We launched a new project today – Jely (http://je.ly). You may get some invites from me today, please sign up and remember to import your contacts so they can follow you. This release of Jely creates Tweetable URLs for travel and the locations of things. For example, you can type in “pizza” and your ZIP code, and you will get a tweetable link for Pizza in your neighborhood.

You can do the same for longitude, latitude, even your closest airport (http://je.ly/sfo). Want the weather at your house? Just type in your ZIP code and tweet away!

This is a public alpha release so use our contact form for any problems you run into.

OK… I am going to damn bed.

SB

Bookmark to:

This guide is not meant as an end all to Twitter and using Twitter in your advertising or marketing strategy. Every business has to approach Twitter differently. This guide just covers the basics of Twitter and how to use it effectively.

First off, open a free account at Twitter.com. Avoid using long screen names like BarbadosOctopusAssociates. You are limited to 140 characters in a tweet and many Twitter users get their updates on their cell phones via text message. Since those are limited 160 characters, a shorter name would server you well once you are up and running on Twitter.

Now once you are set up, you can post. You may find yourself confused or lost in Twitter. It takes some time to get it, some time to understand how it works. Hopefully, this guide can jump start that process.

You will notice you start off following people by default. These people are selected by Twitter staff as long established Twitter users. You may want to stop following them as I am mostly sure their tweets will not be relevant to your career and company, let’s work on finding people that might interest you.

Surf over to ExecTweets.com. It is a website for executives in all industries who use Twitter effectively. Click on the BROWSE BY INDUSTRY link and select you industry. Read through those tweets and see if there is anyone saying something you find interesting. If so, click on their photo (this takes you back to the Twitter site) and click on FOLLOW. This will put their tweets in your homepage. Add somewhere between 10 and 20, this will give you enough to start getting a feel for how the system works.

Or if that sounds a bit daunting, here are some corporate Twitter users you might find valuable, regardless of your industry. Just click on the word FOLLOW under their pic to add them.

http://twitter.com/mridley
http://twitter.com/philjohnson
http://twitter.com/CandidCIO
http://twitter.com/stormbear
http://twitter.com/TEDchris
http://twitter.com/jillwhalen

Once your home page is fully populated, you will see strange things and unusual shorthand notations. There are three things you need to understand, the use of the @ symbol, the # symbol and the compressed URL.

Here is a sample message from me to Twitter user, NimbusAgency

@nimbusagency The Future of HR Was Here 2 Years Ago – http://is.gd/pMOV #linkedin #twitter #facebook #jobs #hr

What in the world does all that jabber mean? Here is the Tweet broken down into the vital parts…

This tweet was directed to user NimbusAgency. When you put the @ symbol in front of an individual’s Twitter user name, a copy of the tweet will end up in their Twitter account. This allows you to carry on a conversation. If you every want to tweet to me, simple use @stormbear somewhere in your tweet and I will get it.

The second part of the message is a title of an article I wrote, The Future of HR Was Here 2 Years Ago.

The next part, http://is.gd/pMOV, is a condensed URL to the story. Remember, each tweet is limited to 140 characters. The original URL for this article is…
http://www.stormbear.com/2009/03/30/the-future-of-hr-was-here-2-years-ago/

That URL has over 50 characters, so you need to shorten that down. Surf over to http://is.gd and take a look at them. Just paste the URL you want to shorten into the box and click compress. The next page will show you a shortened address. Just cut and paste that link into your tweet and save space.

The last part of the tweet has a string of words that has the #symbol in front of them, these are called “hash tags.” They are keywords for Twitter. Sometimes your tweets will use all 140 characters for the message you want to convey. But many tweets you have room left over, that extra room can be used for hash tags. Think of a one word description of what your tweet is about and type that word in and make sure it has the # in front of it. Below are some sample hash tags.

#marketing #jobs #weather #bailout #apple #porsche #wedding #lasvegas #fashion #advertising #sushi

Remember, you can use any word as a hash tag, but only one word. If you want to use Las Vegas as a hash tag, take the space out as in the example above.

For more information, check out the above YouTube video from one of the founders of Twitter.

Bookmark to: