July 13, 2011 10:15 AM
Tea Party Patriots: How to use Twitter
Contrary to media propaganda, the Tea Party is not a top-down but a completely grassroots coalition of people who want to see our government reformed and reined in by the Constitution.There are many different organizations which contribute to the flow of information among those of us identified with the Tea Party. Tea Party Patriots is one of several I subscribe to.
From yesterday's email - I thought this might be helpful for some still struggling with the World of Twitter. while I have my blog set up to feed to my Twitter account, I just have not had the time to explore Twitter, so this was very helpful:
Read more and/or subscribe at Tea Party Patriots.
We the Tweeple
Have you noticed that it is nearly impossible to email your Congressman these days? You have to go through web forms, enter personal information, and on and on to send an email. If you want to send a simple message, there are faster ways, and ones that the Congressmen actually read: Facebook Wall Posts and Twitter. Most of you are already familiar with Facebook Wall Posts, so we will not dwell on that, except to say that you may have to "friend" or "like" the Congressman or Senator to be able to post on their wall.
Twitter, for a lot of people, is an enigma. It is strange, has all these "#" signs and people seem to talk in code. Well, we are here to decode it for you so you can message your Congressmen and Senators directly.
First, you need a Twitter account. Go to http://twitter.com and fill out the form on the right of the page with your name, email, and password, to get an account. When you are filling out the forms, let your twitter id be public rather than private. This is important, because when you do tweet your Congressman and Senators, your tweets will be available for the world to see. If people search for your Congressman, they will see how many people are telling them what they want to happen in government. If you want to have a private account for family and friends, then set up a different account for that purpose.
So now I have an account, but what is a "tweet" anyway? Well, it is a small snippet of information that is only 140 characters or less. So, it has to be a short sentence of thought. It seems crazy that people can communicate in such small pieces of information but it really works. It is similar to sending text messages from your phone. However, rather than sending them to one particular person privately, you are allowing the world to see them.
When you jump into Twitter, it is like jumping into a stream or river of information. There is a lot of noise flowing around you and, if you listen hard, you can hear a particular noise or pattern of noise. Just like if you are in the woods by a river, if you listen hard, you might notice there is a deer nearby, drinking from the river.
To "hear" a particular sound on Twitter, people use "hashtags," which are words with the pound symbol before them. Here are a few examples:
#tpp - Tea Party Patriots
#toct - Top Conservatives on Twitter (which helped launch the Tea Party movement)
#sgp - Smart Girl Politics (which helped launch the Tea Party movement)
#TeaParty - generic for Tea Party followers
#stopthebleeding - Tea Party Patriots' hashtag for our Passion to Action plan this week, to get Congress to stop the out of control overspending in DC.
If you want to send a message to a particular person, like your Congressman or a Senator, you can use the @ symbol, followed by the username (with no spaces between the @ and username), to send a message directly to that person. So, if you want to tell Speaker Bohener and Senator Reid to stop the out of control spending, you would type @speakerboehner and then the message you want to send. If you want to tell Jenny Beth something directly, you would type @jennybethm and type the message to her.
It's so important for each of us to get involved as much as possible and to inform ourselves and communicate to our family, friends and neighbors the hope for a better America.
Posted in Activism, Conservatism, Conservative resources, Tea Party USA | Permalink
