A Guide To Twitter: The Basics

A guide to Twitter: The basics David Somerville November 2011 @southcoastdavid @a1surf

Why use Twitter? Boost website traffic Creates a community Quick and easy Customer Service (get feedback) Make friends, build business contacts and networks Get news, information, content ideas SEO benefits – link building

The basics: Profile Picture Select a clear profile pic that will be readable or noticeable when small. For Twitter you can use animated gifs as avatars, so these can look good and attract attention.

The basics: Background You can replace the default ‘blue sky and clouds’ Twitter background with your own customised one. Make it simple and a statement. One thing to bear in mind is that the main columns can hide anything that’s central, so get around this by using the space to the left and right. Remember the background is static, not linked, but you can display all sorts of information on it.

The basics: Mentions You can see people talking about you by clicking the ‘Mentions’ tab on your Twitter home page. To mention someone on twitter by appending their twitter name with ‘@’

The basics: Direct Messages (DM) If someone is following you (and you are following them) you can choose to send a private ‘Direct message’ to them. This is the same as a normal tweet in terms of character restriction, but it’s not public. This is useful if you want to ask someone a question without your followers seeing, i.e. approach them about supplying a competition prize etc.

Tweeting: Content As with all social media, it’s important to post up a mixture of content. Due to twitter’s restriction of 140 characters, it is used a lot just for quick text updates or observations, but it’s worth also doing things such as: Include links (back to your site or others) Include photos or videos Ask a question Join a conversation by giving your thoughts/advice Topical related content Discount codes/offers Create hash tagged topics Run competitions/games

Tweeting: Content (cont.) As part of the ‘twitter etiquette’, it’s a good idea to thank people if they have recommended you or said something positive. Rewards – if you know it’s a birthday of one of your influential followers then why not send them a present?

Tweeting: Shortening Links Twitter now automatically shorten links (to 19 characters) if you tweet that way. And if using Tweetdeck or other third-party sites they use bitly or tiny services.

Tweeting: Hastags # Hashtags are basically a way of tagging your tweets so that they can be more easily found by people searching for specific keywords. You simply use a ‘#’ before the word you want to make a hashtag. If you’re using more than one word then DON’T put spaces between them. By using a site such as hashtags.org you can find popular hashtags related to your subject. Or you can make up your own.

Tweeting: Hastags Gone Bad Hastags can be used badly too…Here’s Habitat’s blatant spamming misuse…

Tweeting: Hastags Gone Bad This resulted in hundreds of angry tweets from people… So they deleted the posts and replaced them…but the posts will always remain there on Twitter Search!

Tweeting: Hastags Gone Bad What could they have done instead? Replied to each person who tweeted and apologised Apologised in person Offered discounts as an apology Asked what information, offers etc people want Responded quickly to deal with it Case Study from Social Media Today

Tweeting: Retweeting (RT) Retweeting is when you share someone’s tweet with your followers by clicking Retweet or RT. They will see you have done this and some people will thank you for it directly. And they may follow you back as well. It’s good to RT as well as posting your own content, as it helps prove your respectability in that area. When you RT something it’s often an idea (space permitting) to add a brief note at the front (i.e. “Really useful article” or “Great advice from…”).

Tweeting: Tag people Tag people in your tweets – when tweeting about a particular story, event, brand, person etc you can ‘tag’ them in your tweet by using their name, i.e. @ThePonyClub. Not only should the person see you have tagged them which may earn you a RT – but also their followers may see your tweet, which can gain you followers (and possible RTs). An example is @ThePonyClub. They have nearly 4,000 followers, most of whom you would expect are ‘horsey’, therefore they are all potential good followers for @horsemart.

Building followers: Follow the crowd One simple step is to follow more people (who are relevant to your industry) and a percentage of them will follow you back. To find out who to follow you can… Use Twitter’s built-in ‘Who to follow’. This suggests a list of people you could follow, based on your interests, tweets etc. Use Twitter’s ‘Search’ – you can enter keywords related to your industry and it will suggest people who match them. Use the controls of “near:[location]” and “within:[miles]mi” to target this if better for your brand.

Building followers: Follow the crowd There are also options in the ‘Advanced Search’ to help you. When you have found someone who you want to follow you can also then browse who they follow and their followers, then just pick out the ones you want to follow. Other third-party tools can be good for seeing who to follow as well. Tools like SocialBro can show you how influential or important people are and how many followers they have.

Building followers: Off-Twitter promotion In order to help build your follower it’s worth promoting your Twitter account in other places too. This includes on your main site, in enewsletters, print ads etc. Twitter itself has a number of buttons you can add: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/twitter-for-websites One note though is to try and give people a reason WHY they should follow you. For example, don’t just say “Follow us on twitter”, but instead expand with “Follow us on twitter for all the latest horse owning and riding advice, news and more”.

Building followers: Create lists On Twitter you can create lists of people you follow and name them. By making these Public, other twitter users can then find your lists and follow those, which helps to show you as an authority and spreads your profile virally. For example on Horsemart we could create a list for ‘Professional riders’ or ‘Celebrity horse owners’. Create lists you think other people would find useful. You can do this on Twitter or even on Tweetdeck

Monitoring: Searching As well as getting into the habit of tweeting regularly, it’s also important to frequently monitor what people are saying about you on Twitter. The simplest way is to use the ‘Mentions’ tab on twitter itself – this will then list everyone who has mentioned you using your “@xxxxx” name. It’s worth also searching for your name or even misspellings of it (i.e Friday ad, fridayad etc) so you can check those tweets where you weren’t mentioned directly.

Monitoring: Searching You can use the search functions in twitter or the third party services (like Tweetdeck). It’s also useful to do regular searches for important keywords in your industry or competitors (you can obviously “follow” competitor updates, but do so from a personal account if you don’t want them to know!).

Monitoring: Replying It’s crucial that if people are talking about you on twitter that you reply as soon as possible. It’s also important that if they have negative feedback or are slating you that you deal with it politely – if necessary ask people to email or message you privately to avoid an online discussion. If you think that the people posting are spammers or trolls then it’s fine not to reply! And if they are proper spam then block/report them.

Good Twitter Customer Service One excellent example of good customer service on Twitter is the Airline JetBlue (@jetblue)… They ensure they respond quickly and in a friendly way to every tweet that mentions them. This has lead to hundreds of positive mentions on Twitter from people who they have helped and direct ticket sales increases.

Monitoring: Track it! Just as you are (or should) be doing with any content you post on Facebook etc, you should use Google’s trackable link building tool. Simply list ‘Twitter’ as the Source and ‘Social’ as the Medium. You may find that the type of content you use works better for one social channel than another.

Twitter Tools Here’s a selection of tools that will help you with your tweeting… Tweetdeck.com Hootsuite.com Use these as desktop or web apps (or mobile) to tweet from, schedule tweets, create searches/monitoring etc. Both allow multiple account use. SocialBro A new Chrome app that allows you to access a whole host of info about your account, your followers etc Followerwonk.com Find users with similar interests by searching their bios

Twitter Tools Topsy.com Real-time search for twitter (and G+ in beta) to see who has been tweeting about specific keywords. You can set up email alerts too which is handy for monitoring of your brand name. Backgrounds Here’s two useful links with more information: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-twitter-background-photoshop/ http://edigitales.org/making-twitter-background-things-you-need-to-know/

A Guide To Twitter: The Basics

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A Guide To Twitter: The Basics