A basic introduction to Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging site, which means you use it by typing short statements about what you’re doing/what’s going on in your world/your opinion on something topical.

It’s not just about “oops – just burnt the toast” as many people think! It’s about sharing links to other things online, sharing thoughts and opinions and discussing current affairs.

It’s free to join twitter and you can create an account from their home page.

With twitter, the terminology is that you “follow people” and have people “follow you”. When you write a message, your followers see it, and when you visit twitter, you see the messages of people who you’re following. You can also “retweet” messages which means you in effect repeat what someone else has said because you want to let your followers read it, and you can name people in your tweets (@mentions) where you put their twitter name, or "handle" after the @ sign so that they're told via their account that you've mentioned them.

If you want to communicate with people without it being public, you can send short private messages.

You can also put keywords or phrases in your tweets by putting a hash tag infront of them (eg. #webdesign) and then that lets twitter monitor “trending topics” – keywords that are being talked about by a lot of people. If someone clicks on a hashtag such as '#webdesign they'll be taken to a page displaying other tweets with the hashtag #webdesign so they can see what other people are saying on the topic.

With regards to advertising, you can promote a message so that it appears to people who may be interested/your target audience. With a little bit of a push, this can then become a trending topic. This is one of the ways that the Old Spice videos became a viral success – it wasn’t just PR or the fact that they’re very funny and well put together, it was paying money to twitter to push them (according to a twitter speaker at AdTech, Oct. 2010).

Is Twitter right for you?

I recently discussed a possible Twitter strategy for a client who publishes books about antiques. The first step is for them to identify whether they've got a potential audience on Twitter. I suggested they look at the brands and creators of ceramics, pottery and art they write about to see whether they have Twitter profiles. Next, they need to look at galleries which stock the antiques they write about. If there's a like minded community already on Twitter, then they can work to tap into that network and build up followers.

To find these people on Twitter, I suggested checking their websites and looking for a link to a twitter profile. Sometimes if you search on Twitter itself you can't be sure if someone with a suitable sounding name is actually the same person - a gallery for example could be the one down the road in Cornwall or it could be one in California.

Once you've seen that people in your sector are on Twitter, and they're tweeting and have followers, then you might decide that yes, actually, you can follow these people, hope they follow you back and try and strike up conversations.

The hope is then that you'll say some things which they deem worthy of "retweeting" to their followers - perhaps facts, research or great photos - so others will see you and start to follow you. Before you know it, you've got yourself a little gang of followers!