So I’m sure you’ve heard of Twitter by now. And like Facebook, there are hard core users, some who uses it lightly, and others who feel its a waste of time.

But if you do business online, or are big brand name companies, it’s hard not to get into all the social media hype. Business wise, it’s used a promotional tool. So it’s a good idea to start your Twitter account as early as possible to start accumulating followers. Although some people feel that the followers count is important, if the tweets that the account is tweeting is invalid or they never tweet, then the followers count doesn’t mean anything.

You may not become a hard-core user, but more and more companies are asking about whether a new potential employee knows about social media when applying for a job – especially if you work in a field where it’s relevant to have them. So here are some basic things about Twitter that might come handy to know.

• One tweet allows you to type up to 140 characters
• use @UserName: In your tweet, this is how you can reply to that user, or if you want to announce something that is relevant for that user to see.
• MT: modified tweet
  PRT = please retweet, a plea to put at the end of a tweet – this is great if someone who has a large number of followers retweet your tweet.
  RT = retweet. If you want to tweet the entire tweet by another user. There is a button that allows you to retweet, but many like to still copy the tweet and tweet it themselves using RT @OriginalUserName and commenting a bit before their original tweet.
• Hastags: by placing # symbol infront of a work (without and spaces ie. #dogs) that makes that word a ‘keyword’ so that if someone is searching for someone  tweeting about ie. dogs, then your tweet will come up. This doesn’t mean that you should hashtag every word in your tweet. It’s a good idea to keep it to 3 or less in one tweet.

To learn more, click on the link: http://ontheweb.kimvallee.com/2009/01/twitter-101-basic-commands/