Twitter? What, why & how

Twitter 101 – The Basics : 8 November 2010- @bryonycole

What is Twitter? Why do we need it? How do you do it?

a new form of online communication

One -> OneOne -> many

Side by side

...new way of listening

Main features of Twitter

•140 characters•Followers

•Desktop or Mobile

Why use Twitter?

1. market research

2. more contact = more sales

3. Google likes Twitter

Users find great value in connecting with businesses of all kinds on Twitter

1. Share their experience

2. Provide feedback

3. Discuss product ideas

4. Exclusive deals

5. Get customer service

So what does Twitter do for student placement providers?

Online presence, more connections, share information

Before you dive in

• Signing up for an account takes just a few minutes

• To help people recognize and trust your account, fill out your profile completely and include a picture

Getting started is easy

• Following somebody means you’ve subscribed to their tweets

• To find people talking about your company or topics in your field, use search.twitter.com

• When you find a good candidate, look under their picture for the Follow button

• You can also choose to interact without following an account, just send them a tweet

Follow relevant accounts

Post tweetstips / links / thoughts / experiences / respond to questionssay hi / respond to comments / praise / complaints / jokes

more than words...

Retweets

I just heard that Coke is releasing Coke2.0 in November!

Retweets

The Twitter user @benholbrook tweets:

RT @benholbrook I just heard that Cokeis releasing Coke2.0 in November!

You retweet by posting

Hashtags ?

1. Build relationships

2. Leverage the real-time

3. Manage resources

So, 3 tips for best practice

• Listen for comments about you

• Respond to comments and queries

• Ask questions

• Post links to things people would find interesting

• Retweet messages you would like to share

• Use a friendly, casual tone

• Don’t spam people/don’t sell

Build relationships

Leverage real time

Manage resources

Twitter office hours

Automation

Attribution

• To follow somebody is to subscribe to their messages

• A tweet is an individual message

• A DM or direct message is a private message on Twitter

• RT or retweet is to repost a valuable message from somebody else on Twitter and give them credit

• Trending topics are the most-discussed terms on Twitter at any given moment

Key terms

• @username is a public message to or about an individual on Twitter

• A hashtag—the # symbol followed by a term and included in tweets—is a way of categorizing all the posts on a topic

• Shortened URLs. To fit links into the short messages, Twitter shrinks some URLs down automatically

...and some special lingo