Learning Twitter can be somewhat intimidating at first. The community speaks its own lingo and interacts in a way that is completely different than Facebook or email.
Here is how you can get “Twitter savvy,” so you can jump in without making potentially embarrassing mistakes:
Learn the Shorthand
Twitter users (also known as “tweeters”) have their own language. The language is often necessitated because of Twitter’s character length limit. Because you only have 140 characters, you are more likely to say “PRT” than “Please retweet.” Twitter has a very comprehensive glossary you can view on their website to learn the various common words and phrases used by the Twitter community:
http://support.twitter.com/entries/166337-the-twitter-glossary
Learn How to Use Hashtags (#)
Hashtags are used primarily to identify messages on a certain topic. For instance, if you are running a sale and want people to be able to have discussions about your sale, you might tell anyone tweeting about your sale to tweet with #salomatic. Someone tweeting would then put #salomatic at the end of their tweet. Anyone seeing that tweet could just click that hashtag to see all messages tagged with #salomatic. This effectively instantly creates a chat room or message board of sorts.
Follow People in Your Industry
What should you post about, how often should you post, and what are topics people are interested in hearing about?
The best way to find out for yourself is to start following people in your industry. These could be competitors, customers or industry news channels. Basically, follow anyone that has a strong voice in your market. This way you will start to get a real sense of what your market is like and what conventions are in your market. You will get a sense of how often others post and what topics people tend to respond to.
Following, Being Followed, Posting Messages
The best way to learn your way around Twitter is to use it a lot. Before you start using Twitter on your business account, try using Twitter in your personal account. Start following your friends and ask your friends to follow you. Post tweets and watch your friends respond. Respond to your friends’ tweets.
Get used to how the whole system works. Once you have learned how to create topics with hashtags, the various common words and phrases, and how to follow, be followed and post messages, then you will be basically conversational in Twitter.
Once you are conversational in Twitter, the next step is just to dive in head first and start using Twitter a lot. Learning Twitter isn’t difficult, it just takes a bit of basic understanding and a lot of regular use. In just a few weeks, you can quickly become very Twitter savvy.