Twitter: What and how? by True Digital

TwitterWhat you can do and how you can do it

What is Twitter?

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What is Twitter?

• Twitter is not just about people telling other people what they had for breakfast

• But it can be if you want

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What is Twitter?

• Being on Twitter doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be friends with celebrities

• But you can try

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What is Twitter?

• Twitter isn’t going to take up all of your time• But it might if you let it

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What is Twitter?

• Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets (Wikipedia 26/03/08)

What is Twitter?

• Like other Social Media tools (facebook, youtube, blogs) twitter works two ways

1. You can view content created by others

2. You can create content for others to view

• On Twitter this ‘content’ is made up of 140 character tweets (vitally these characters can provide links to images, video, and WebPages)

• Like other Social Media tools you can just use it one way, but it works best if you do both

What is Twitter?

• So…

• Twitter is a service or a tool

• It’s up to you what you do with it

• What is actually possible is dependent on the users of the service

What can I do with Twitter?

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• Be Entertained

• Follow updates from celebrities such as Russell Brand, and Britney Spears


• See what your friends are doing

• See where they are

• Find likeminded people

•Be Social


• Get the Latest News

• Don’t wait for journalists to write up the story, get the latest from the people at the scene as it happens

• News of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and the US Airways Plane landing on the Hudson River, both appeared on Twitter before anywhere else


• Get Information

• Follow people who share the information you neede.g. follow people in Digital and get a constant stream of the information relevant to you

• Of course you could look for it all yourself, but why waste hours searching when there are thousands of people doing it for you?


• Get more specific Information

• Use twitter search to find tweets on the specific topic you wante.g. Search: augmented reality


• Get Even more specific Information

• Ask the people of twitter a question


• What can Brands do?

• See what people are saying about the Brand

• Broadcast messages to their audience (but ensuring not to spam)

• Speak directly to the audience

How do I get started?

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• Simple, just go to www.twitter.com

• Pick a username

• Fill out the info so people know what to expect from your tweets

• Now you have a Twitter account


• Now you need to find some people to follow

• You can search for people you already know by searching their names and by importing email lists

• Then there are various way you can find people who are saying things that interest you• Search your interests at Twitter Search• Twitter Directories such as WeFollow • Find someone talking about things that interest you, chances are they

will be following similar people, so check out who they follow• Twitter recommendation services like Mr Tweet


• View Tweets

• Now you’ve picked some people to follow, every post they make will be delivered in your Homepage feed

• See someone talking rubbish? No problem you can simply click a button to unfollow


• Send Tweets

• Now it’s time for your contribution• Share what you want with the world but putting your 140

characters in the box at the top• If what you put is worth reading people will start following you• Want to Share a link? Be sure to shorten it at somewhere like

tinyurl.com so you don’t go over your 140 limit

How to use the features

• That’s the basics• But to really interact with Twitter you need to learn a few more

things


• Reply to Tweets

• You can reply to any tweet you see on Twitter, just click on the reply arrow located bottom right of their tweet

• Your reply is public and identified by having ‘@username’ at the beginning on the tweet

• If you don’t want it to be public you can send the user a Direct message


• Re-tweet

• See a tweet you like, then you might want to tweet it yourself• This is called re-tweeting, and convention is to credit the user

by starting your tweet with ‘RT@username’


• You can see any replies to your tweets in the @Replies section

• If you want to see if anyone has Re-tweeted any of your tweets you need to search ‘@yourusername’ in Twitter Search

What else should I know?

• When people are sending tweets about or from certain events or about specific topics they put ‘#location’ or ‘#topic’ at the end of their tweet. This saves on characters and helps people find information via Twitter search

• There are various ways you can Tweet and view Tweets• Via the Twitter website• Via various Twitter clients• Via Text message• Via Phone application

• Twitter clients can improve the Twitter experience• Login to several accounts at once• Re-tweet with a click• Create various feeds to help filter content• Get stats on who follows your links• Shorten URLs automatically

What’s next for Twitter?

• Twitter needs to find a way to transfer its success into financial success

• Brands need to experiment to see what can be done with Twitter

• The uses of Twitter are all dependent on its users, as new and different users join the service new and different possibilities will arise

• As more people use the internet on their mobiles, the possibilities will expand. Geolocation could be incorporated into Twitter (this is already available on iphone applications such as Twinkle)

Business

Twitter: What and how? by True Digital