We are all aware of the power Twitter possesses, however I know some people don’t fully understand the concept or power of retweeting.  One way to think of a retweet is to compare it to forwading an email you may have received.  The email you are forwarding should contain interesting or relevant information to the people you are forwarding it to.

This same underlying principle can be applied to the concept of retweets.  When retweeting, you are telling your followers that the information you are posting is worthy of a look or a read.  Hopefully you have built a great relationship with your followers and more than likely are interested in what you are retweeting about.  Also, any tweet you create may be viewed as something by your followers and they could decide to retweet your tweet. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I explained the basics of building your twitter profile.  For some reason if you have not read it yet, please take a minute to glance over it so you can see where we left off.

Now that you have decked out your profile with a custom background, updated your profile settings and began following other tweeps, it’s time to manage your profile efficiently and effectively.  While I am not going to go into every tip & trick there is, I am going to focus on a few that can ultimately enhance your followers experience while helping you establish tweet cred among your followers.

Plug It In

One of the most popular blogging platforms is wordpress.  It is used by millions of people for various purposes.  In fact, it is the same software that is being used to power ploked.  There are many great things about Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been on twitter and developed any sort of following, you might have noticed the use of the #hashtag.  Sure it might look like someone accidentally typed something in on their tweet by hitting the # symbol, but really they are helping to make twitter easier to use.  The hashtag helps tweeps follow a particular topic.

Think of hashtags as being “tags” you use on social bookmarking sites or even flickr to describe what you are submitting.  The hashtags on twitter are simply word(s) being used to describe the topic/subject at hand in brevity.

By placing a # infront of a phrase, word, or acronym such as #mlb (Major League Baseball), it creates a searchable component that can followed or searched on twitter.  The hashtag helps tweeps organize and search tweets.  These hashtags are also great to use to increase brand visibility, note particular events, people, and more.

An easy way to see twitter hashtags in action is to simply login to your twitter account.  Chances are that someone you are following tweeted utilizing a hashtag.  Simply click on the hashtag and you will notice it takes you to the twitter search showing all tweets with that hashtag.  From the results page, you can see all the recent tweets using this hashtag.

So how do you get started using hashtags?  It’s quite simple.  Just follow the step outlined below.

1. Add a hashtag (#) in front of your keyword tag at the end of your tweet.  For example your tweet would look like this “reading a great new social media blog #socialmedia #ploked“

That is pretty much it.  Hashtags have evolved somewhat since tweeps started using them, so they have become pretty mainstream and are now easier to use than previously.

One great resource to track hashtags in realtime is HashTags.org.  Here the latest hashtags are updated instantly…you don’t even have to be logged into twitter to see what the latest tweets are about!

So are you utilizing hashtags in your tweets?  Do you find them helpful in searching twitter for what you are looking for?