Twitter: You Can Do It!

• Join! Keep your username brief. Consider using your real name, too.
• No eggs: use a photo of yourself or something that's easily identifiable as YOU for your profile pic (AVI).
• Your bio! Keep it brief & informative, and be sure to include a relevant URL if you have one to share.
• Follow people you like & admire. Watch to see who they follow & interact with, to follow people outside of your own circle.

Twitter has its own grammar & slang. Here are some key terms:

• Handle = your username.
• AVI = avatar - the image associated with your handle (username).
• Fav = short for favorite. When you click the little star icon at the bottom of a tweet? That's faving. Use it to save tweets/links for later or just to give a thumbs-up.
• RT = retweet. That's how you share what other people are saying.
• LRT or RLRT = Last RT or Re: Last RT. Use this to preface a follow-up to a retweet.
• Hashtag = self-applied metadata. A way of making your tweets searchable & your account more discoverable by people interested in the same things you are. #savvy

• Brevity: 140 characters is a challenge!
• Threading: If you have more paragraphic thoughts, create a thread by responding to yourself (but delete @myusername from follow-ups)
• Search for & save useful & interesting hashtags.
• Tag your work: If you're participating in a hashtagged conversation (such as at a conference), include the hashtag so others can see & respond.

Live-tweeting events (the Oscars, a movie with friends, a professional conference) is a great way to dip a toe in a calmer area of Twitter's turbid waters. It's a way to slow the fire hydrant flow to a manageable & refreshing water fountain stream.

Ready to live-tweet? Log in to your Twitter account, then:

• Search for the event hashtag (for example, #njla16)
• Save your search - this will make the stream of tweets easy to find & read
• When you tweet something (an insight from a session, questions about lunch or evening activities), include the event hashtag in your tweet so others who are following it will see, retweet & respond to you.

• To save links, don't rely on favs - use a service like Pocket, Instapaper or Evernote.
• You may prefer to use a Twitter client like Tweetdeck or HootSuite.
  
• Tools like TweetChat and Twubs can simplify participation in fast-moving tweet chats & hashtagged conversations.
• Use tools like Storify to archive & share conversations.
• If you start a tweet with someone's username, only that person and the users who follow both of you will see it. Which is fine, but if you want everyone who follows you to see a tweet, add at least one character before @theirhandle. Current convention is ".@theirhandle take a look at this!" (See photo above)
• Twitter's Missing Manual gets deep into the nitty-gritty of Twitter's quirks.

Over on my personal Twitter account, I asked friends & colleagues what ONE piece of advice they'd give their past selves about using Twitter effectively.

You can read their great responses here.