An Introduction To Twitter For Marketers

An introduction to a little micro-blogging site called Twitter www.twitter.com Brought to you in part by Tessa Horehled

What is micro-blogging? Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief updates (most often text & usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed publicly or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These updates can be submitted by a variety of means including text messaging, instant messaging, email, mp3 or the web.

That’s nice. So what is Twitter?
A free micro-blogging service
Allows users to send updates, commonly known as “tweets”
Tweets are text-based posts, up to 140 characters
Tweets are posted to the Twitter website via sms, im or a third-party application.

Twitter, Inc. was born March 2006 & launched in July of 2006 by a start-up called Obvious. They are based in San Francisco, CA.
Twitter is written in Ruby on Rails.
Twitter won the Web Award in the blog category at the 2007 South By Southwest Conference.
In May 2007, an article counted a total of 111 Twitter-like sites internationally. See a trend?
What’s their story?

What do you do with Twitter? Communicate. Ask questions, advice, directions or for feedback Promote your projects, products and updates Personal Branding Drive awareness to something of interest to a larger community Update many people all at once Offer resource information to peers A channel of discovery: trends, sites & breaking news On-The-Go Sketchpad

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.
The user has the option restrict delivery to those on their friends list (delivery to everyone is the default).
Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, im, sms, rss, email or through a third-party application.
Hmm. How can I check out someone’s updates?

What are you doing?

How to find friends on Twitter Source: Twitter FAQ

How to follow friends on Twitter Source: Twitter FAQ

Who is hip to this thing? Presidential Candidates (& Ex) News Networks, Shows & Sites, Magazines Techy Sites, Tools & Blogs Entertainment & Retail Borat Geeks

It’s all the rage Source: Alexa

Tweet Tips Use TinyURL.com or a similar service for URLs. This takes up less of your character limit. @username will send a reply to the user & appear on their Replies tab d username will send a direct, private message to the user

Twitter Etiquette
Discretion: Some things are better left unsaid.
Impersonation: Users posting as someone else.
Profanity: They’ve developed a site for your type. 1
Round-The-Clock Updates: “I draw the line at Twittering while on the toilet. Not gonna happen.”
Quality vs. Quantity: Twitter & IM are not the same thing
Spam: If you choose to promote something on Twitter, give those who follow you personal updates as well.
Source: Twitter Fan Wiki

Twitter Account Management Good Twitter Hygiene: Remove all those Twitter news feeds from your friends list. It often becomes too much. This Vs That: It is very easy to feel overwhelmed by Twitter. Phone updates are the first thing to cut. Next is RSS. Then IM. Source: Twitter Fan Wiki

Quick Things To Remember
No HTML – plain text only. Twitter will automagically hyperlink your URLs.
You cannot edit a tweet after you post it. You can only delete it.
At the bottom of the right hand sidebar on every profile page, there is a block link to block users.
The star at the end of is a way for you to mark a post as “favorite”.

Why bother?
Stop freaking out!
You don’t need to read every single update that rolls across your screen. Let it roll past like a stream.
Use the replies tab & direct messages. This will help you follow conversations and individuals.
Repeat: I do not have to read everything.
Twitter when you can. Don’t when you can’t.
This is where “the conversation” is happening.

It’s cheaper than joining a cult

Okay. This makes sense. What else can I do with Twitter?

KEYWORDS

Tracking keywords on Twitter Tracking is an SMS or IM only feature that allows you to receive all tweets that match a keyword you would like to key an eye on. For example, if you send track Tessa , you will receive all updates that match “Tessa.” All updates you receive from tracking will contain your keyword in parentheses. To stop getting these messages, just send untrack Tessa to Twitter.

Compare keywords on Twitter Source: Tweet Volume

GEOTARGET

Search by location or username Source: TwitDir

See live public Twitter updates Source: TwitterVision

See live public updates by location Source: TwitterMap

Subscribe to RSS of updates by location Source: TwitterWhere

INTEGRATION VIA THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS

Like all the cool kids, Twitter is on Facebook

And your iPhone Source: New York Times

Where the mega-addicts flock

TRACKING

Keep up with top Twitter users Source: Twitterholic, Twit Rank, Tweeterboard

Hashtags Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag . Hashtags is an opt-in service. You must follow @hashtags for the service to index your tweets. Example Uses: Events or conferences : i.e.: "Tara's presentation on communities was great! #barcampblock" Disasters : "#sandiegofire A shelter has opened up downtown for fire refugees." Memes : "My #themeword for 2008 is conduct." Context : "I can't believe anyone would design software like this! #microsoftoffice" Recall : "Buy some toilet paper. #todo"

APPENDIX

Create an account with TweetChannel. The Twitter user will be added to your friends list By adding #channelname in front of your tweets, your tweet will be listed in the channel discussion on TweetChannel.com. Create a Twitter channel Source: TweetChannel

Host a Tweetup Source: sxswtwitter

Twitter Lifehacks Source: Tweet What You Eat, OutTwit, TwitterFox

Create a flash character for your profile Source: twitter.com/celly

More Reads Marketing Profs What Web Marketers Should Know About Twitter Marketing Profs Daily Fix 7 Ways Marketers Can Use Twitter New York Times Campaign Reporting In Under 140 Taps

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An Introduction To Twitter For Marketers

by Tessa Horehled on Jan 25, 2008

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