More Twitter Lingo Explained

My coworker Allison has getting been getting into the social media game! If you missed her two excellent articles about Twitter, you should check them out -- the first one is a more general introduction to Twitter and its terminology, and the second gets into more specific examples of how arts organizations have been (and should be!) using Twitter.

There's plenty of Twitter info that didn't make it into the main articles, so I'll be posting some of the "outtakes" from here on the blog. Here's the first!

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Allison Klein, guest blogger:

If you've been listening or have recently started tweeting yourself, you've probably noticed that a lot tweets that have "RT" peppered throughout them. Welcome to the world of the re-tweet.

What?
Abbreviated as "RT," the idea of the re-tweet is really just a way to indicate that you’re quoting another users’ tweet. If you find a tweet to be particularly interesting, full of useful information, or including call to action worth passing along, you may consider re-tweeting it.

How?
To re-tweet something, just copy and paste the content of the original tweet, and precede it with the letters “RT” to indicate that it includes something that you’re re-posting from another user. Follow that abbreviation with "@" and the username of the original tweeter to give them credit. If you that doesn't push you over the 140-character limit, you might also want to include your own comments, but the re-tweet can also stand alone. (And yes, you have to copy/paste -- just typing "RT" will not do anything "automatically" like I thought it would the first time I tried to re-tweet something.)

Why?
I find that re-tweeting comes very naturally -- I don't know about you, but I'm always sending links to useful Web sites or funny videos to my friends and co-workers. Re-tweeting is just the equivalent of this practice in the Twitterverse. So I guess what I'm saying is--why not use it? It's an easy way to become a more regular/active tweeter without having to come up with or find your own content.

PLUS, using the re-tweet is a great way to get a conversation going with another Twitter user that you might not know yet. Once you've re-tweeted them, many people (corporate accounts included) will send a thank you message (via @reply), which you in turn can reply to if you so choose, so it really does serve to help build new relationships on Twitter. You're putting yourself on the original tweeter's radar -- which means that they might very well start following you, and so might some of their own followers. So think of re-tweeting as a good karma measure! The more you re-tweet and give credit to other Twitter users, the more likely they will be to take notice of your tweets and do the same.


Here are a few examples of re-tweets that I've posted recently, so you have an idea of what this looks like and how they may be used.

After seeing Hair on Broadway:

(I didn't happen to catch the performance on Letterman after all, but as a result of my re-tweet, my colleague @seajo did!)


Regarding a giveaway I was missing while out of town:

Notice that this one's a DOUBLE re-tweet: Not only am I re-tweeting the tweet that @NewYorkology posted, but they're re-tweeting the original 'news' story from Twitter user @MidtownLunch. This is how things tend to go a bit viral on Twitter!


You're probably following and being followed by other Twitter folks in your field:

You're bound to come across tweets that will be useful to those followers professionally, so why not re-tweet that content and help get the word out?


I found this original tweet via Twitter search results:

...so I re-tweeted it to spread the word.


And the Atlantic Theater did the same here, when they saw my own tweet reviewing their current show:

I should add that finding out that something you've tweeted has been re-tweeted brings no small amount of pride -- so definitely consider re-tweeting your followers if you want to make them feel good! It also lets them know that you're listening to what they have to say!

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Thanks, Alli!

Hello, my name is _________.

We already talked about WHO should create your organization's Facebook Page; now let's continue on through the process of setting up the Page. There are a few more issues to take into consideration before you dive in. (If you're ready to take the plunge, though, here's a link!)

The first thing to do is to decide on your Page title and decide on your category.


These are the first two pieces of information that you enter, and they're also the two things that you can't edit once you submit them. (If you've created a Page already and you're unhappy with the name or category, you can delete and start over. That should be an option at the top of the "edit Page" page.)

So the name part is obvious: make sure you know whether you want to be the "Lab Theater" or the "Laboratory Theater," and make sure you don't make any typos, either! (A real life example: the first time I tried creating the Patron Technology Facebook Page, I was just testing things out and I named it "patron technology" -- all lower case! I had to delete that version and start over.)

As for categories, here's the list again.

Out of the arts organizations that I'm a "fan" of, it seems that the most popular choice of category is "Non-profit," closely followed by "Museum/Attraction" and "Other Business." I think all of those work perfectly well.

I've been specifically asked what category I recommend for a theater. I have to say, it really doesn't matter. These categories don't exactly DO anything anymore -- the category of your Page used to determine what kind of special features your Page could have, but ever since the big redesign in March, Pages are flexible enough that there's basically no functionality difference between categories.

And here's the real kicker: that category list I linked above is not the same list that you see when you're searching or browsing Fan Pages.

Where's "Museum/Attraction"? Where's "Other Business"? Facebook is inconsistent with their terminology. (The category you end up choosing will show up under your Page title when people are browsing a list, but not on the main screen of your page itself.)

This is all to say: be aware that you're making a permanent choice, but don't worry too much about choosing correctly.

I think maybe some level of consistency through the arts industry might be nice, though. In the comments, let everyone know how you classified your organization! Let others learn from your example (or, you know, copy off of you).