What is Twitter?
Twitter is an information network.
Millions of people, organizations, and businesses use it to discover and
share new information.
On Twitter, anyone can read, write and share messages of up to 140
characters. These messages, or Tweets, are public and available to
anyone interested in them. Twitter users subscribe to your messages by
following your account. Followers receive every one of your messages in
their timeline, a feed of all the accounts they have subscribed to.
When you combine messages that are quick to write, easy to read,
public, opt-in, and accessible anywhere, you have a powerful, real-time
way of communicating.
What does Twitter do for businesses?
As a business, you can use Twitter to quickly share information,
gather market intelligence and insights, and build relationships with
people who care about your company. Often, there is already a
conversation about your business happening on Twitter.
Start participating!
Glossary
Twitter users have developed short-form syntax to make the most of 140 characters. Here are the fundamentals.
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Mention
Once you've signed up and chosen a Twitter username, you and
others can mention an account in your Tweets by preceding it with the @
symbol, eg: "Glad your shipment arrived @!"
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Message
If you want to privately Tweet to a particular user who's already following you, start your Tweet with DM or D to direct-message them, eg: "DM @ what is your order number?"
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Hashtag
Users often prepend # to words in their Tweets to categorize them
for others eg: "Check out our new products for the Fall:
http://t.co/link2 #fallsale" Think of hashtags as the theme of your
Tweet. Users can then click on a hashtag to see other similarly-themed
tweets and find yours in search.
Best Practices
Build your following, reputation, and customer's trust with these simple practices:
- Share. Share photos and behind the scenes info
about your business. Even better, give a glimpse of developing projects
and events. Users come to Twitter to get and share the latest, so give
it to them!
- Listen. Regularly monitor the comments about your company, brand, and products.
- Ask. Ask questions of your followers to glean valuable insights and show that you are listening.
- Respond. Respond to compliments and feedback in real time
- Reward. Tweet updates about special offers, discounts and time-sensitive deals.
- Demonstrate wider leadership and know-how. Reference articles and links about the bigger picture as it relates to your business.
- Champion your stakeholders. Retweet and reply publicly to great tweets posted by your followers and customers.
- Establish the right voice. Twitter users tend to prefer a direct, genuine, and of course, a likable tone from your business, but think about your voice as you Tweet. How do you want your business to appear to the Twitter community?
Twitter on the Go
Making the most of Twitter is greatly
facilitated with mobile phones. Whether you want to Tweet, or simply
encourage your customers to read your Tweets, here are some features
that can help.
Fast Follow
This is a simple way for people to get information they care about
in real-time, a way to follow an account from a phone without signing
up. For example: users can text 'follow twitter' to 40404 and receive
Tweets from @
sent to their phone. Promoting this feature in a storefront window or a
website is a great way to stay engaged with your customers, regardless
if they're on Twitter or not.
Read more about Fast Follow and international short codes.
Notifications
From a computer, or from a phone, Twitter users can elect to
receive text message updates when your account Tweets. Mobile
notifications can be a great way to promote exclusive content or
coupons, among other promotions. If someone has signed up to be notified
of your Tweets, whenever you tweet, they'll get it as an SMS message on
their phone.
Pro Tip: Tell your customers to click
the phone icon next to the Following button on your profile on
Twitter.com to receive your company's tweets on their phone.
Tweet from anywhere
Tweeting on the go will help you stay connected to your followers
wherever you are. Applications that we have made include official
clients for the Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows, and Blackberry phones.
There are also numerous great applications to help you upload pictures
and video, such as TwitPic, YFrog, Plixi, Flickr, and YouTube.
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