This article is going to cover something called micro-blogging. More specifically we will be covering the basics of a website called Twitter.com and how you can use that in your business.
By now I am sure you have heard of Twitter and may have heard various opinions of the site. Twitter is much more than a bunch of 'chatter' as many would refer to it. It is a very powerful 'micro-blogging' site and can prove to be one of your MOST effective marketing tools for your business.
First go to Twitter.com and set up your account. Be sure to choose a username that is SEO friendly. For example, 'Traverse City Real Estate', 'Leelanau County Boat Rentals', etc. If you can, try to choose a username that closely represents what you will be micro-blogging about. In many cases your name will be fine too!
Ok, so what exactly is micro-blogging?
Simply put, it's a short version of blogging in 140 characters or less and on Twitter it's called a 'tweet'. Because Twitter allows you to connect to other people from all around the world and in your area, your tweet will broadcast out to a large group of people. Many people start using Twitter and then get confused because there are so many others on the site tweeting about what they are eating, what they are watching on TV, or where they are going that day. Although it is fine to occasionally tweet about these things, it is best to keep your tweets professional and on topic.
People will 'follow you' by subscribing to your profile so they can receive your tweets. Other people in your profession and those that are interested in what you do follow you on Twitter because they are interested in your field of business and not so much because they care about what you are eating. This is exactly what you want. You want people that are interested in you and your business and what you have to say about topics related to your business.
Before we move along any further I would like to give you a basic list of some common acronyms that are used on Twitter and their definitions.
Tweet- a micro-blog of 140 characters or less
ReTweet - tweeting content that was already posted by another user
Tweeps - people on twitter (also tweople or tweeple)
Twitterverse - everyone on Twitter as a whole
Followers - people that subscribe to your tweets
Un-Follow - unsubscribing to someone's tweet
Hashtag - keywords used on Twitter. These can be more than one word but not normally more than three with no spaces and preceded by the hash (#) symbol such as #TCRealEstate or #TraverseCity. I recommend that you sign in and follow hashtags so that your tweets are indexed by the service.
FollowFriday - a hashtag (#followfriday) used on Fridays to recommend other tweeps that post good content
Followorthy - tweeps that are worthy of being followed normally because they give a lot of good advice on their topic of expertise
Twammer - a twitter spammer
Twedia - news and media on twitter (i.e. @nytimes)
Ok so now that you know a little bit of the lingo, here are 8 tips you should take into consideration as you start to use Twitter:
1. Don't start getting too excited about everyone that follows you and reciprocate an auto-follow back to them. Only follow people that YOU want to hear things from. This prevents follow-spam or people that follow you just to get you to follow them. When you follow someone on Twitter everyone will then be able to preview that person's tweets on your Twitter page.
2. Follower count doesn't matter. There are a lot of people obsessed with increasing their follower counts. It doesn't matter how many people are following you; it matters that the people following you actually want to hear what you have to say.
3. I don't recommend that you use the feature called 'auto DM' (Direct Message) to thank people and especially for self promotion as this can get annoying.
4. DO NOT tweet about what you are eating unless you're in the food business. It's just tacky and no one really cares what you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
5. Think before you tweet! Don't just tweet about ANYTHING you do not want the entire world to know. Tweets can be permanent even if you delete them. Because Twitter is indexed by the search engine spiders every few minutes it is very possible that your tweet could remain in the search engines archive for many days. Overall just be sure to use prudence when tweeting.
6. Check out people's profiles and recent tweets before you click to follow them. Make sure they are tweeting about things of interest to you. Again, their tweets will appear on your page as soon as click to follow them.
7. Try using Twellow.com to find people that tweet about subjects that are of interest to you. Twellow is the Twitter yellow pages and you can find people who tweet about any topic imaginable.
8. Grammar Matters! Ok, now I know that it's only 140 characters but that is no reason not to use proper spelling and grammar. Using Twitter shorthand or abbreviations is perfectly acceptable, but bad spelling or an overuse of acronyms may cause people to un-follow you. Here's some ways you can tweet and have conversations with other tweeps. These functions are pretty cool so be sure to pay attention.
DM - Direct message to another person on twitter. This is not displayed in the public timeline, but is displayed on the other person's private timeline. To test this out feel free to send me a direct message. In the top text box that asks you what you are doing simply type in "DM @BlueLaVaMedia your message" It's really that easy!
@ - Used just before another person's username (i.e. @BlueLaVaMedia) to talk directly to (or at) another person. Try sending me a reply if you like. Again in the top text box type in "@BlueLaVaMedia and your reply message" Again...very easy to do.
RT - ReTweet - used just before another person's full tweet when you are retweeting without altering the original message. Original message is copied into the text box for submitting. (i.e. RT @BlueLaVaMedia original message of mine would be here)
Via - Used in parenthesis immediately after a message you have altered to give credit to the original tweet. For example: (via @BlueLaVaMedia) would be used when giving credit to one of my tweets after altering it slightly.
Are you still with me here? Ok let's talk a little about Twitter shorthand. Twitter shorthand is pretty much the same as cell phone text messaging. Go to http://www.sitemasher.com/seed-the-web-blog/my-twittonary--every-twitter-term-and-tool-i-can-find for an exhaustive list of Twitter shorthand Don't get overwhelmed by all of the terms and new Twitter language. It is perfectly acceptable to type everything out when tweeting. As time goes on you will find that you need to shorten words to get your entire message across in 140 characters or less and you will eventually learn the language.
Well that about does it for your Twitter 101 class. Now go out there now and just dive right in with your newly discovered microblogging site. Start tweeting about topics you know about and start following people that talk about topics that interest you.
Next week we will start to talk social bookmarking and effective ways to use Twitter to direct traffic to your blogs, profiles and website. So, for the rest of this week, spend some time getting familiar with Twitter and understanding your new twitterverse.
