Using Twitter

Be mature about itPick a user name

Don’t be sillyConsider using your real name

Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t say to your mother or your boss

Use a real picture of yourself, and not one of you with a keg in it. You can be casual but don’t be “Joe College Student” on Twitter

Use a real locationDon’t be cute

Write a real bioTell people you are a college studentSpecify the university. Not MSU – that can mean

Montana State University, Minnesota State University, etc. Say Michigan State University

Tell your majorYou can talk about yourself, but stay away from

religion and politics

Uses for Twitter Share links to items of interest to your network

Re-distribute content from blog, web site

Get Feedback

Read News

Event Updates

Provide Live coverage

Crowd-source questions and answers

Promote specific content

Don’tsDo not link to your Facebook profile unless there

is NOTHING on it you wouldn’t show to your boss, grandparents or instructors

Don’t protect your updates. If you want to be private, stay off Twitter

Follow and be followedLook for professionals in your field

Look for professors in your field; they are likely to tweet things relevant to college students

Look at who the good twitter users follow. Then follow the good ones.

Add a few media outlets

The basicsUpdate: Your tweet to the your Twitter universe

Reply: To reply to something someone tweets, click the curvy “reply” arrow. It will start your tweet with the @ symbol and that person’s user name

Retweet: Copy someone else’s tweet (or hit the retweet button) and add RT to the front with an @before their name.

Direct Message: Private messages between you and someone else who is following you

Using ListsOrganize the people you follow

The “groups” feature for Twitter

Creating a list Click on new list link Name the list: The name is also used for your list’s URL,

which will be “twitter.com/username/list-name.” Make it public or private

Public mans anyone can see it, anyone can follow Private: Only you can see the list. Not even those on the

list can see it Add a description to the list

Each list is currently limited to 500 people

Users may create a maximum of 20 lists

Add users to your lists by going to their profile page, or from a following page

Manage your lists in the right-hand navigation of Twitter

The # (Hash tag)Keep track of multi-party conversations or posts

from an event

You can search for all posts from that event or conversation using that #, like #

Twitter tools Tweetdeck

Good way to organize your tweets and send them

Allows you to send to Facebook at the same time

Can have more than one twitter account

Tweetmeme Hottest links on

Twitter at www.tweetmeme.com

Bingtweets: Trending topics on Twitter

Twitter sites for journalistsMuck Rack: Follow journalists on Twitter

15 Social Media Twitter lists from Mashable

10 journalists you should follow on Twitter

More Twitter resourcesTop 7 mistakes new Twitter users make

Trendistic: Graphing trends in twitter

Twitter search

15 Twitter directories compared on Mashable.com

Remember:Tweets, like blog posts and comments, are

indexed on search engines. So, don’t send any Twitter messages that you wouldn’t want your mother, your employer, or your who-knows-who to read either now or in the future.

Once online, always online.