How to Make Twitter Work for Your Kick Butts Day Event

By signing up for Twitter, you will be able to view Kick Butts Day announcements from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and connect with other KBD event organizers and youth advocates around the country. It's a great way to let everyone know what you are up to and to find out what other advocates are planning. As KBD approaches, we will also be using Twitter to petition elected state officials to take a stand against Big Tobacco. We'll need your help to make it a success.

Getting started:

• If you don't already have one, sign up at http://www.twitter.com to create your own Twitter account.

• Go to http://twitter.com/KickButtsDay and click "Follow" to start following the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids' official Kick Butts Day Twitter account. "Following" other Twitter users is a lot like "friend-ing" someone on Facebook. To follow a Twitter user, visit their profile page and click on the "Follow" button featured prominently at the top of the page.

Tweeting from your computer

• To send a "tweet" from your computer just go to your Twitter homepage and type your message in the "What's happening" box. Your message must be 140 characters or less.

Tweeting from your phone

• If you haven't already, you can connect your Twitter account to your mobile phone and use your phone's SMS texting function to post tweets to Twitter.com. Simply go to your account "Settings" page on Twitter, select "Mobile", and follow the instructions.

• Once you've hooked up your phone to your Twitter account, you can start sending 140-character tweets to "40404".
  
  Important note: These tweets are SMS text messages that your phone sends to Twitter.com. So if your phone company charges you for sending text messages, you will be charged for tweets as well.
  

Passing along other people's Tweets.

• If you see a tweet worth sharing, you can re-tweet it. Re-tweeting (or "RT") allows Twitter users to share other Twitterers' great tweets with their own followers.
  
  To re-tweet, you have two options:

1. If you want to add your own comments to the tweet, you can go to the "What's happening?" box and type RT @username and then retype the message. This will allow you to modify the message (if you want) and add your own comments. For example:
   
   The Twitter user @KickButtsDay tweets: Only 6 more weeks til KickButtsDay!
   
   You retweet by posting: WOW! Can't wait! RT @KickButtsDay Only 6 more weeks til KickButtsDay!
   
   
2. If you want to retweet the message exactly as it is, just hover over the tweet and click the "re-tweet" option when it appears. The message will then be re-tweeted to all of the Twitter users who are following you.

Hashtags: #KickButts

An important feature of Twitter is the hashtag. A hashtag is a topic with a hash symbol ("#") at the beginning. Twitter hashtags, such as #KickButts, help organize information on Twitter. For example, if you search for the hashtag #recipe, you will find hundreds of tweets containing recipes because the Twitter user identified them as such.

So if everyone decides to put a certain hashtag on tweets, finding tweets about that topic becomes very easy. The more people who use a hashtag, the more likely it is to appear in Twitter's Trending Topics (on the right sidebar of the Web site). If a hashtag makes it into the Trending Topics, all of the users on Twitter can see it!

Hashtags can be inserted anywhere in your tweet. You can tack them on at the end or put them in the middle of your tweet--either ways works!

So remember to always include #KickButts on your Kick Butts Day-related tweets!

How to Post Pictures to Your Twitter Feed

1. Log in to http://www.twitpic.com using your Twitter username and password.

2. From your computer, just go to "upload a photo."

3. To upload a photo from your phone, first log in to twitpic.com on your computer and go to "settings" to find your twitpic upload address. To send a picture from your phone, simply send it to your twitpic address.
   

What Can You Tweet About?

1. Your event planning progress (ie: "Wow! Just collected 1200 shoes for our KBD numbers event! #KickButts" Or "Just chose Tobacco-Free Facilities as our KBD event. Anyone have tips? #KickButts")

2. LiveTweet on Kick Butts Day and let the online world know what your group is doing! On March 24, we are encouraging advocates to tweet live from their events around the country using the hashtag #KickButts. Keep us updated on your progress in real-time. If enough people post live using the #KickButts hashtag, Kick Butts Day could become a "trending topic" on Twitter, which would mean that thousands of people see it!

3. Tweet pictures from the day of the event (and even beforehand, as you are planning your event), using twitpic.

To learn more about Twitter, visit http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries

Getting Noticed

• Register Your Event
• Promote Your Event in the Community
• Promote Your Event to the Media
• Share Your Photos
• How to Make Twitter Work for Your Kick Butts Day Event