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Monday, January 20, 2014

Let's get the Twitter party started!

What the # and what the @ does it all mean?! And why is everyone hashtagging everything?

If you dabbled in Twitter, or are afraid to start, here's an overview of some basics to get you started.

The Hashtag #  (nope, it's no longer the "pound sign")

# groups or categorizes tweets that become indexed so they are easy to find when searching for them later. People are overusing the # these days on Facebook, not understanding what it's true purpose is really for (see my blog on Facebook #)


The @ Symbol (nope, it's no longer known as an abbreviation)
@ symbol will capture the attention of someone in a group, or within the body of your Tweet.  It's also a way to attribute an original tweet when you RT (retweet).  So, if I RT someone's Twitter post, it will show as:  RT @dracula

@ symbol is a good way to suggest a follow to others.  For example, if I want my friends to follow the Milwaukee Brewers, I may say #brewers @joesmith


Two important symbols to get you started are going to be the @ and the #.  If you're posting a tweet and you want to mention someone or something, you can say:  Wow, I really had fun at the Halloween Party @amygajewski @joesmith #halloween #spooky

So, if you or one of our friends posted a tweet like that, and if our twitter names were amygajewski and joesmith, we would get notification in our twitter feed that someone just mentioned us.  We could then reply and say @dracula thanks for inviting us.  Then, our response would show up on @dracula's page/Twitter feed.

By adding in the #halloween #spooky....If anyone wanted to see what people were tweeting about when it came to the topic of #halloween, you could enter #halloween into the search box on Twitter and all of the posts where someone hashtagged Halloween (#halloween) would show up.  So, maybe you'd see a bunch of tweets from candy companies, scary movies, retailers because they sell halloween costumes--and if they did a Tweet with #halloween #costumes, they'd show up in your #halloween search.  Likewise, if you search for the #spooky anyone who has mentioned #spooky in a Tweet would come up in the search feed. 

Try going to Twitter and search for different things....in fact, I just did do the #halloween search and there are 1000s of posts.  For example, one that popped up in my search was from Tide.  It said "This house is clean. #poltergeist #scaredstainless #halloween  

If I wanted to let specific people know about my tweet, I could say @joesmith I'm excited to see all the little goblins trick or treating next week. #halloweencostumes #halloween  Now, in this example, JoeSmith would get notification of my tweet but you could also still search #halloween or #halloweencostumes and find any tweets that mentioned these 2 hashtagged things.
(C) Amy Gajewski January 2014

Thank you Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake for this:
 

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