What Is Twitter?

Twitter is a social network “micro-blogging” service that allows users to send messages up to 140 characters. These messages are lovingly referred to as “tweets.”

Who Uses Twitter?

Individuals and businesses use Twitter. Individuals tend to use it as a ‘quick update’ for friends and families. Businesses and celebrities use it as a way to connect with fans and customers, post events, specials, and just to generally communicate with their audience.

How To Use Twitter and How Does Twitter Work?

There is a lot of ways to use Twitter, for business, for personal use. For business you really are using it to connect with your customers. You are using 140 characters to convey only the most important information to people who choose to follow you. This is the same for individuals, though the subject matter will differ! An individual may “Tweet” about where they went for dinner, but that same restaurant may see that tweet and “Reply” saying “Thanks so much for joining us last night, here’s a coupon for 10% off your next meal with us. Twitter is SO instant that these connections can happen almost in real-time. That’s really the a major appeal of Twitter, being SO instant. Movies have been panned within hours after their release…. how? Twitter! People get on, “Tweet” their hearts out, this gains momentmum and before you know it the movie has shut down a day after opening. It’s the first system that lets people connect with each other, almost instantly, to create a sort of “public radar” or everything in the entire world.

How To Twitter – Twitter Terms:

Tweet: This is the 140 character update that you send through the Twitter system.

Tweet

ReTweet: Often referred to as “RT” this is a way to echo something someone else has said and allow your followers to see it, while giving credit to the person who originally said it. It’s a great way to get a lot of people looking at you!

A Retweet

Trending Topic: If something gets a lot of Tweets and Retweets it becomes a Trending Topic. This is listed ont he right side of Twitter to let you know what’s hot in the Twittersphere.

Trending Topics

Twittersphere: This is what people refer to as the world of Twitter itself. “What’s going on in the Twittersphere,” or “The best app in the Twittersphere.”

Twitter Ecosystem: This is something Twitter is very protective over. It’s the delicate balance the system needs to strike between being mundane and useful, promoting and being spammy. Twitter always strives to maintain a balanced ecosystem and encourages like-minded developers to make applications to contribute positively toward it.

Follow: On Twitter you can “Follow” people. When you follow someone their tweets will show up in your newsfeed.

Unfollow: Sometimes you’ll follow someone who has become uninteresting to you. If this is the case, do not despair, can unfollow them!

Twitter Profile: This is the small little bio and link that you see when you click on someone’s Twitter name.

Twitter Profile

Why Twitter?

Twitter is a growing network with a tremendous amount of traffic. If you have a presence on Twitter, you are getting more Traffic. It’s that simple. Google also recently integrated Twitter results in their search engine, so you can actually show up in searches based on what you Tweet. The question really isn’t “Why Twitter?” it’s “Why aren’t you on it yet?!”

Want to find out more about how MarketMeTweet can help boost your Twitter Traffic? View our Tour!