Now that we’ve established why you want to Tweet and how to get started, let’s talk about how to actually use the service.  As with my first Twitter How and Why post, I’m using examples and explanations that came up while explaining to a non-Twitter friend how to start tweeting.

There are  four main ways of communicating with people and sharing information:

Tweets

Replies

Direct Messages (DMs)

Re-Tweets

Tweets

These are your messages to the world.  In 140 characters or less, use this feature to share links to interesting information you’ve found (breaking news!), share your thoughts on something happening in your life at the moment (“First date tonight! I’m a little nervous!”, or seek information if you have a question.  For example, this morning I tweeted, “I’m looking for new vegetarian food blogs.  What are your favorites?” and I received 10+ responses from my followers and their friends with links to amazing recipes.

To tweet from Twitter’s web interface, enter text in the box under “What’s happening?” and click update.  Done!  Your message has been shared with Twitter and your followers.

This general tweet doesn’t go to any one particular person, but is available in the public Twitter stream and Twitter search results (unless you’ve made your profile private) and to your followers.

If you want to reply to or get the attention of one person in particular, use the @Reply (at-reply) function.

@Reply (At-Reply)

When you want to reply to something someone else has said or make a comment directly at a Twitter user, be sure to include “@username” in the Tweet.  For example, if you want to tweet “at” me, you’d include @doniree in the tweet somewhere, like this:

Wondering what @doniree is doing later.  I’d love to take her out for a glass of wine!

This alerts me that someone has said something directly to me, becomes a link to my profile, and will guarantee my company for the evening (I love wine).  At-replies are public, meaning that anyone who follows you can see this reply to your connection.

Direct Message (DM)

If you want to say something to one particular user without it being a public reply, you’ll use a Direct Message (DM).  You have to be followed by someone to send them a DM, though so keep that in mind if you’re trying to talk to or at someone new.

You can access either the @Reply feature or Direct Message feature to send a message from any user’s profile page; links to both options are on the right sidebar under the heading “Actions.”  Again, note that in order to send someone a DM, they must be following you, and to see the profile of any user, you must either be following them or they must have a public profile.

Retweets

When you find something that one of your users finds interesting,  you have the option to “retweet” that tweet, meaning that you’ll re-post their message to YOUR followers, giving them credit.  There’s a “retweet” button that automatically preserves the original text and simply reposts the original tweet to your followers.  Alternatively, if you want to add context to someone else’s original post, you can copy their text into the post update box with your commentary and simply include “RT @username” before the quoted part.  Being retweeted means your thoughts get additional exposure, and retweeting information you find can be valuable to your list of followers.

These are the four basic ways to communicate using the functions of Twitter’s web interface.  Twitter clients such as TweetDeck, Tweetie, and Twhirl allow additional features, and we’ll delve into those in the next part of this Twitter Why and How series.