Florida Atlantic University's first student-run news source.

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Florida Atlantic University's first student-run news source.

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Florida Atlantic University's first student-run news source.

UNIVERSITY PRESS

The etiquette of Twitter

Last week, FAU started following me. No, the campus isn’t stalking me — FAU started following me on Twitter.

I have been on Twitter for three months now and can officially say FAU and its @FAUOwls account has no idea what it’s doing on the 3-year-old social networking site.

FAU is not the only organization on Twitter. Dunkin Donuts (@DunkinDonuts) and Target (@TargetINC) have accounts, as well as celebrities like basketball star Shaquille O’Neal (@THE_REAL_SHAQ), comedian Dane Cook (@danecook) and singer John Mayer
(@johncmayer).

Local newspapers like the Sun Sentinel (@SunSentinel) and Palm Beach Post (@Palm_Beach_Post) also use Twitter to share news and create a personal connection with their readers. So there’s no reason why FAU can’t make this a successful way to reach more students. But in order to do so, the folks from FAU need to understand the rules of Twitter.

I’m not an expert on a lot of things, but I think I have this Twitter stuff down. In fact, I just made new business cards and included my Twitter account on them. I’ve also encouraged five people to make accounts.

Thus, I feel I have some advice to share with FAU.

Because I admire FAU’s attempt to jump into the 21st century — but understand FAU needs some help — I would like to come to the rescue. Here are my tips for how to become a successful Twitter-er:

1) Follow people
It goes back to what your mother told you when you were little, “Do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you.” In other words, if you expect people to follow you on Twitter, you have to find and follow them.

The other cool thing about Twitter is that it’s absolutely okay to follow people you don’t know. Unlike Facebook, where it’s weird to add people you’ve never met as friends, the whole point of Twitter is to network. If you think someone has something cool to say, follow them.

2) Tweet more often
As of press time, the @FAUOwls account only had 17 updates since it was launched on Feb. 3. If you want people to follow you, you can’t let them forget about you.

As a devoted Twitter-er, I strongly believe you should tweet at least three times a day. Most people tweet six to 15 times per day. The unwritten rule is that your tweets should be at least 15 minutes apart.

Also, if you want to be really cool, don’t update your Twitter account from the Web site. Download a nifty program like Twhirl or TweetDeck, and update your tweets through there. They basically let you update your tweets more like a conversation. You can also search and track other tweets better.

3) Link away
If you’re going to tell me about something going on — especially a cool event — give me a link so I can go get more information.

Currently, if the tweets do include links, @FAUOwls just links to the main www.fau.edu Web site. Don’t insult my intelligence; if I’m an FAU student, I know what the main Web site is for my school. If you want to help me out, give me the direct link for whatever you’re talking about so I don’t have to go searching for it.

Use Web sites like tr.im or www.tinyurl.com to shorten URLs. I personally use tr.im because it will track how many people click on the links you post.

 

What is Twitter?
According to www.tweeternet.com, a site for Twitter newbies, Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you to answer the question, “What are you doing?” by sending short text messages 140 characters in length.

 

Twitter vocab you should know:

Tweets — Once you update your Twitter account, what you wrote is called a tweet. So it’s now socially accepted to say, “I’m going to tweet that,” or “I just tweeted.”

Followers — Your account and your updates are public (unless you set them as private, but that’s silly) so everyone can see your tweets. But people who “follow” you will see your tweets on their pages when they log in. It’s kind of like the Facebook news feed or an RSS feed. So if you want to see someone’s tweets when you log in, you just “follow” them. You can follow as many people as you want, but I suggest you do it in moderation. It’s best to follow about the same number of people who are following you.

@ replies — There are no “walls” per se, but if you’d like to mention someone in your tweets you put an @ sign and then their name, and your tweet will show up on their profile. For example, if you love this letter you could say: “Read @mboyet letter from editor this week, and now I love Twitter!”

DM — Stands for “direct message.” If you’d like to tell someone something privately, you can DM them. People on Twitter also use it like a verb and often say, “DM me for more info.”

RT — If someone tweets something cool and you’d like to “retweet” them, there’s a little button that says “RT,” and then it will come up in your update as “RT @mboyet: I love Twitter.”

 

If you’re looking for FAU sports news, also check out @FAUOwlAccess, which promotes the FAU fan site www.fauowlaccess.com. We’re buddies already, and they actually know what they’re doing.

And if you like my letters, go ahead and follow me. I’m @mboyet, and if you follow me, I’ll follow you.

Leave a Comment
More to Discover

Comments (0)

Do you have something to say? Submit your comments below
All UNIVERSITY PRESS Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *