RealtyGo offers helpful tips / twitter 101, what are #Tags, RT, OH, HT, etc.. .

Twitter FAQ; RT, HT, OH, ETC…

Twitter RT means ReTweet

RT is an abbreviation for ReTweet, which is like Repeat. It’s like forwarding, but for Twitters instead of emails. If you see something really cool from one of the people you follow, you may want to ReTweet it so that the people following YOU (and not the original person) can see it.

“RT is slang, not a system function. Twitter doesn’t do anything special if you put in the RT.”

Why don’t people follow me back?

Just because you follow someone doesn’t mean they’ll turn around and follow you back. Some people are paranoid because they think you’re a twitter spammer, or maybe you don’t have your Twitter profile set up completely. Here’s a few pages where I explain why I follow people back – or don’t follow them back.

Top 10 Reasons I’m not following you on Twitter; by Brent Ozar @BrentO

Top 10 Reasons I *AM* Following You On Twitter; @BrentO

Adding more info to your twitter profile!

When someone views your Twitter page, they make a snap decision whether or not to follow you.  People want to know in a matter of seconds if you’ve got something interesting to say or valuable information they can use to make their own twit feed more interesting and relevant.

Unfortunately, sometimes your most recent Tweets have less relevant articles that may not be related to what you usually Tweet about.  Maybe you’ve been on vacation or selebrating a recent life changing event, or you’re talking about the plane crash on the Hudson.  People would have to scroll through a page or more of your history to figure out what you do and what you Tweet.

Our Twitter profiles don’t help much, either – they give us only a handful of characters to describe ourselves, and sometimes that’s not enough.

My Twitter Sidebar
The fix is to make your own Twitter background image that tells visitors more about who you are and what you do. Included a few lines about what you Tweet, easy ways to contact you and your QR Code.

You can choose whether or not to tile your picture, and what color your page background is. A QR Code is awesome, becuase it instantly makes your twitter background interactive with end users. Now people that want to know more about you can scan your QR Code and get relevant real estate information, your listings, contact info and social networking links, etc.. .

Before QR Codes A drawback to just having an image of your self or company logo is that it was just an image, not interactive(like a QR Code), so if people click on it or tried taking a picture of it nothing happens. Since Companies like RealtyGo, now you can have a fully interactive image that initiates a call to action from the viewer, giving them all the information they could possibly need to know to interact with you in the future. And remember your in control of the information behind the QR Code, you can Add, Edit, Update, Delete and promote new ideas and real estae listings all the time by simply editing your account within RealtyGo.

Twitter OH is an Abbreviation for OverHeard

If you hear something funny or insightful with your ears (as opposed to reading it on Twitter) and you want to repeat it, you can prefix it with OH. Generally, this is used anonymously, not for quoting people, so you tend to read things that might be personally embarrassing to whoever actually said it.

“This is slang, not a system function. Twitter doesn’t do anything special if you put in the OH.”

Using Twitter Through Your Company Firewall

If your company doesn’t allow access to Twitter through their web filtering systems, check out NutshellMail. It’s a free service that sends you a periodic “highlight reel” of your Twitter, Facebook or MySpace activity via an email. You can reply to the email and update your status or reply to tweets.

Even if your company DOES allow Twitter, it’s not a bad idea to try out NutshellMail just so when they run web reports it doesn’t look like you’ve been sitting around tweeting all day. Plus it helps you confine your Twitter use to short bursts, because you can pick exactly when you want the emails to come in. I get mine at noon (just before I break for lunch) and at 3:30pm, just after the busiest part of the day, on Twitter.

How to delete messages from Twitter

You can only delete your own tweets – things that you’ve posted, not things that someone else has posted. When you’re on Twitter.com, and you’re looking at one of your own tweets, you’ll see a trash can icon when you hover your mouse over the tweet, and/or select delete.

Twitter isn’t like email where you have to worry about cleaning out your in-box. The list of Tweets you get will always keep coming, and they’re always archived on your Twitter home page. It’s like trying to drink from a firehose: you have to stop trying to drink it all in, and stop trying to “keep up”. You won’t be able to do it.

Instead of deleting your old tweets or your read tweets, you’ll want to learn to use the tabs in Twitter’s web page, OR use a Twitter program that runs on your desktop to help you filter it all. If you’re using the web page Twitter.com to read your tweets, then check out the @Replies tab. That gives you a recap of anyone who’s started a tweet with your name, even if you’re not following them. Which reminds me….

How to Send a Message To Someone Who Isn’t Following You

Want to tell someone a secret, but they’re not following you? Well, uh, you can’t, because you can only direct message people if they’re following you.

Instead, send them a reply – this works even if they haven’t sent you anything first. Just start a message with @”their-name”, like @RealtyGo, and ask them to follow you so that you can send them a direct message.

Another method is to send them a reply and say, “Please direct message me your email address so I can send you something private.” Since you’re following THEM, they can direct message you with their email address without the entire internet seeing it.

Twitter Manners for Following and Followers

When someone follows you, you don’t have to follow them back. Don’t feel guilty. Take a look at their Twitter page, see if what they’re saying interests you and decide whether or not to follow them back. There’s no rules on Twitter, and don’t worry if someone gets offended because you don’t follow them back – they’re probably not the kind of friend you want anyway!

I like to think of it as newscasters: I watch the news on TV, so I’m kind of “following” the newscaster. However, the newscaster wouldn’t bother following me, because I’m not doing anything newsworthy. (At least, I hope I don’t end up on the news!) I’m not offended that the newscaster isn’t following me back, and you shouldn’t be offended if you follow someone who doesn’t turn around and follow you back. Spammers take advantage of guilty feelings.

Spammers On Twitter

Spammers will try to take advantage of you by following you, then hoping you follow them back. If you get a new follower, and their only tweet says something like “Get a Free Macbook Air!” or “Lose Weight Fast!” then they’re probably a spammer. They have automated systems that go out and follow thousands of people in the hope that a few will follow ‘em back just out of guilt. Don’t get suckered into it – all they’re trying to do is push advertising tweets into your Twitter stream.

Over time, Twitter has gotten better at trying to catch these types of spammers before they get too far. There’s a limit now that you can’t follow more than 2,000 people because the spammers were just trying to follow everybody, and taking the Twitter server down. Speaking of which…

What’s the Fail Whale?

When Twitter’s servers get overloaded, they show a cute picture of a bunch of birds trying to lift a whale out of the water. This is more load than the birds can handle, obviously, so they’re going to fail.

When you see the Fail Whale, it’s time to take a break from Twitter for an hour or two. Something big is happening, and Twitter’s going to take a little while to recover from the pressure. This seems to happen during major events like earthquakes or when Twitter gets mentioned on TV.

The Fail Whale was created by artist Yiying Lu.

Using Twitter to Update Facebook

If you use FaceBook, you can have Twitter automatically update your status on Facebook whenever you post a tweet. It’s free – just go to the Facebook Twitter application setup page, log in, and give it your Twitter information. Facebook will ask if you want to update your status automatically whenever you post a tweet, and you’re all set!

If you use more social networking services like Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace, Friendster and so on, then consider using Ping.fm to update your status. When you post a message on Ping.fm, it automatically posts that message across all of your social networking sites.

Ping is only used for posting, not for reading, so it may not make sense at first. Here’s how I use it: when I sit down at my computer in the morning, I post a message on Ping.fm saying what I’m up to today. That way, the message goes across all my social networks. Then I go into Twitter, and I use Twitter as I normally would. When something really big happens, like if I get news that I want to share with everybody on all my networks, then I’ll go back into Ping.fm and post another message, but otherwise I only go there when I’ve got something important to say and need to spread it to all my social network links with ease.

How to Search Twitter

To search Twitter, go to http://search.twitter.com and type in what you’re looking for. It does more than just search, too: it stays on top of hot Twitter topics, things that a lot of people are mentioning.

Twitter Hash Tags (#)

Hash tags or pound signs (#) help to designate topics that people might search for – especially when they want to distinguish the word from a common phrase. In the example above, BrentO (me) tweeted about a conference in Seattle. The problem is that the name of the conference is PASS, which is a very common word. If people just searched for PASS, they’d get results about passing a test, passing a football, passing a policeman at high speed, yadda yadda yadda. That’s why we start certain terms with # tags.

Anytime someone uses the phrase #PASS in their tweet, it will be much easier to find in search.twitter.com than if you just searched for PASS, because the word PASS will bring back all types of match topics – like football passes or people saying they’ll take a pass, etc.. .

Advanced Tip: at search.twitter.com, you can set up an RSS feed for any given search phrase. This helps you stay on top of news when you’re interested in a specific topic. You can also find hot hash tag topics at Hashtags.org, or look up hash tag definitions at Tagref.

“This is slang, not a system function. Twitter doesn’t do anything special if you put in a # phrase.”

#FollowFriday – A Twitter Tradition

On Fridays, people post a tweet that includes a list of other people they think you should follow. If you like following one person, and if they list other people on #FollowFriday, then you might like following those people too. It’s like book recommendations from a friend. Here’s an example:

#TCOT – Top Conservatives On Twitter

Tweets that have #TCOT in them are politically conservative. The #TCOT Report is a web site styled to look like the conservative pundit Drudge Report site, but it’s driven by people who tweet with #TCOT.

Twitter HT means Heard Through

If you found out about something through a Twitter user, and you want to name ‘em by name, you Heard it Through them. This is different than RT, because it usually means you heard it in real life, not over Twitter.

How to Shorten Your Links for Twitter

Twitter posts can only be 140 characters long, and sometimes we want to post longer URLs or post URLs along with a long description. You can shorten long URLs with a service like TinyURL.com or Bit.ly. People aren’t trying to hide or obfuscate their links (usually, anyway) – they’re just trying to cram more info into 140 character “Tweet”

Marking a Tweet as a Favorite

When you hover your mouse over a tweet on Twitter.com, you’ll see a star icon. Click it, and the star will light up, indicating that this tweet is one of your favorites.

Dont let your Real Estate listings be as complicated as your Twitter activities! RealtyGo takes care of all the heavy lifting, by organizing, promoting, categorizing, and offering an easy to use system for the lister of real estate and the end user requesting real estate information and more!

If you have some interesting twitter trivia, please leave a post and share with the rest of the readers. Thank You
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