Well no you aren’t – but you could be mistaken for thinking that way (too many overpaid celebrities are!)
In the last couple of weeks we have seen a flurry of twitter inspired news stories, from the Royal Wedding, through to the Osama Bin Laden assassination and then our very own
#DWTS controversy.
So in a nutshell what is it and why would I use it?
Twitter (www.twitter.com) is commonly referred to as microblogging.
A great description I found is to consider it an online post it note – you only have 140 characters to get your point across – so you need to be short and sweet. In the same way that a post in note might be stuck on your terminal at work or on the fridge for everyone to see, twitter, unlike facebook, is potentially visible to the entire world –they just need to be searching for a keyword in your tweet or following you specifically.
So, some useful terms for beginners:
A tweet is the 140 character message that you post online. You must be a member of twitter to tweet. When you create your account – you create a profile that people will know you by online – i.e.
www.twitter.com/bosweb or @bosweb
Following – these are people you follow and you see their tweets in your twitter feed (just like, say, pages you like inside facebook or the status updates of your friends inside facebook)
Followers – these are the people who follow you and are interested in what you have to say. It is usual for beginners and first time users to follow lots of people and to not have as many followers
# hashtag – this is often how people follow a conversation from various sources – even from people they are not following. So when Q&A is on TV, you can follow online by searching inside twitter using #qanda or, if your are contributing to the fake posts for Dancing with the Stars, use #dwts when that is on TV! If you follow bosweb, we had some fun posts for #Cookingsongs the other week – I am sure our clients where a bit perplexed!
#FF – Follow Friday, you might see lots of these on a Friday as they are people recommending who are good people to follow on a Friday.
We find it really easy to manage twitter and follow lots of people and conversations using
Hootsuite a social media dashboard – we also hookup facebook here as well. You may also hear the name
TweetDeck and you can integrate twitter and facebook so that you can push out the one message to all your social media channels. And just like facebook, using twitter on your phone is fantastic – you can really keep your finger on the pulse!
It is a great way to communicate with your clients if in business to provide advice, hints or tips to clients or to understand what your competitors are saying about you, and what they are saying about themselves. You can also get a heads up on what people are saying about you or your business!
Or you can just get on your soapbox and spout forth into the twitterverse for everyone’s enjoyment!
