This article is going to cover something called micro-blogging. More specifically, we’ll cover the basics of a website called Twitter.com and how you can use it in your business.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of Twitter and may have heard various opinions about the site. Twitter is much more than a bunch of ‘talk’ as many refer to it. It is a very powerful ‘micro-blogging’ site and can be one of the MOST effective marketing tools for your business.

First go to Twitter.com and set up your account. Make sure to choose a username that is SEO friendly. For example, ‘Traverse City Real Estate’, ‘Leelanau County Boat Rentals’, etc. If you can, try to choose a username that accurately represents the topic you’ll be microblogging about. In many cases, your name will be fine too!

OK, so what exactly is microblogging?

In a nutshell, it’s a short version of blogging at 140 characters or less and on Twitter it’s called a ‘tweet’. Because Twitter allows you to connect with other people around the world and in your area, your tweet will be broadcast to a large group of people. Many people start out on Twitter and then get confused because there are so many other people on the site tweeting about what they eat, what they watch on TV, or where they’re going that day. While it’s okay to occasionally tweet about these things, it’s best to keep your tweets professional and on topic.

People will ‘follow’ you by subscribing to your profile so they can receive your tweets. Other people in your profession and those who are interested in what you do follow you on Twitter because they are interested in your field of business and not so much because they care about what you are eating. This is exactly what you want. You want people who are interested in you and your business and what you have to say on topics related to your business.

Before I continue, I’d like to give you a basic list of some common acronyms used on Twitter and their definitions.

Tweet- a micro-blog of 140 characters or less

ReTweet: tweet content that has already been posted by another user

Tweeps – people on twitter (also tweople or tweeple)

Twitterverse: everyone on Twitter as a whole

Followers – people who subscribe to your tweets

Un-Follow: Unsubscribe from someone’s tweet

Hashtag: keywords used on Twitter. These can be more than one word, but typically no more than three without spaces and preceded by the pound sign (#) such as #TCRealEstate or #TraverseCity. I recommend that you log in and follow the hashtags so that your tweets are indexed by the service.

FollowFriday: A hashtag (#followfriday) used on Fridays to recommend other tweeters who post good content.

Followorthy: Tweets that are usually worth following because they give a lot of good advice on their topic of expertise.

Twammer – a Twitter spammer

Twedia: news and media on Twitter (i.e. @nytimes)

Ok, now that you know a bit of the lingo, here are 8 tips to keep in mind when you start using Twitter:

1. Don’t start getting too excited about everyone who follows you and return them with an automatic follow up. Only follow people YOU want to know about. This prevents follow spam or people following you just for you to follow them. When you follow someone on Twitter, everyone will be able to preview that person’s tweets on your Twitter page.

2. The number of followers does not matter. There are many people obsessed with increasing their number of followers. It doesn’t matter how many people follow you; It matters that the people who follow you really want to hear what you have to say.

3. I do not recommend that you use the feature called ‘auto DM’ (Direct Message) for thanking people and especially for self-promotion as this can get annoying.

4. DON’T tweet about what you’re eating unless you’re in the food business. It’s tacky and nobody cares what you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

5. Think before you tweet! Don’t just tweet about ANYTHING you don’t want the whole world to know. Tweets can be permanent even if you delete them. Because Twitter is indexed every few minutes by search engine spiders, your tweet may well remain in the search engine archive for many days. In general, just make sure you’re careful when tweeting.

6. Review people’s profiles and recent tweets before clicking to follow them. Make sure they are tweeting about things that interest you. Again, your tweets will appear on your page as soon as you click to follow them.

7. Try using Twellow.com to find people tweeting about topics that interest you. Twellow is the yellow pages of Twitter and you can find people tweeting about any topic imaginable.

8. Grammar matters! Okay, now I know it’s only 140 characters long, but that’s no reason not to use correct spelling and grammar. Using Twitter abbreviations or abbreviations is perfectly acceptable, but poor spelling or overuse of acronyms can cause people to unfollow you. Here are some ways you can tweet and have conversations with other tweeters. These features are quite interesting, so be sure to pay attention.

DM – Direct message to another person on twitter. This doesn’t show up on the public timeline, but it does show up on the other person’s private timeline. To test this feel free to send me a direct message. In the top text box that asks what you’re doing, just type “DM @TraverseCityTours your message.” It really is that easy!

@: Used just before another person’s username (ie @Username) to speak directly to (or to) another person. Try to send me an answer if you want. Again in the top text box, type “@Username and your reply message” Again…very easy to do.

RT – ReTweet – used just before someone else’s full tweet when you are retweeting without altering the original message. The original message is copied into the text box to send it. (ie my original RT @Username message would be here)

Via: Used in parentheses immediately after a message that you modified to give credit to the original tweet. For example: (via @Username) would be used when crediting one of my tweets after slightly modifying it.

Are you still with me here? OK, let’s talk a little bit about Twitter shorthand. Twitter shorthand is pretty much the same as cell phone text messaging. Don’t be overwhelmed by all the terms and new language on Twitter. It’s perfectly acceptable to type everything when tweeting. As time goes by, you will find that you need to shorten words to get your full message across in 140 characters or less and you will eventually learn the language.

Well, that’s enough for your Twitter 101 class. Now get out there and dive into your newfound microblogging site. Start tweeting about topics you know about and start following people who are talking about topics you care about.

Next week we’ll start talking about social bookmarking and effective ways to use Twitter to drive traffic to your blogs, profiles and website. So, for the rest of this week, spend some time getting familiar with Twitter and understanding your new twitterverse.