By now, you’re either using Twitter already or you’ve at least seen it on Facebook or heard someone talk about it. There’s a great video by Common Craft that explains the concept “in plain English” that you should watch. The video gets the basic concept down, but if you’re like me, you really need to watch how someone uses it to get a better grasp of it. This post is about my way, which is not necessarily the right way. Use what I do and figure out how you could potentially use Twitter.

I have configured Twitter to get instant notifications via SMS on my iPhone (I prefer this instant notification over an iPhone web app like Hahlo). Not everyone uses it this way—I just happen to be a texting fiend. The people I follow to my phone are mostly good friends or people that live in/around Austin so I can be attune to what is going on in my environment. I would go crazy if I got a text when all 150+ people I’m following updated. (If you live anywhere other than the US, there is a 250 incoming message limit on your phone.)

I’m all about not missing a beat when it comes to activity that involves me on Twitter. As such, I like to be notified of any interactions that are occurring with me. Let’s get started.

First, let’s look at what my settings look like in Twitter under Notices:

Some things of note here: 1) “Show me all @ replies” is selected, 2) “New follower emails” are turned on, and 3) “Email when I receive a direct message” is off. This goes back to the way I primarily use Twitter to push info to my phone.

The first option is not configured that way by default, so make sure you go in and change it so you can receive responses to people talking to you. The second is so I can make sure I know who is “friending” me on Twitter (I don’t necessarily have to friend them back). The third is superfluous to me since I get a text when someone DMs (direct messages) me. Some people like to keep this checked so they can keep an archive of their DMs, especially if they tend to include important info better suited for a desktop situation vs. a mobile one (links, street addresses, etc.). I’ll take the +1 email with the new follower because, other than keeping track of the number of people following me, that’s the only notification I get of a follower, but the DM emails are redundant.

Configuring Twitter to show you all @ replies like I have them lets you get your notifications from people talking to you, whether you follow them or not. When their message gets sent to your phone, it will show up like this—the parentheses denoting that you’re not following them:

(username): message

Play around with the rest of the settings to customize your Twitter experience. Again, you might find that you don’t want anything sent to your phone.

Another way to make sure you receive notification of people talking @ you is with tracking. If you want to be notified when people tweet about a specific subject, send

track subject

where the word “subject” is replaced by a word you want to track. I made sure to track “cesart,” my username, just in case people forget to place the @ in front of my name when talking to me. Hopefully your username is unique enough that you can do this. You might not want to track something generic like “internet” or “bill,” especially if you’re having everything pushed to your phone. I also use tracking to follow subjects I’m involved in like “conjunctured.” Tracking is like a Google Alert for the global Twitter feed.

There is of course way more than that to Twitter and I’ll most likely be writing about it later. ‘Til then, check out the Twitter Help section to answer questions. I’ve used it before and it’s actually really helpful (imagine that). Tweet away!