Digitalist life in the library

Twitter – the next level

Earlier this week my boss started using Twitter. She got herself up and running and then called me in for some help with a few things. Watching her get started made me realise that I needed to revisit my post Twitter - the basics and provide you with some more tips. Now I know it's been done before but there are some folks who read this blog that don't read Mashable and the like. So here goes.

Blocking

When my boss signed up her first follower was someone like "celebritysex101". Clearly if you're going to be presenting yourself in a professional capacity you don't want a follower like this.  So how do you get rid of them?

• Click through to your list of followers from the sidebar of your homepage or profile.
• Next to each follower, who you don't follow yourself, you will see these buttons
• To block a follower it's simple, just click the block button and follow the steps to confirm the action.

Retweeting

I'm finding that as I'm following more people I'm retweeting more and more. The principle is simple - when you see a tweet you like and want to share it with your followers you retweet it. The image below shows an example of a retweet.

Retweeting is easy, all you need to do is copy the content of the original tweet, preceded by RT (so that people know it is a retweet) and the original tweeters username (to give them the credit). If you've got space I always like to add a comment of my own afterwards just to give it a personal touch and show why you are retweeting.

Shortened URLs

When sharing links on Twitter you don't want to eat up your character allowance with a lengthy URL. So why not use a URL shortener such as TinyURL or bit.ly to help you save some space.  All you need to do is copy the original URL, paste it into the box on the site of your chosen URL shortner and hit go.