I need some Twitter Quick Tips!!!! Help!

Thanks for asking the question.  There were some great answers, thank you all for your input, I will put them to good use.

Kristin:  Remember ... we all have to start somewhere .. and have! 

My best suggestion doesn't pertain to the techie part of Twitter.  It is more to the content and decision on who you will follow.  I just cleaned out a good number of names that I found were doing be absolutely no good on Twitter.  For any number of reasons, they just had to go.  (Poor tweets, no longer tweeting, the "bikini girl" thing, and more).  When I first started "tweeting" I was not selective enough and followed too many.  Now I am far more selective as I believe that I offer good quality "tweets" within my chosen topic areas and wish to receive only good quality "tweets" in return.  I'm tweeting for a purpose .. and it's not building numbers.  If you start your Twitter experience with that thought, I think you will do better more quickly than I did.

Best of luck to you ... and I'll look for you on Twitter!

I didn't ask the question, but thanks to all for sharing the tips. I have picked up a few ideas.

I use a simple desktop program called Seesmic Desktop - which is free to download.  Not only does it shorten URLs you are posting and help with responding to people and retweetin gin a one click sort of way, but it also saves searches.  I live in Temecula, CA so I have a search set up that shows me everyone who is tweeting about Temecula and I interact with them or leave them comments about what they are up to in town or answer their questions.  Seesmic saves those searches for me so with one click I can see what's happening in my market and respond regularly.

I'm with Gene on content.  I have several Twitter accounts, one for each one of my interests.  Although I follow everybody who follows me (it's just my personality), I have found other ways to organize my followers in order to pay attention to the ones who give me good information. 

If your Twitter account is about Real Estate, keep it about Real Estate.  If it's about holistic health, keep it about holistic health.  If I go to the Coastal Mall Twitter I don't want to hear about your in-laws coming for dinner.  Instead, give me some info about your upcoming events!  

For Myrtle Beach and MB Real Estate Information, follow me @MyrtleBeachDigs.

For the personal stuff you can have a locked account and only a few well chosen followers (I don't have one of those).

Nice to see so many Rainers incorporating Twitter in their online strategies. And some great tips in the comments, a real tribute to the AR community.

Kristin

1. You are totally correct, but it's important to understand a few key features of how twitter works.  Any tweet that begins with @ before a user name, twitter automatically interprets as a reply.  This is important because replys are only seen by the party who originates the tweet and the party to whom the tweet is directed AND anyone who happens to follow both the sender and the receiver. 

RT basically ensures that your tweet isn't a reply tweet and is a community accepted abbreviation that you like and/or endorse the content of the tweet you're retweeting.  Other variations might include mentioning a twitter user(s) in the body of a tweet.  Either a RT or a mention (that doesn't begin with @) gives a wider viewing audience to your message.  Now your message can be seen by both your followers and the followers of the person you mentioned or retweeted.  Read: You don't have to follow both parties to see the message.

2. There's a lot of different ways to abbreviate your web addresses (URLS).  You can google "URL abbreviation" for some options.  Tweetdeck's built in features, as mentioned by others is probably the easiest.  Some options will allow for embedded advertising in the header bar, others allow for you to incorporate your own web address in the abbreviation for additional exposure.  Some of these options can be intrusive and irritating so it's important that you study them, maybe take a poll and make a careful educated decision as to what's best for your needs.

3. I know a lot of people who use twitterberry without an issue, but if you're thinking of upgrading to an iphone, I would strongly endorse Twitterrific as the twitter application of choice.  It's very strong and has most of the features of tweetdeck and even a few more.

Oh, and congrats on the feature!

Lots of great information about Twitter here, which I really appreciate as I'm still working on it.

I'll chime in with several above...

Yes... TweetDeck rocks and makes retweeting and tinyURL's so easy to do... There are several others, but I tend to gravitate towards TweetDeck.

Kristin, hi.

Twitter's cool.  It's almost like having an alter-ego, although I don't know who's the super-hero yet, me or Twitter.  Probably more of a team effort.

It takes time to build, so have patience.  Like other people have answered here, it is a numbers game, but you do want quality followers and also to find great content to follow.  

At the very beginning, when I first joined, I did start to follow the top 100 most popular people.  Most were marketers, SEO mavens, business-people.  Shortly thereafter, I started to concentrate on my content and now only follow those that follow me first.  I think this creates more of an 'organic' list, not one that's just stuffed with clicks/follows to get your numbers higher.

When someone follows you, follow them back (if they're legitimate) right away. Here's a great application to see who you're following and whether they're following you back:  http://friendorfollow.com/

Twitter's a tool, but it's good to keep it fun, too.  Make sure you balance the professional with the personal so people know that you're real.

I have received inquiries for real estate on Twitter, so it does work.

Make sure to read the blog for Twitter at the bottom of your page.  Go through them thoroughly and you'll find tons more info.

http://bit.ly/ is the best URL shortener because it also allows you to track how many hits your link is getting.  Just another way to measure your tweet success.

The best tutorials you'll find are on YouTube.  Just search 'twitter tutorials'.  They are fantastic and walk you through step-by-step.

GOOD LUCK!!

http://twitter.com/ScottSellsFL

p.s!  now i'm following you!

Great information on twitter i creat account but dont know how it works but i get good tips to use that

I use Twhirl instead of Tweet Deck. id does many of the same things, some different things, and I find it not to be as overwhelming. 

I am also a BIG fan of www.Ping.fm to put my posts on the other websites, and www.Socialoomph.com to allow me to create tweets to go out at later times. like reminders of upcoming events.

Have fun with it and you will learn what works for you.

P.S. I just followed you on twitter. 

Happy Tweeting!  :)

Nice blog...I have bookmarked it and continue to return to see the great comments.

Oh my darling Kristen,

Welcome to Twitter! I disagree with an earlier post that TwitterBerry isn't any good. I use it CONSTANTLY throughout the day and it is fantastic. It allows me to very easily read on my Blackberry screen what those I follow are saying and allows me to post. And it easily counts my characters so I know how to edit down to 140 characters.

As for making long URLs short so you can post them, I only use http://www.tinyurl.com and it works great too.

Twitter is my all time favorite Internet invention.  Email is great of course, but Twitter changed my life. I am an independent real estate broker who left a big firm years ago to start my own business in my home office. I get so much daily helpful interaction from other brokers, real estate techies and others I follow every day that it's transforming me and my business.

Why? Because I learn a lot of cool things about real estate that I use that I never would have heard about otherwise.

Yes, you can simply "cut and paste" a statement, then type:

RT @personname PASTE

All of it though has to be under 140 characters. I rarely re-tweet.  In reading them, I find that it is often too garbled and condensed to make any sense to me and I despise quotes from people like...well, anyone famous!  I do like some re-tweeting links that are helpful but please, no Ghandi quotes.  I get no inspiration from any quotes at all. That's just me.

TweetDeck is only OK for me. TwitterBerry is WHERE IT'S AT. If you're a busy broker on the go 24/7 like I am.

I rarely use hashtags myself but will occasionally search by them like: #NAR2009 if I want to know who's talking about the NAR convention in November.

One person I follow (no names mentioned) uses them to be stupidly clever  ~Example:

Burned my hand making waffles #Iamsostupid

Now this is a real estate broker and firm owner and who the heck cares about that nonsense hashtag that means nothing? But that's what she does. She's actually pretty funny 90% of the time. But she uses Twitter for her silly daily occurrences.  Not serious stuff. I get that from others.

Twitter can be a useful tool but some people use it excessively to hear themselves talk.  But Twitter is also changing my life and business daily thanks to the people I follow. I am so happy with it I can't tell you.

Good luck!

Follow me on Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/greenboxhomes

or @greenboxhomes

Reading down thru..the hash # mark was not being covered..this link does that quite well. We used it at the Maine Association of Realtors convention..tweeting with #maine so all collected, you could follow and congregate, be in the group. www.twitter.com/mooersrealty

Wow I found a load of information just in your comments, short post but very helpful