The Newcomers Guide To Twitter is a ten-part series of introductory lessons, tips and suggestions for people using Twitter for the first time. Please share these articles with your friends, family, colleagues and anyone you know who is struggling to “get Twitter”.

So, you’ve studied the basics, chosen the perfect username, setup your profile at Twitter.com, started following some cool people, picked up some followers yourself, wrote some really great tweets and figured out Twitter etiquette. So far, so good. Now, you need to make Twitter part of your life… without making your life part of Twitter.

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A new app called “vs.” from San Francisco-based text analysis specialists OpenAmplify lets you pit any two words against each other to see which is trending higher on Twitter.

The app uses natural language processing to analyze tweets in real time for sentiment, relevance and trends.

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British beer company Brew Dog has combined two of my favorite things in a glorious fusion fit for the digital age: #MashTag, a Twitter beer.

That is, it’s the very first alcoholic beverage inspired and created by users of social media.

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Moms are a key demographic for social media marketers across many industries, with study after study suggesting that mothers, particularly expectant mums, are highly-engaged users of social channels and, critically for brands, often the primary buyer in the home.

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Search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about the quality of your backlinks, right?

Wrong. Not any more. At least, not wholly, as an updated study from those good people at Searchmetrics has revealed just how important social media signals are to a strong SEO ranking, with well-positioned URLs almost always having a high number of Likes, shares, tweets and +1s.

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In February, Twitter announced its first official Ads API partnerships, designed to make it easier and more effective for marketers to create and manage Twitter ads “that are engaging, relevant and useful” for users.

And now the second wave of partners has rolled out. Let’s take a look at who made the cut.

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Our Wednesday series Twitticisms is back, featuring the jocular jests and witty wisecracks of Twitter’s funniest.

Today’s is a special DOMA edition, featuring the funniest Twitter reactions to the Supreme Court’s striking down of a key measure of the Defense of Marriage Act.

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More than three-quarters of U.S. small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are currently using social media as part of their digital marketing arsenal, reveals a new study.

In their The State Of Digital Marketing For SMBs March 2013 report, Vocus and Inc. Magazine discovered that social media marketing is being used by 77.3 percent of SMBs, and almost one-quarter (24.9 percent) rated it as one of the top three most effective tools for their marketing needs.

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In a study titled “The New Normal for News,” Oriella PR Network surveyed more than 500 journalists spanning 14 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US).

The main finding? Digital media is more entrenched than ever before.

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After a red panda went missing from the D.C. National Zoo on Monday, Twitter played a crucial role in locating the animal in a Washington neighborhood later that day.

Read on to learn how.

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