Don't Be Afraid of Twitter

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Last week I wrote about Facebook.  Most people are familiar with Facebook and already have a profile for themselves.  But when it comes to Twitter, there are still some people who seem to be scared of the social network or have written it off as not useful.

Now Twitter is 7 years old and you should definitely pay attention to it. According to Twitter's "About" page, the network has 271 million monthly active users and 78% of those users are on a mobile device. So Twitter is absolutely useable because it gives you the ability to reach your customers on their mobile device.  But just because it gives you this ability, doesn't mean that every business owner should be on Twitter.  If your target market probably isn't on Twitter, then you don't need to worry about using it.  For example, if you sell medical equipment to senior citizens, chances are Twitter isn't going to be very effective for you as it would be for an owner of a Top 40 or Country radio station.

So if you do decide to use Twitter here are a few things you need to know about the social network.

Accounts:  On Twitter, all accounts start with "@" or at.  If you want to tweet something to a friend, type "@" and then their account name.

Hashtags:  For some reason hashtags can confuse a lot of new Twitter users.  A hashtag or "#" can be added to different keywords in a tweet or to a general topic that the tweet is about so that people who search for that specific hashtag can read all of the tweets related to that topic.  So if I tweeted about the Georgia Bulldogs and I used the hashtag #CommitToTheG, users would be able to see my tweet when they searched for the hashtag #CommitToTheG.

Retweet: A retweet is similar to sharing someone else's Facebook post.  You can use the retweet function to share someone else's tweet that you like or you can ask your followers to retweet one of your posts.  When a user retweets someone else's tweet, that tweet is then shared with all of that user's followers.

Direct Messages:  A direct message or "DM" is a way for you to send a private message to a follower. Direct messages cannot be seen by anyone other than you and the other party.  Typically, users do not use the direct message feature on Twitter.  However, if you run a special contest with your Twitter account, you can use the DM feature to privately give the contest winner the details about how to claim their prize.






In my last post I wrote about how it was important to engage with your Facebook fans, the same is true for your Twitter followers. You can do this by asking them to use special hashtags that you create.  For example, Coca-Cola ran the #ShareACoke campaign this past summer and asked its followers to tweet pictures using that hashtag.






Now at many events, coordinators ask participants to tweet using a special hashtag about the event.  This is most effective if the event lasts a while or has national attention. For example, if you get on twitter during the next movie or music awards like the Grammys or Oscars, you will see users using specific hashtags to talk about those events.


This is just the basics about Twitter, but it is enough for you to go ahead and get started on using the network.  I will write more about more ways on how to use Twitter later on.

-JS