What Is Twitter ? Why Should I Use It?
Welcome to the introductory Twitter course! With Twitter usage growing significantly over the last 2 years, it has cemented itself into one of the top 20 websites that are visited everyday on the Internet. Because of its large and active user base and the fact it can be accessed in almost every country of the world, it is extremely likely your current customers and potential customers are already active on the service. Hence, it is imperative for your organisation to be present and involved in the conversation.
What is it? According to Twitter itself
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called “tweets” of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.
Basically tweets are very similar to SMS, with the only key difference is that rather being sent to one individual, the update (tweet) is sent to everyone that has elected to “follow” or monitor your Twitter updates. As mentioned, these tweets can also be included into your company or personal website or any other network you choose to include on the Internet. Why should businesses use Twitter? Due to the flexibility of the network, it can be used in multiple ways to improve your business, whether to drive sales or to increase awareness of a particular cause. Below we will outline a few of the key reasons:
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- The incredible amounts of traffic – As you can see from this Alexa traffic report, Twitter has exploded onto the Internet in the last 12 months, and is ranked number 14th in Alexa’s traffic data in the entire world. With actual real user numbers kept close to the chest of the company, this report from Tech Crunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/end-of-speculation-the-real-twitter-usage-numbers/ puts the number at approximately 1.3 million in 2008. The real benefit then comes is that once people share information that they find on your website on Twitter, a percentage of that traffic can reach your website which you would not have attained any other way.
- Two-way communication – the whole idea of Twitter is to reach out and communicate with other individuals all over the world. There is a strong community in many circles on the network, with users often searching out and supplying answers to other’s questions. Not only that, it allows businesses to listen and respond to feedback regarding the business itself, a product, or a service.
- Increasing your business network – Twitter allows you to connect with industry and thought leaders, people you would never have access to with any other medium. By interacting with these high profile individuals, it could create new business opportunities.
- The Search – Found at http://search.twitter.com, you can use it much the same as any other regular search engine. The benefit of looking at Twitter search however is the fact you can see only the thoughts of people in real time as opposed to all the other information kept by the typical search engines.
- Your primary means of communicating your business’s updates and announcements – Rather than performing costly mail outs or outsourcing to a PR company, you can broadcast on Twitter for no cost and achieve almost a similar result.
Continue onto the next lesson to see how to register an account.
