Promoting Through Twitter

You have probably heard of Twitter, or you might even already have a profile on the social media site, but do you know how to use it effectively? Twitter can be a great way to promote your team and its sponsors while building your fan base. In this series of articles, we speak with a few Twitter experts for some of their best tips on how to spruce up your Twitter profile. But first, here a few facts and myths about Twitter and its involvment in drag racing.

Myth 1 - You have to be famous to have a lot of followers. WRONG!
Super Comp racer and Twitter expert Tina Stull has just over 160,000 followers. Compare that to the 16,000-17,000 of NHRA and John Force Racing. NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson has 113,785. Actually, Tina has more followers than just about all of the top NASCAR drivers.

Myth 2 - Twitter is only for useless chatter. WRONG!
Twitter has grown up a lot over the past year. Companies use it to promote their brands. Race teams use it to inform their fans on the latest results or newest sponsor. Fans use it to show their support for their favorite driver or team.

Myth 3 - Twitter is too complex; I don't have time for it. WRONG!
Twitter is extremely simple once you learn the terminology and flow of things. You can spend as much or as little time as you want on it. However, you will be rewarded if you spend more time interacting with your followers and posting entertaining and interesting tweets.


Twitter Dictionary
@ - All Twitter usernames begin with the "at" symbol. When you want to mention someone in your tweet, just type @(insert username here).

Direct Message - Commonly shortened to DM to fit within the 140 character limit, direct messages are tweets between two users, private.

Favorite - When you're favoriting someone's tweet, you're basically saving it in a folder on your profile that includes tweets that you like or want to access easily at a later date. You can favorite by clicking the star that's included in all tweets; it will turn yellow.

FF - This stands for Follow Friday. On Fridays, users will send out tweets with multiple usernames of people that they think you should follow. These tweets will include the #FF hashtag.


Follow - To follow someone is to subscribe to their tweets. Their tweets will appear in your timeline, but your tweets will not appear in their timeline. To follow someone, click the "Follow" button on their profile.

Follower - A follower is someone that subscribes to your tweets. The opposite of following someone; your tweets appear in their timeline, but you don't see their tweets in your timeline unless you follow them back.

Handle - A user's username and URL is also known as their handle. For example, our Twitter handle is @TopAlcoholNews www.twitter.com/topalcoholnews

Hashtag (#) - The hashtag, AKA pound symbol, is used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet. When someone enters a hashtagged word or phrase in the search area, all tweets that have that hashtag will show up. For example, if you wanted to look for tweets about the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series (LODRS), you would search #LODRS or include that in your tweet about a LODRS event.

Lists - You can create lists of the people that you follow to keep up with a certain group. You could create a list called "Sponsors" and add your sponsors' usernames to that list. When you only want to see tweets from your sponsors, click that list. When you are added to a followers list, you have been listed. Other people on that list are probably similar to you.

Mention - When you mention someone by including their @username in the tweet, they receive that tweet in their "Mentions" box. Example: "Check out the latest driver blog from @BLAKE_FC".

Profile - A page containing information about the user. This includes their hometown, URL, a short bio, their tweets, favorites, following, followers, and mentions.

Protected Accounts - Protected accounts will have a lock symbol next to the username's name. This person's tweets can only be seen when you send them a request to follow them and it is accepted. Tweets from a protected account will not show up in searches. If you think you want a protected account, please go back to the TAN home page and look for another article. Twitter is not for you.

Reply - Replying to someone is giving your input on something that they posted about. When you click the Reply button on a tweet, it automatically puts their @username on the tweet. For example, we will do #TopAlcoholTrivia questions from time to time. If we said "Who is the TAFC driver with the most wins?" you would reply with "@TopAlcoholNews Frank Manzo, duh!".

Retweet (noun) - A tweet from another user, forwarded by someone you follow to all of his/her followers. If TAN driver blog writer Cassie Simonton wanted her followers to see our tweet containing a link to her blog, she would retweet it.

Retweet (verb) - To retweet, retweeted, retweeting. To forward another user's tweet to your followers. You can retweet by clicking the Retweet button on a tweet.

RT - Abbreviated version of retweet. This is usually used when someone manually retweets a tweet by adding RT. This is also used to include your short comments on the tweet. Example: He won the race, too. RT: @TopAlcoholNews Frank Manzo reset the TAFC record and clinched the national c-ship at Reading.

Timeline - Your timeline is where all of the tweets from the people that you follow appear. When you click on a tweet in your timeline, you can choose to reply to it, retweet it, or favorite it. The most recent tweets will appear at the top of your timeline.

Tweet (noun) - A message that contains 140 characters or less. Equal to a status update on Facebook. Tweets can also include links or photos.

Tweet (verb) - Tweet, tweeting, tweeted. The act of posting a message known as a tweet.

Unfollow - To unsubscribe from someone's tweets. Their tweets will no longer show up in your timeline.

Username - Beginning with @, the username is a unique name used to identify users. Usernames must contain fewer than 15 characters, with no spaces. The underscore _ symbol can be used, though.

Verified - A verified account is identified by a small blue circle with a checkmark next to the username. Be careful when following a celebrity if they don't have a verified account. Twitter takes extra measures to make sure that a celebrity or their publicist is really running their account. If a profile has a black checkmark next to it, that person is a celebrity in their own mind.


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