What is Twitter? Part 1:
How to Work and use Twitter!

Twitter can help drive traffic to your website, get your website noticed, read and get customers.

What is Twitter? Twitter is a fabulous social networking tool and can help you to improve your customer service, promote events and create new contacts in your industry. This is a four part series where we can introduce some techniques you can use to make that happen.

Twitter has recently become more and more popular with the general public, celebrities and with big business – 2009: The Year on Twitter. Anyone can use Twitter friends, family, co-workers and business.  In the UK the comedian, actor and writer Stephen Fry is one of the most famous and popular Twitter users.

But why and how does Twitter work?

My Exact words were "FOLLOW ME, ON TWITTER" NOT on your Triumph!

The more successful Social Networking websites have something that makes them different from the rest, Twitter is no different, in it’s simplest form it is a small blog – a Microblog.  (For information on Blogs and Blogging). To connect to Twitter you only need to have an Internet connection or a mobile phone.

What Twitter Can Offer!

• Real Time News Channel
  The big news corporations all use Twitter to update followers.  See BBC, SkyNews, CNN
• Status Update
  Similar to Facebook, Twitter has Status Updates, but unlike Facebook these updates can be viewed in lots of differents places.
• Dynamic Accessible Chat Room
  You can follow and join in with new conversations immediately without needing permission.
• Instant Social Messaging
  Possible to have a real time conversations on your computer or on your phone.
• Connect with Audience
  Twitter allows you to choose people with similar interests and chat.  These interests could be personal, a company or a brand.  You can promote events to people who choose to follow you or improve your customer service by engaging customers and finding solutions.
• Information Tool
  By following the right thought leaders in your industry or interest you can gain access to new articles, case studies and news just by following their links or retweets.

  See Twitter for Business for more commercial Twitter tips.

Twitter’s User Features

These are the basic features of a Twitter account.

MicroBlog – Tweets

Instead of a normal blog, Twitter users can send a maximum of 140 characters in each update called a “tweet”, which are very similar to a mobile (cell) phone text message.  It is possible to post as many tweets as you like and can have real time conversations with people.

Followers (Your Subscribers)

Other Twitter users called “Tweeters” can follow your updates, they follow you to see what you are writing and what your interests may be.  If you like tennis and send updates about tennis to Twitter, another person who likes tennis may follow you as you have a common interest.  If you don’t want people to follow you, it is easy to block people or make your updates private rather than public.

It is polite to follow people who follow you.  Depending on your motivation for using Twitter adding more followers can be a very powerful tool see Twitter for Business.

Following (You Subscribe)

If you like another person’s updates you can follow them, this does mean when you begin to follow an individual you will receive their updates and you can send them direct messages.

Direct Messages

It is possible to send a private message/tweet if someone is following you, this message can only be viewed by the receiver and is not on public display.  It is good practise to welcome or thank someone for following you via direct messaging.

Retweets

Retweeting is how Twitter users share interesting Tweets from the people they are following.  If you see a Tweet you like from another user it is possible select Retweet and send it again.  Once sent again the Tweet will have RE at the beginning meaning it’s a retweet.

@Replies

Replying to updates you have received is fundamental in Twitter.   Once you receive an update from another user you can hit reply, which adds the users name in the update bar.  You can then write your message and send.  This is a public reply unlike the Direct Message.

Link (URL) Shortening Services

You may have noticed that the links in Twitter are short, this is because you are limited to 140 characters so the shorter the url(link) the better. To get these short links you have to join a url shortening service where they transform the url. There are plenty of services out there, my current favourite is www.bit.ly just because it has less letters than www.tinyurl.com for example. These are free and they also offer other services such as tracking. For more information on these services see Twitter tools.

Above I have explained the basics of Twitter, follow this link to Part 2 to learn how to use these functions get started and find more tools, in How do you Twitter?  (Twitter Series Part-2).

If you would like to follow me Brian Cee click any of the Twitter logo’s on this page or @BrianCee1