Some basic Twitter terminology

• Tweet: When you post or write your 140 characters on Twitter and hit send it’s called a tweet or tweeting.
• Handle: That’s your Twitter name @ducttape—balance short with descriptive and no matter what your business handle is get your personal name if you can even if you don’t plan to use it right now. It’s like your URL and will have value someday.
• Follow: This is simply the act of adding someone to your list of people you are following—this makes their tweets show up on your home page.
• Replies: This is what it is called when someone writes a tweet directly at your handle—@ducttape cool post today blah blah—this is often an invite to engage with a follower.
• Retweet: This is a tactic of republishing someone else’s tweet—the original tweet along with author stays intact, but you are basically showing someone’s tweet to your followers—many people find this a great way to add content and acknowledge good stuff from the folks they follow.
• DM: This is a message that is sent directly to another user. They must be following you for you to DM them, but this is a very useful tool for private messages and generally a good choice when you start going back and forth with someone on something your entire base of followers might not find interesting.
• Hashtag: This is a way people categorize tweets so that others might use the same tag and effectively create a way for people to view related tweets—it will look something like #marketing—more on this in search.

     Source: Let’s talk, Social Media for small busniess, version two (John Jantsch) e-book