What is Twitter and why does small business need to care.

1. Basic Introduction
THE WORLD OF TWITTER

2. Introduction
 What is Twitter?
 Why Twitter for MY Business?
 Getting Started
 Following and Followers
 Twitter Tools & applications
 Speaking Twitter
 Tips & Sites

3. Demographics
 13% Americans
 25% African Americans
 19% Hispanic
 9% white
 Median age is 31
 Urban twice as likely versus rural
 54% of mobile users consume Twitter
 becoming popular with high school age group
 Income level not an overriding factor of usage
(2011 Pew Research study)

4. What is Twitter
 Originally defined as “MICROBLOGGING”
 A service for sharing & collecting data, information & news
 A conversation hosting service (MEGA-chat)
 One-to-one & one-to-many communication system
 Real time messaging & networking system

5. Who is using Twitter?
 462 million users
 100 million users added in past 4 months
 340 million Tweets per day ( June 2012)
 Teens text 3,000 per month
 75% of Twitter users do not use www.twitter.com

6. What Are They Talking About?
 72% post personal life, activities, & Interests
 62% post work-related updates
 55% Share news
 40% Share photos
 28% Share video
 24% Share their location

7. And Some
I just ate the best pastrami sandwich
hungrydog1308

8. So what?
 Not interesting
 Why not
 Where did you have lunch?
 What was on the sandwich?
 What about the environment?
 How was the service?
 Not only Tweet about you
 While at it add a recommendation for the restaurant!

9. Development

#tweets
3 years, 2 months and 1 day
 The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
 177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
 456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at
that time).
 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.

#accounts
572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
 182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.


10. Why Twitter for MY Business?
 Build connections
 Event promotions
 Utilize hash tagging [#] to promote
 Media outreach
 Real time communication with customers/vendors
 Customer service
 Employee recruitment
 Prospecting
 Tracking industry news
 Competitive research

11. Why Twitter
A cocktail party in many ways
Go network and find your niche
Hotel – Housing – Restaurants – Finance
Great method to get to know people in other
Regions or arenas

12. Let’s Tweet

13. Sign Up

14. Be Yourself with the Profile

15. Profile
 Don’t make viewers guess who you are…
 Choose a name that reflects you or your business
 Be relevant
 Use keywords in your bio
 Include a photo
 People do not like talking to a logo
 Photo makes for more commentary and responses
 Include your location
 Include your website link

16. Following & Followers
 Begin your experience by searching for those to follow
 Twitter’s “Find Friends” can search your e-mail
 Use www.search.twitter.com
 Search for those talking about specific keywords
 Use Twitter services
 www.twellow.com
 www.tweepz.com
 Look for competitors
 Search followers of other users
 Follow a user’s follower list

17. Tools- Apps – Account Managers
 Twitter can be used through multiple services:
 Smarphone apps
 Hootsuite – Seesmic – Plume
 Desktop dashboards
 Hootsuite – Tweetdeck – Seesmic
 Standard texting
The type of tool or app you use will evolve with the use of
Twitter.

18. The Follow versus The Following
@W @X
@V
@Y
@Z
@X Tweets so @y, @Z, and @V can see the Tweets
@X Tweets @Y then @Y and @V see the Tweets, but not @Z or @W.
@W sees nothing as @X is following @W only, so the connection is
not reciprocal allowing only for @X to see @W’s Tweets

19. Scheduling Tweets
 Hootsuite
 Can schedule tweets in advance by hour or day
 Paradox:
 If not logged onto twitter at time of the post then –
 Missing live engagements
 Yes, that is true –
 Depends on the message

20. Vocabulary
 Tweet – a message or status update of 140 characters
or less
 Mention – Tweet directed to or mentioning you or
your account name (@computracks)
 Reply – A Tweet directed to a particular user &
begins with the user’s account name (eg.,
@computracks)
 DM – A back channel messsage
 RT – Retweet (repeating) a Tweet crediting the
sender

21. Hashtag
 # - Use of the hashtag (pound symbol) is often used
to connect tweets from a live event or to a group of
tweets from a variety of people on a single topic.
@teddyroosevelt Have you decided on what hill
To climb while in #Cuba?

22. Mention & Retweet
 Looking forward to having one of those
Cigars @ulysesgrant just received.
RT @betsyross finished sewing my new flag.
What do you think?
http://www.slideshare.com/rbhammond.php?flash=n
ew&flag=12

23. ReTweets
 When using the Retweet button on www.twitter.com
The selected Tweet will be automatically retweeted to
your followers, but you will not have the ability to add
any additional comments.
Many Twitter applications (Hootsuite & Seesmic)
allow the retweeter the option of adding comments,
OSRT, (old style ReTweets) or retweeting in the format
preferred by Twitter itself.

24. Hashtage
 Live event blogging (e.g. #ramsfootball)
 Linking tweets to trending topics (eg. #ncaa-b-ball)
 Connecting tweets during Twitter chats (eg.,
#smforfun)
 Humorously creating false categories
 # can be especially useful as search terms and
monitoring tools with programs such as Hootsuite,
Tweetdeck, etc., allowing the ability to follow all
tweets using a designed hashtag.

25. Vocabulary
 Tweetchat
 A scheduled gathering of Twitter users to discuss a designated
topic. Tweetchats use the # to identify conversations taking
place during the chat.
 Lists
 A collection of Twitter users designated by a cetegory. A handy
resource for following tweets within a specific category or
industry.
 Tweetup
 An in-person gathering of Twitter users

26. Vocabulary
 URL shortener
 A web tool to reduce the length of an address link in order to
save character space for tweeting.
 Twitter.com has one built into its platform.
 Others include www.tinyurl.com
• WWW.BIT.LY
 Fail Whale
 Twitter is down. The fail whale is an animation Twitter posts
when the service is down.

27. Abbreviations
 OH overhead
 NSFW not safe for work
 FB Facebook
 LI Linkedin
 FTW for the win
 IRL in real life
 #ff “Follow Friday”
• Tradition of spotlighting other users to recommend to follow

28. Tools & Sites
 www.business.twitter.com
 Introduction of Twitter by Twitter
 www.search.twitter.com
 Search engine
 www.twellow.com
 Find participating users by categories & geography
 www.listorious.com
 Find people based on self-identified categories
 www.twubs.com
 Research source for hashtags

29. Tools & Sites
 www.wthashtag.com
 Research source for hashtags
 www.twitpic.com
 A picture sharing service for Twitter
 www.bit.ly
 Shortens the length of a URL
 www.tinyurl.com
 Shortens the length of a URL

30. Tweeting Tips
 Listen
 Follow along for a while to get used to the flow
 Share
 Share content of interest to your audience
 Ask
 Ask questions to get opinions and information
 Link
 Share links to your own content and to other useful content
 Commit
 Devote some time everyday to jumping into the Twitter fray.