Welcome to the Twitorial – get it?

Twitter.
Twitter is being used by news organizations across the world to deliver information, ask very specific questions
of the community in order to engage the community – known affectionately in journo-world as crowdsourcing –
and has become an important tool for breaking news and aggregation.

The basics:
A tweet is a message you send out to followers in a timeline. OK, wait what?

Tweet: A message/sentence/small graf in 140 characters or less. Characters include letters, punctuation, spaces
and so on. This explanation was done in more than 140 characters.

Followers: As you will see on your Twitter homepage, a follower is a person who follows you. Go figure. If
you follow me, you will see all my tweets on a timeline, which is where all the tweets appear. It’s quite simple
really.

This is
me.
Pretty
cool,
eh?

This is a timeline. I
am following these
people, who are
tweeting.

Hashtag: A hashtag (#) is similar to a tag in a news story, or a keyword. For instance, if I tweeted and used the
hashtag: #Elyria, #Lorain, #music #kellyisawesome, anyone who clicked on those as they appear in a timeline,
or searched those words would see your tweet in a search database.
In Twitterverse, there are certain days where people tweet certain things associated with a hashtag. For instance,
#FollowFriday is done when a person wants to share with their followers who they believe is worth following. I
usually #FollowFriday people in the Journal Register Company (#JRC), ideaLab (#JRCidealab), The Morning
Journal (@MorningJournal) and reporters here.
Mondays are #MusicMonday, where a person can tweet about a favorite band or song. This is important when
entertainment reporting.
@replies: On a timeline, you will often see the @-symbol. For instance, @Scot_Allyn, @Newspaperguy,
@Kelly_Metz, @Megan_Rozsa, @Taylor_Dungjen and so on. This is a direct link to that person’s profile, or if
you want to include them in your tweet, they will see it. It’s technically called a mention, because I will see that
you mentioned me.

Trending topics: As you can see from the side of the page, there is a list of trends. Those are the top tweeted
topics as identified by hashtags. Sometimes they are phrases, like #whenIwasakid or #thisiswhyI and people
write a tweet in order to be part of the Twitter trending topic list. A trending topic is also generated not only by
hashtags, but also by words that appear in a tweet that are already trending topics.

Lists: A list is created by people who only want to see certain people. It’s kind of high school clichs, in that
rather than see every single person who you follow, you separate them in groups based on importance to you. I
am on 20 lists, which means I am probably somewhere on the popularity chain of a band geek or newspaper
editor – compared to someone like The New York Times who is like the quarterback who dates the head
cheerleader.

Retweet: A retweet, or RT, is when someone tweets exactly the same thing you tweeted. The difference is their
followers will see it, and that will eliminate any audience you might be missing. This may have some overlap,
but in general it is really about getting the information out to a wider audience. You can retweet at your
discretion – but it is highly encouraged to always retweet (RT) The Morning Journal main account
(@MorningJournal) in order to drive more Web traffic. This can be anything from breaking news to any feature
stories running.

It’s important to drive traffic back to a website. A tweet is kind of like a headline and cutline into one package.
So, you give some keywords, a small description and link the person back to a full story or somewhere they can
find more information.

Examples: Power outages reported all over Lorain: http://bit.ly/9lQiMQ Are you without power? Treat all
intersections like a four-way stop.

See that funny link? The bit.ly? That is a shortened link – made especially for micro-sharing sites like Twitter.
You achieve this by copying a full link, going to bit.ly, pasting the full link in a box and shortening the link.
Copy the shortened link and paste into your tweet box, KEEPING IN MIND, you still only have 140 characters
to get your point across.
This not only shows someone how to directly get some more information, but drives web traffic.

Suggestions
Tweet every headline
Tweet sneak previews
Tweet reviews, Web exclusives
Ask people to rate or review things – this could be generated into a new feedback section.
When crowdsourcing, make sure to ask specific questions