Amadeus Consulting Discusses: A Quick Intro to Twitter

Almost everyone has heard of Twitter™, but what is it and how do you use it? This article covers some of the basics of using Twitter and provides some advice on using Twitter for your business or as part of a promotional campaign.

Tiny Expression

Twitter is often called a "micro-blog." This is because it lets users freely share thoughts and ideas, but limits each post to 140 characters. This limit was originally designed around the SMS (text message) limitations on your phone which is restricted to 180 characters, because it allows users to upload and receive texts by phone as well as through the Internet.

Each post is called a "Tweet," and there are thousands of people "tweeting" each second. To help you sort through it all, Twitter lets you "follow" other users so that only the tweets from people you follow are displayed. It is still possible to view tweets from other users and to search through all public tweets.

Twitter also follows the "opt-out" approach to privacy, which means that Tweets are public by default. This is often seen as one of the benefits of Twitter because users generally understand that everything on Twitter will be public before they post anything. However, it is possible to make all your tweets private, and to privately message other users.

Twitter for Business Use

Twitter is largely populated by individual users, though media companies, governments and businesses also have a large presence. It is important to remember that a mere presence on Twitter will accomplish nothing. This is not a fan site where you declare your loyalties, but a place to interact and share information. As a business, it is up to you to determine how you want to represent yourself and interact with your customer base.

The main challenge of a business twitter account is attracting enough followers. For example, Southwest Airlines and Delta Airlines both provide essentially the same service, however Southwest has managed to attract 1.1 million followers, where Delta has only 131,000.

Mixing engagement, incentives, customer service, and promotion can be a tricky task in such a public setting and so it is important to understand that Twitter is a long-term commitment and nothing will be gained if it is only viewed as a single campaign or a single tactic in your social media marketing strategy.

To break it down, it is often said that only about 20% of tweets should be self promotional, and the other 80% should be a mix of discussion, interaction, news, and updates relevant to your market. Of course, this can be adjusted depending on your product or audience, but the idea is that you should be providing enough content and incentive to attract people, rather than just spewing ads which tends to scare people away.

Communication: The ‘@'

Communication on Twitter is fairly straightforward even though you are limited on space. The best way to understand it is to look at your favorite brands, people, or similar companies and see how they are talking on Twitter.

However, there are also a few tricks that can help you get noticed and be involved in the community.

The first of these is the @ sign, which lets you mention individual users. By placing an @ sign before a name, it will create a link to their profile (and their tweets). For example, you can type @AmadeusTech to mention Amadeus Consulting.

Hash Tags: #

The term ‘Hash Tag' describes a method for tagging different words or topics that have a common theme. This is done by placing a hash mark, #, directly in front of the word you want to tag.

This can be used to explain the tweet, or to tie it to a larger issue, or make it easily findable by others. For example, events often have a dedicated hashtag so that attendees and fans can keep track of what is being said.

You can add a hashtag to any word you want, and doing so creates a link to every other tweet that has used the same hashtag.  This lets people easily converse about similar topics even though they may have not ever previously met.

URL Shorteners

Since each tweet is limited to 140 characters, it is often challenging to include links because they take up space. For example, if you wanted to direct people to an interesting blog about twitter search you might give them the URL http://blog.amadeusconsulting.com/using-twitter-more-effectively/ which takes up 48 characters.

Or you could use one of many free services that offer URL shortening and share a link in only 20 characters which would look like http://bit.ly/bTzCvN. These provide a very short URL which then redirects the user to another URL. In this example I used a service called Bit.ly (http://bit.ly), but there are many others including services by Google™, Facebook, and Twitter. Each of these also allows you to track how many times a link was clicked, which can be useful for monitoring the impact of certain messages and social media analytics.

There is not a real difference in which link shortening service you use, though some will shorten links a bit more than others, which can be important if you are crammed for space. These are easy to use and can be accessed through their website, or through the Twitter page itself.

Going Deeper

Twitter has many other more advanced features, which let you post video, pictures, and organize your searches and favorite users. There are also many third party platforms that help you keep everything straight.

In short, Twitter is a very powerful tool for sharing thoughts and information, building brands, engaging communities, and motivating people to action. Becoming a part of the community is more than creating an account, and requires that you be involved. It takes time, but the payoff can be tremendous.