Let's Tweet

Do you tweet? If you are not on twitter yet, you are missing out on being part of a great quilting world. There's all sorts of quilters who tweet, including a very large modern quilting group.

What it is...
Basically twitter is a way to say something to lots of people all at once. The tweets are limited to 140 characters so this isn't the way to write a book to anyone. And it's in real time. where Facebook is not. You can see what your friends wrote on facebook for days and years, but once you have seen a tweet it's gone.

How it works...
Once you download twitter onto your computer, phone or tablet and set up an account you can start tweeting. You will have to pick a twitter name and hence forth you will be known by that name so choose carefully. Twitter names always begin with an @.

A short note about the actual program. There are several different apps out there that will let you tweet, I suggest starting with the twitter app or program and once you have the hang of it you can look into different apps.

Now that you have a twitter account it's time to start tweeting, but if you tweet right now no one will see it. The only people who will see your tweets are the people who follow you and conversely the tweets you see in your twitter feed are from those who you follow or who directly tweeted you using @yourname in the tweet.

How do you find people to follow and get followers? 1st get a friends twitter name and 1. follow them and 2. tweet directly to them. For instance if you tweet me, I will blast it to my quilty friends on twitter who will then follow you. Then you can look who is following you and decide if you want to either follow them back or block them.

Tweet this "Hi @friendsname this is XYZ from FWMQG!". If you put my twitter name I will make sure my quilty friends say hi and welcome you. My twitter name is @shapernes if you want to start there.

There's also something called a hashtag. It's a word or words typed with no spaces with a # before it. Try searching #quilt or #quilting to see current posts that people have marked with that hashtag. That's why they mark it with the tag, so others can find them. Then click on their picture and read their bio and their past few tweets. This way you'll know if it's someone you want to follow. I tend to not follow stores who tweet about what they have to sell, but that's just a personal preference.

Once you find people just start tweeting. It could be anything you like. My last tweet was "Aww Hubs just walked in with red roses and candy". We also ask questions about quilting or show off our newest creations. It's amazing what conversations I have on twitter. After a while these people aren't strangers anymore, but I don't know that I would go as far as say that they are friends. I like to think of them as my 'tweeples' or friends who live in my IPad.

That's all for now. Don't be afraid to play around with it. You can always tweet me any questions.

Until Next Time,