Tweetese: Decyphering Twitter’s Secret Language

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This space, for the next several Fridays, will focus on Twitter as a marketing tool.

Why You Hate Twitter

Twitter has a large user churn rate (accounts that get started and then cancel) and at least as many accounts that were started and then abandoned. As a consultant, Twitter is the most difficult Internet social media tactic to explain. As a strategist, it’s the most difficult to sell. As a user, it’s the most difficult to read. And last I checked, not a single yellow Rosetta Stone box offered help.

Twitter Stweetegy: How to Read and Write in Tweetese

Twitter’s signature 140-character limitation has created a new language. At first glance, it’s more difficult to grasp than Latin-based language and it looks like it came from web programmers, which is off-putting for those of us who think and speak in words.

Here’s what you need to know:

Tweet – A post. Also used in verb form, i.e. “I can’t wait to tweet about this event.”
@ – Prefaces a public reply. “Hey, everyone, this person and I are talking!”
D – Prefaces a private reply. Only available between people who are “following” each other. If no mutual follower relationship exists, the public (@) reply is the only 1:1 communication option. The Direct message is a bit of a joke. When your follower base reaches a certain size, this function is associated with spam. Better to send an email, a note via Facebook or, if you remember how to work the contraption, a phone call.
RT – Re-tweet. The essence of social capital on this network. I liked what this person posted so much that I am going to share it with all of you and give her credit. Strategic use of Twitter includes constructing your posts so that they will be re-tweeted. A little later, we’ll give you the formula for this. Because, as in other media, content remains king here, the quality and value of your post is the primary concern; our formula optimizes your character use and, therefore, retweet potential.
# - “Hashtag.” The conversation on Twitter is broad and uncontrolled. Adding a hashtag before a term places your post within a conversation of other, similarly-focused posts and users. A complete list of hashtag terms is maintained at http://hashtags.org/tags.
An industry of URL shorteners has sprouted. The current de facto market leader is www.bit.ly. These services integrate with tools and provide websites that shorten the length of website links. For obvious reasons, this becomes essential for Tweets. The process, for better or worse, disguises the actual website name. So, www.HanberyMarketing.com can appear as http://pd.am/uT or http://tinyurl.com/y99b5t5 or any number of other ways depending on what service you use (they’re all free). We’ll go in depth into URL shorteners in another post.

Now, see if you can make sense of this Tweet:

@DougGrebenc @StacieCisco RT @MPIRandyC: #MPI Social Media Goes Hyper #eventprofs #meetings #assnchat http://ow.ly/otwL

Here, the poster (me), is publicly recommending Randy’s article to Doug (Audio/Visual Account Exec) and Stacie (Event Planner), which Randy had previously posted and branded into three focused conversations (eventprofs, meetings and assnchat). Randy’s Twitter username, or what I call his “handle (My grandparents were CB junkies. Shout if you know anyone who ever owned a CB.),” is MPIRandyC. Randy Crabtree is a thought leader for Meetings Professionals International. (I’m not an MPI member, just a fan. Help us Keep America Meeting!)

Preview

Another of Twitter’s peculiarities is the prevalent use of third party applications and websites as intermediaries. We’ll start hitting these next Friday in this space.