So what is that star thing on Twitter and what does it do?

There seems to be a lot of food truck owners who haven’t really explored favoriting tweets or at least don’t see much value in starring tweets of others so here’s a quick intro to one of the most overlooked little gems of Twitter.

Favoriting TweetsWhat is a Favorite?

There is a small star under each tweet that allows you to favorite a tweet.

Everything else is open for interpretation and there lies the main problem. It isn’t readily apparent why a mobile food operator would use this. Is this a bookmark or a high five?

Favoriting Tweets: How to use them

The standard disclaimer applies: There isn’t a wrong way and this isn’t an exhaustive list.

Method 1: Save a tweet for later.

As a busy food truck owner knows keeping an eye on your twitter feed and reading the links that show up in it during the day can be a difficult task. Favortiing can help you save a link that you’d like to read but you don’t have time at that exact moment to digest the entire article. You can favorite the tweet so you can easily find it later and read it when it’s more convenient.

To see your favorited tweets just visit your Twitter profile and click on the Favorites tab.

Method 2: Show appreciation (give a little Twitter high five)

This is the method some owners I have spoken with prefer because it allows them to show appreciation to someone for their tweet without retweeting it. In my view, a retweet is for others whereas a favorite is for you and the author of the tweet.

Method 3: Create a “Reviews” archive

This is a great method for food truck owners- Favorite a tweet when someone says something nice about your product or customer service. You can use these tweets in the future on promotional displays, real and digital, and it’s a quick way to show off your positive user feedback.

Method 4: Create an archive of tweets

Twitter search is not quite as handy as most would like so if you want to create a searchable archive of tweets you can get the rss feed of your favorited tweets and plug it into Google Reader. Nifty huh?

Monitoring who is favoriting tweets from your truck

There are a couple of ways to see when someone favorites your tweets. The first 2 are the most common and the last 2 are my favorite.

1) Twitter.com now includes mentions in the tab formally known as mentions. Just make sure to uncheck the “Show mentions only” checkbox.

2) Tweetdeck will also display favorites in your replies tab.

3) Boxcar iPhone App – This app is how to get push notifications for everything Twitter. Its faster and more reliable, supports many services and comes with settings to set quiet times, sound notifications, and much more. Part of that more is the ability to get a push notification when someone favorites your tweet. It’s free and awesome. Visit Boxcar.io for more info.

4) Favstar.fm – A quirky but very useful service built completely around favorite Tweets. Authorize your twitter account to see who favorites your tweets.

So, do you favorite tweets? How do you use them for your mobile food business?

If this article encourages you to give them a try let us hear from you, or tweet this article and we might just favorite it.