The digital world seems to be split into three different Twitter camps: those who are avid tweeters, those who have handles but don’t actively use the platform, and those for which Twitter is still a black box. To the latter two camps, this article is for you.
Many people initially view Twitter as a platform to announce and broadcast what you happen to be doing right now. Hand-in-hand with this misconception is that you read about what other people are doing right now. The question that inevitably follows this notion is, “who cares?” The answer, however, is that over 20 million people do (reported by Mediabistro). And it’s not because they have nothing better to spend their time doing, it’s because they have discovered how Twitter can be a lucrative social and business tool. Here’s why: Twitter is a short-form conversation platform that allows for immediacy and relevancy. This means, unlike Facebook, you do not need to know another user to have a dialogue with them, allowing users to find others based on topic, keyword or name.
An analogy that’s been used before is to liken Twitter to a cocktail party where you are the host. The room (your Twitter handle) is filled with guests (your group of followers and those you are following), some of whom you know and others who have been invited for other reasons (they are friends of friends, acquaintances of coworkers, people you want to get to know, and people who want to get to know you…etc). As the host, you are a social butterfly, going around the room inserting yourself in conversations already taking place and starting all new conversations based on your experience, thoughts and interests. Throughout the course of the party, you’ve made great connections with some of the guests you didn’t know yet based on shared interests, perspectives, or because you just simply like each other. You’ve also formed closer connections to some of the people you already knew. At the end of the party, you had fun, expanded your network, learned a few things and introduced others to your experiences and perspectives.
This is what happens if Twitter is used correctly.
For brands, Twitter is a powerful channel to offer insights, connect with your customers, form relationships with partners, showcase product and expand your brand identity.
For individuals, Twitter can be equally as lucrative. Whether you are looking to remain relevant, stay up to date on information, network, job hunt, get tips and advice or establish yourself within an industry, Twitter can help.
Here’s how to get started and make the most of the platform:
1. Choose a Twitter name (it’s called a handle) and set up your profile. You can add 140 characters about yourself, insert a picture and add a background if you like.
2. Start following those who interest you. When you follow someone, you are listed on their profile as one of their followers. The same applies when people begin to follow you. Unless you have a protected account, your tweets can be seen by anyone (and vice versa). Your followers, however, will get to see your tweets in their twitter feed. The people you follow will appear in your timeline when they post something.
You can also create “lists” and access the lists that others have created. This helps to segment users based on the categories you choose. For example, you may create a list of “emerging designers” or you may access someone else’s list of “fashion bloggers” to start following them. As a general rule, most people like it when they have a lot of followers, but you may want to be more selective with who you choose to follow (if you follow too many people, your timeline may not necessarily be as useful or as easy to keep up with).
3. Tweet. This means you use the space of 140 characters to convey a message. Proper grammar goes out the window. So ds spllng. It’s a challenge to communicate a message with such a limited amount of letters but you are not limited only to copy. You can, and should, also share links to sites/videos and images. Since links can be really long, and you should use a free service to shorten them (one example is bitly), leaving you more space to insert your text. Other free services exist for sharing images so that you can snap a shot with your smartphone and share it on Twitter (for instance, yfrog is useful for this). If you do this, you should also add some copy about the link to provide some information about what your followers will click on.
Especially if you are a brand or business, your tweets should fall in line with your larger content strategy to ensure your positioning is consistent.
4. @ is the symbol to officially mention another user. It is what allows you to communicate with them and also know when people mention you. For example, if you want to talk to or about Fashion’s Collective, tweeting “Thanks @FashCollective for helping me learn Twitter” will ensure that we see the tweet when we check our “mentions” tab. It will also ensure that your tweet appears in a search result for anyone looking for tweets about us.
Note: when you begin a tweet with the @ symbol, only users who follow both you and the user you are mentioning will see this tweet. A short cut some people use is to trick Twitter by adding a “.” before the message.
5. # is the symbol to discuss a topic. This is done simply by adding a hashtag symbol before any word or phrase. Create your own topic or use one that already exists. This helps you to start and participate in conversations around the topics that interest you. For example, if you are at an event there may be an official hashtag to use, or you can create one if there is not. We were recently tweeting from the Firenze4Ever event and each time we tweeted about the event we included the hashtag (#Firenze4Ever). This helped us to connect with the other people who were also talking about/attending the event, and it helped those not attending to be able to follow the event and know that we were participating. Charlie Sheen recently used the hashtag #winning which became a phenomenon and a trending topic because so many people also started using it. Another example is if you are an avid Yankees fan, adding a #Yankees to your tweet will make it more easily searchable by others interested in the good ol’ Yanks.
6. Retweeting is a function that allows you to republish another person’s tweet to your followers while giving the original source credit. If you like, you can also preface a RT with your own comment.
7. If you want to send something privately, you can DM (or direct message) a user so long as you are following them and they are following you.
8. Once you get the hang of the process, you can use tools like Postling or Cotweet to manage your Twitter feed. This means you can do things like schedule tweets in advance, update to Facebook and Twitter simultaneously and have multiple tweeters all on one account.
That’s Twitter in a nutshell! We invite you all to connect with us on Twitter @FashCollective, would love to see you there!
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