Many of our Coffee Chat sessions thus far, despite their intended subject, have turned turned into conversations about Twitter. We figured it was high time to bring in experts Danielle Morrill (Director of Marketing at Twilio, and Editor in Chief at Seattle 2.0) and Thu-An Bui (of An Consulting), to demystify the Twitter phenomena for non-users, and to elaborate on features and functions for those with tweeting experience.
WHAT is it, exactly?
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates which are called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in
length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by
default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS aka text messaging) or external applications.
WHY Twitter?
• People are online, talking about you and your business! Twitter helps you to find, measure, and participate in these conversations.
• Twitter encourages one-to-MANY communication as opposed to one-to-one.
TIPS
• Think carefully about how you brand yourself and be transparent. Once something goes live on Twitter it ends up on Google within five minutes. It is extremely powerful, and extremely public.
• Keep business and personal accounts separate. Use a Twitter tool like Tweetdeck, or Twhirl to help manage them.
• Scratch each others’ backs! Follow other users intently, and they will follow you. The more followers you have, the greater the influence of your tweets.
• Twitter messages may be tagged using hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a #, such as #shoes. This enables tweets on a specific subject to be found by simply searching for their common hashtag,
provided that the user has tagged his or her tweet. Meanwhile, the @ sign before a username, such as @example, is used to distinguish a reply directed at that user.
• Publicize and promote your Twitter account whenever you get the chance to. Put a link leading towards your account on all of your other social media profiles, email signatures, and even your business
cards.
Twitter TOOLS
• Tweetscan is a search engine for Twitter that allows you to see what people are tweeting about you.
• Tweetstats allows you to graph your Twitter stats including tweets per hour, tweets per month, Tweet timeline and reply statistics. The free site allows its users to view everyone’s analytics, not just your
own.
• HootSuite enables you to manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success.
Any Twitter success stories out there?
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