While blogs are solitary in nature, Twitter needs to be done with people. That's what gives it, it's power. That is what makes it fantastic.
The Network is key
What makes Twitter useful is your network. You want to cultivate your Twitter feed to reflect the very people you want to converse with. You want to find your people. The people that make you the best "you" you can be.
This is your personal learning network. Giving people a list of people to follow is just a list. What you need to do is go through the act of actually building the network, that is how you build value.
Stop fetishizing follower numbers. Some people grumble when they are unfollowed. Don't be like that. You should be ruthless in unfollowing people that don't add value to your tweet stream, and likewise you can't blame others for unfollowing you when you don't add value to their stream.
“When it comes to followers, don’t be impressed by gaudy numbers. This is a situation where quality is more important than quantity.”
Anatomy of a Tweet
There is a surprising amount of depth hidden in 140 characters.
The Reply
Clicking on the reply tab automatically populates a new tweet with the first character being the Twitter handle of the Tweet being replied to.
This allows for a semi private conversation between the person tweeting and the author of the original tweet.
Anyone who follows BOTH parties will see the tweet in their timelines. others not following both will not
I like this option during a tweetchat so I don't flood my followers' timelines with all of my chat tweets. If they are interested they need to follow the hashtag and then they will see all of the tweets.
The Retweet and the Quote Tweet
The next skill to learn is the Retweet and the Quote Tweet. The retweet is one of the original Twitter options and it is a way to broadcast a tweet to your entire follower list. I typically do this when I see a particularly useful tweet or something that I feel needs further amplification.
Quoting a tweet is way to acknowledge the original tweet and add additional context or context. See below:
You see this Tweet and click on the RT or quote Tweet option.
Notice how both Tweets are visible...
For more information on using retweets and quotes look at Conversation, for more on hashtags go to Focus. Or go to straight to the Activity.