There’s been an awful lot of hype surroundingTwitterrecently – celebs spending their days telling tales of
fellow celebrities, and people posting pictures of snowmen during
the recent bad weather in the UK.
But does this the Twitter phenomenon have any practical uses?
Does it have a meaningful application for your business?
Almost certainly the answer is yes, but it may take some work on
your part.
So how does it work?
The
premise, as with most good things on the internet is surprisingly
simple. Comments of up to 140 characters are sent to Twitter,
people who have decided to follow an individual or organisation
receive these “Tweets” as soon as they are sent.
The advantage over existing personal publishing methods - blogs, or
RSS feeds is obvious – your words are delivered to people, they do
not have to actively go and look, and the postings are brief and to
the point. You can catch up with the list of people you follow a
few times a day and scan for the information you want to see, and
easily reply and join in conversations that take place.
Twitter works best when you have a good idea of what you want to
get out of it. Aimlessly following people (when you follow a
person, you receive everything they post) may not be the best way
to serve your interests. Use a tool such as
search.twitter.com to
search for people who are talking about issues within your business
sphere.
Take a few moments to think about what it is that you need to
know about straight away, the business leads that will give you an
edge – from adverse weather to breaking news.
Your search will throw up people who are talking about the things
you want to know about. Add those people to your follow list.
Search through the people they follow; these people are being
followed for a reason – because they are of interest within your
business circle.
Twitter as with the rest of web 2.0 is a social vehicle – social in
the sense that communication and interaction will yield best
results.
Merely using the information you gain from the people you follow
is not only poor judgement, it is also bad Twitter etiquette. Your
organisation (or rather the person who is tasked with being at the
helm of the Twitter name in your organisation) should be
interacting with those who you follow, as a form of social outreach
to get your online brand name out into the circle.
Good Twitter etiquette and bad Twitter
etiquette
Good forms of communication can include offering advice, starting
conversations, offering the odd snippet of information about your
organisation where appropriate, and RT (retweeting) good and
valuable information you have seen. It is about being seen as a
person on the other side of the Twitter name.
Bad forms of communication involve not replying to others when
they tweet at you, using Twitter to continually barrage with
information regarding your company, and not showing a human side. A
twitterer that continually sends out links and nothing else, will
soon only be talking to themselves within twitter.
What’s an RT?
An RT – or to give it it’s full name is a Re-Tweet – where you
pass someone else’s Twitter along giving them full credit, this is
an essential part of how Twitter works, as it allows a great number
of people to disseminate information quickly and easily. It is also
a great way of finding other people who may be good fits within
your business circle that you may not have otherwise known
about.
If you want to send a message to someone directly for their
attention, but you want it to go publicly so all your followers can
see it – like a conversation you would have in a bar, everyone can
hear you but you are talking with one particular person, then you
can use the @<name> commands, it looks like this on everyone
else’s feed:
Direct messaging
You can send a message only to one person .. you can do that from
the Direct Messages menu item on the right hand side of your
page.
You don’t have to use the website to send your tweets, there is a
whole range of applications that can help you to use twitter on
your phone and also on your desktop or laptop.
Searching using the # tag
The # is an extremely useful tool in Twitter it allows people to
post to large groups about a common theme, and this tag can be
collated by search.twitter.com and will then make a meaningful
discourse with a lot of people about a given subject.
The # system has proven it’s worth most notably for breaking news
stories like the Mubai bombings, and the US presidential
inauguration, but can also be a very useful tool for conferences
and ongoing topics.
Twitter is very much what you make it – the framework of twitter is
very simple, but with all things that involve collaboration, it’s
usefulness ultimately depends on the groundwork you are willing to
put into it.
Recommended reading:
ComputerWeekly's top ten Tech power Twitterers>>
Twitter fact file
| Website: | Twitter |
| Location: | San Francisco, California, United
States |
| Founded: | March 1, 2006 |
| Funding: | $20M |
Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams
and launched in July 2006. It is a social networking and
micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest
updates.