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What You Should Know About Microblogging

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 - (1914) Comments

Microblogging through services like Twitter and Plurk have really taken off in recent months. It seems everyone is on Twitter now, from big-name celebrities and multi-national corporations to regular individuals and small businesses from all over the globe. But what is microblogging and why should you use it?

Microblogging, in general terms, is short, bite-sized updates (on Twitter they're called "tweets") broadcast to a group of followers or subscribers. On most sites, these updates are restricted to 140 characters or less (including spaces and punctuation). Twitter, as mentioned before, is by far the most popular, with millions of users worldwide. If you're going to use a microblogging service (especially for business), start with Twitter unless you have an excellent reason to use one of the others.

Twitter has a few unique features that users should know about. First are @replies. This is the basic mode of conversation on the site. If you want to reply to another user, you simply put their username preceded by the "@" symbol (with no space in between) in your tweet and then type a message to them. These replies can be seen by everyone.

Retweets are another useful Twitter feature. Generally preceded by an RT and then the username (with the "@" symbol as in replies), retweets are basically reposting of content posted by others. If someone you're following says something interesting, you can RT it and broadcast it to your own followers. This is the biggest way information spreads on Twitter.

Hash tags are the main tagging system on Twitter. A hashtag is a one-word tag preceded by a hash mark ("#"). Hash tags make it easy for other Twitter users to search for related content. These are often used by groups or organized chats (such as the #litchat hosted on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 4-5pm Eastern Time) to make it easy for everyone involved in the chat to follow the conversation among multiple users they may or may not be following.

The final important feature of Twitter is the trending topics. These are a list of the most popular words or phrases currently being tweeted about. In most cases, they have to do with current events or news, and can be a great way to see what's being talked about all over the world.

Microblogging Dos and Don'ts:

Don't post overly-commercial content. Spam on microblogs is no different than spam in email; it's annoying and in most cases it doesn't work. If all you do is promote your own products or services, you're not going to have many long-term followers.
Do engage with other microbloggers. Join in coversations with those you follow and with those who follow you. With Twitter, this is done using @replies.
Do follow others in your field. Twitter and other microblogging services can be a great way to make connections with colleagues and potential customers.
Don't spam the trending topics. This has become a popular technique for spammers to have their messages seen. But it's also a good way to get your account banned. Only post about trending topics or hashtags if you have something interesting to say. The same goes for hash tags.
If you're using microblogging for company news, do make just one person responsible for updates. This makes updates more consistent and allows a single person to become the face of the company. It also allows that person to become a part of the community and better engage with others.

Most Popular Microblogging Services

Twitter - This is the largest microblogging service.
Plurk - Very similar to Twitter, though the standard layout for reading updates is a bit different (it's a timeline-type interface).
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