Do You Hear That Tweeting Sound?

Many of us here at Hammock Inc. have known about Twitter (and have been using it) for close to two years now. When we first signed up back then, we weren’t sure what it was, what it would do or where it would go.

Nowadays, you can probably throw a rock out of your window and hit someone who knows at least that it exists; maybe your target is even using it. (But please, don’t throw rocks out of your window.)

Many of us “tweet” as individuals, and Hammock Inc. (@HammockInc) also tweets as a company. (A tweet is your 140-character-or-less answer to the question “What are you doing?” It has also become a verb for Twitter users.) Over the last couple of years, we’ve picked up a couple of tips — from followers and those we follow, and from each other — about making the best of our tweets:

Good conversation goes both ways. Try to avoid simply throwing information out there, but be sure to join in on conversations that are already happening. If someone asks what movie they should see this weekend or what they missed in the latest presidential news conference, take 20 seconds and jump into the discussion.
Check out who your followers are following. I’m following some very smart and funny people that I might not have known to follow on my own. By seeing their conversations with friends and finding out what topics they are interested in, I’ve been able to find some very interesting and thought-provoking folks to follow.
Search. I personally follow 163 people. If they aren’t talking about a subject that I’m interested in or wanting information about on one particular day, it’s very easy to search the whole “twitterverse” to see if anyone else might be. Learn how to use the nifty search feature at Search.Twitter.com to follow keywords.

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Utilize RSS. You can’t (and shouldn’t) be on Twitter 24 hours a day, but that doesn’t mean you have to miss out. Setting up an RSS feed of particular words or people is easy to do. I have a feed that lets me know anytime my username is used, so I never miss an answer to a question or the opportunity to jump back into the conversation.
Be ahead of the news. What you hear on the morning news tomorrow, we found out on Twitter yesterday. That’s not a tip really, but it’s definitely a plus!