Be a Better Blogger Week: Using Twitter

I am SO excited about this topic. I need help with Twitter big time. If you follow me on Twitter, you probably agree with me! My husband is a Twitter ninja. He is so knowledgeable with this topic, I knew that he was just the guy to give us all a learning session on this topic! I’ll let him take it from here…

If I were to rank the best decisions I’ve made in my life, the top three would be 1) marrying a smokin’ hot wife, 2) fathering a child, and 3) signing up for Twitter. If you’re a frequent reader of Girl Loves Glam, you probably aren’t looking for a wife, and you physically cannot father a child, so I guess I’ll give you advice about #3, Twitter.

I recently signed up for an account on Twitter after reading an article about how teachers use Twitter to connect with other educators. Though the façade of the building I work in identifies it as an elementary school, if you were to see our staff picture, you would wrongly think it was a postcard from a retirement home. Connecting with educators beyond my immediate reach was a must. And Twitter was how I intended to do it.

Two weeks after making the conversion, I have 200+ followers, and my teaching blog has received 4,000+ unique page views from all around the world. Let me say that a different way. . . Twitter brought over 4,000 people to my blog . . . about being a teacher. Surely, your blog is more exciting than mine. Imagine what Twitter can do for you.

To an outsider looking in, the Twittersphere looks like a very scary place. It did for me, at least. But just like the boogey man, monsters in the closet, and male craft blogs, it’s all in your head. So, hold my hand as I walk you through an introduction to the amazing world of Twitter (that was meant to sound cheesy).

First things first. Sign up for an account. If you aren’t able to succeed at this step, close this web page and sell your computer. Once you do get yourself signed up, don’t do anything until you get rid of that egg picture. Replace it with one of you. Tweeters don’t like talking to eggs. They like talking to real people. After that, be sure to fill out the bio about who you are. Be sure to let your personality shine here. This is where potential followers are going to look when trying to decide whether to follow you or not. Use up as many characters as possible. A bio that says, “Mom, blogger, and church-goer” is super boring. Do what you do best, and accessorize it! Be sure to link your website or blog to this part of your Twitter page as well. That would be silly to forget that part.

Once you’ve established an introduction to you. Follow the Twitter account of the blogs that you already read. You might have noticed the Twitter icon on some of them. You can either click those, or Google search your favorite blogger with his or her name or blog name and “twitter” as a search keyword. Click on their page link in the search findings and select “Follow”. Some good blogger Twitter accounts to get you started are . . .

@sahans, @prettyhandygirl, @cindyhopper, @infarrantly, @LaraEllieG, @UcreateLLC, @Whipperberry, @iheartnaptime, @houseofsmiths, @CrapIveMade, @taunitweets, @housewifestacy, @MySisSuitcase

Tweets from the people you follow will show up in your Twitter thread (think of it as a Facebook newsfeed). Spend a bit o’ time each day reading through these, and you will quickly find others to follow as well. It is also nice to RT (re-tweet) tweets that you like. RT shares what you are reading with your followers (don’t worry about them yet). In the networking world of Twitter, RT a tweet is like complimenting someone on their shoes. If the tweep is somewhat down to earth, he or she will thank you for the RT.

Mentioning people is a great way to draw attention to your new Twitter account too. Mentions require using the “@” followed by a person’s Twitter handle. If you were to tweet “@DaveGuymon looks like he’s been working out.” That would show up on my news feed and under my personal “mentions” tab whether I am following you or not. It’s a simple way to get someone to know you exist in the Twittersphere. With my account I generally follow three types of people: those who share valuable links and resources (blogs, webpages, videos, tutorials), those who frequently RT my tweets, and those who mention me to their followers.

Many, if not most tweets will have some sort of phrase with the # symbol in front of it. A ( # ) is called a “hash tag”. Hash tags are used to categorize tweets. If I was at the SNAP! Conference and I wanted to tweet about it, I would tweet, “I just mod-podged a siiiick birdhouse #snapconf”, and my tweet would be seen by others following #snapconf. You will also see tweets that have a # in front of random phrases like, “Call Me Maybe is on the radio again #whenwilliteverstop”. Hash tags are used this way to be silly. But all other tweets that have #whenwilliteverstop will then be connected with my Tweet about ‘Call Me Maybe’. Don’t worry about understanding or memorizing all of the hash tags right away. THERE ARE A TON OF THEM. I frequently do Google searches for hash tags in education, and bookmark pages that list them for future reference.

Using # (hash tags) is also how you can participate in Twitter chats, which are the equivalent of informational water balloon fights. I promise you that you will be overwhelmed by Twitter chats the first few times that you encounter them. Find out how I keep my cool in a Twitter chat here. However, twitter chats are the quickest way to connect with other like minded people and to collect followers. Do them, and do them often.

Seriously, I just gave you a ton of arrows to put in your quiver (does that even make any sense?). Nevertheless, you are ready to Tweet. You can follow me @DaveGuymon. There’s also a good chance that you will find everything I say by searching #genius! Tweeting a link to this blog post is a great way to get started in your tweeting adventures. Tweeting links to your blog posts is step two.

Big thanks to my sweet husband for writing this post! He really is a Twitter know it all. He wrote a free Twitter ebook that is available on his website here too. It is FREE so go check it out here! 

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