Guide to Twitter

Duncan ColmanDigital Marketing Consultant

What is Twitter?

•Twitter is a unique method of communication : anyone can speak to anyone

•Microblogging (140 characters) platform with lightning word of mouth capability

•3.21% of the social media market (source: Hitwise UK)

•Great for mobile use

How does Twitter work?

•You create 140 character messages that can include website links, image links or hash tags.

How does Twitter work?

Profile (a) Profile (b)

Profile (c)

Profile (d)

Profile (e)

Follows

•You follow people (friends, famous people, companies, colleagues…anyone!) which creates your ‘timeline’.

How does Twitter work?

Profile (a) Any profile

Profile (c)

Profile (d)

Profile (e)

Mentions

•By adding a username to a tweet you can publicly ‘mention’ or talk to any individual.

Seen by

Profile (b)

How does Twitter work?

•All tweets can be seen internationally by any profile.

•Content can be found by searching or clicking on the hashtagged ‘trends’

Trending (#)

•By prefixing characters with a hashtag within a tweet you create a searchable ‘trend’ that can be used to identify threads of discussion, gossip, company info and hot topics.

Retweets

• A retweet is where someone forwards on a tweet to their followers.

• This is the major ‘sharing’ action on Twitter.

• Twitter’s API has led to retweet buttons being created and syndicated out all over the web.

Messages (DM’ing)

•Messages (direct messages or ‘DM’) are effectively email communications.

•You can only send a message to someone where you follow then and vice versa.

Free applications for large scale use

•Hootsuite.com is a great system for automated tweets

•Tweetdeck.com (recently acquired by Twitter) is powerful for keyword / trend monitoring

•Hootsuite.com is a great system for automated tweets

Business use

•Powerful customer service

•Traffic generation

•Everyday communications

•One to one marketing

Thank You!