Twitter, the social network which asks its members to answer the famous question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less, has a language all its own. New users may find themselves wondering what the #tags and RT’s are all about. Facebook users who do not use Twitter may wonder the same thing, since the new update has left them seeing more Twitter messages as Facebook status updates thanks to services such as Ping.fm, Selective Twitter Status, or other applications that turn Twitter updates into Facebook statuses. Here is a rundown of all the common Twitter lingo and updates you will encounter.
Twitter Lingo
Here are some of the things you may see in Twitter updates, or tweets.
@username
This is an update sent to a specific Twitter user, also called Replies (or Mentions). These updates can be sent to followers and non-followers alike. Replies to you can be viewed on your homepage in the right sidebar by clicking the @yourusername under Home.
This week’s Fetching Friday includes Web 2.0 resources at the bookstore and lots of Twitter resources. Also, check out previews for next week and related news about recent changes to this site.
In one of my most popular posts, The Blogging Process, I compiled a list of things I do to keep kikolani.com running, including prep work for posts, social media promotion, bookmarking, interacting with readers, and other technical updates. This article focuses specifically on using social networking for blog promotion. Unless your blog is purely personal in nature and only meant to be shared with family and close friends, chances are you want to bring in more readers. Because what is the point of putting your thoughts online if you have no audience? And if your motives for blogging are fiscally driven to create a secondary source of income, or at least to cover the costs domain renewals and hosting services, then it is going to take a lot of traffic to bring in the revenue.
Read more to find out the 9 ways I use social networking to promote my blog, in order of the networks that bring in the most amount of traffic for this site.
Promote your blog without spending money.
