Welcome to the third day “6 Day Twitter Traffic”.

Communicate with your network

There are 3 ways to keep in touch with people in your Twitter network.

Public messages are what you type into your updates box.

Replies are tweets with the @ symbol followed by the username of the person you are responding to. For instance, to reply or address a post to me, you would type:

@drmani - Your message here

You can also send private messages to a specific user through the Direct Message feature (it’s on your sidebar). DMs can only be sent to people who follow you, so the bigger your network, the more people you can DM.

You can post messages on Twitter in many different ways.

You can do it from your computer by visiting Twitter’s website, or through several third party applications that run on your desktop. You’ll find a nice list of Twitter tools here

You also have the option to link it to your mobile phone and instant messaging clients, so you can send and receive updates wherever you are.

To get wider reach from your Twitter messages, you can distribute it on other websites and blogs you have using the badges that Twitter makes available to users.

You can grab the code and add it to your blog, forum or website - and your tweets will automatically be displayed there. Visitors who read your Twitter posts can then click on a link there to arrive at your page and follow you.

Your assignment today is to follow another 25 members at least, and then explore the 3 different methods of communicating on Twitter.

Post updates to your account.

Write @ messages to a couple of followers.

And test the DM feature too to see how it works.

Also, please post one message about CHD Awareness Day, like this one:

You can help spread Congenital Heart Defects Awareness. See how you can help: http://www.chdinfo.com/chdaware/youcanhelp.htm

The “CHD Social Media Challenge” is a project to spread Congenital Heart Defects awareness. There are 4 mini-tutorials and 1 firesale making up the ‘challenge’. You can join in and help too - click here to see how.