide on AM or PM, according to where you are in the world. Here’s a reminder of which things to fill out:

Photo of how to Schedule a Tweet 5
Circled areas are important to make decisions about.

 

6. Once you’ve completed your entry, click on the Schedule button to actually schedule the Tweet. You will want to create a new stream of scheduled Tweets in one of your tabs for the particular account you’re Tweeting from. Once you do that, you can see your scheduled Tweets and edit them, if necessary.

Thanks for reading!

Add streams, Hootsuite, Twitter

Hide Tweets in Hootsuite

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We’ve been using Slipstream, available here: Slipstream , to hide some user’s tweets on the main Twitter site. Now that we’ve switched to Hootsuite, we had to figure out a way to hide some of the endless tweeters that we follow. Yes, we could simply ‘unfollow’ those people but most of them are average users who took the effort to follow us. We don’t feel right about unfollowing them but we don’t want to read all of their tweets, either. Here’s how we did it.

1. Obviously you have to have a Twitter account and be using Hootsuite, right? In this example, you should probably have made some lists in Twitter. Here’s how to make a list in Twitter: Lists in Twitter .

2. If you don’t follow many accounts on Twitter, make one list for everyone but the person(s) you want to hide. Name that list ‘regulars’ or something similar. On Hootsuite, these accounts will still show up on your Home stream but we’ll show you how to add your other streams to the main panel.

3. Your main Hootsuite window looks like this before you add any streams:

Photo of Hootsuite main panel
No tabs? You won’t see anything here until you add a social account and a stream.

 

4. When you want to actually see something in the panel, click the + sign up at the top, choose your social network and then add a stream. Hootsuite has some default streams as you can see here:

Photo of Hootsuite default streams.
There are the default Twitter streams. ‘Home’ is every tweet from everyone you follow.

 

5. If you have some lists set up, choose the fourth tab from the left. Choose the ‘Regular’ list that you created in Twitter and click ‘Create Stream’. Here are some lists on one of our accounts:

Photo of Hootsuite lists.
You will see your lists on the lists tab.

 

6. Once you add some streams, this is what your Hootsuite main panel will look like:

Photo of populated Hootsuite main panel.
Streams are on tabs. A tab is just a set of streams.

 

7. A tab is a full panel on Hootsuite. It can be made up of several streams from one social network account or streams from different social network accounts. In the photo above, we’ve added streams from two different Twitter accounts.

Hootsuite offers you a full range of options, all for free. We’ve just scratched the surface here. Give it a shot. Let us know what you think.

Thanks for reading!