In Part One of our social media series, we covered the basics of Facebook marketing. Today, we’ll tackle Twitter.
Twitter can be leveraged in a number of different ways, including (but not limited to) industry news, driving brand awareness, providing customer service, and following brand influencers. Before diving into Twitter, there are some basic terms you need to know:
- Tweet: A tweet is a 140-character message posted to Twitter, which can contain text, links, photos, and videos. Any links are automatically shortened, and count towards your character limit.
- Follow: When you follow someone on Twitter, you will see their updates in your timeline. Twitter lets you see who you are following, and who follows you. Followers are defined as individuals who will see your Twitter updates.
- Timeline: Your Twitter timeline will display updates from people you follow, as well as promoted tweets and content Twitter thinks you may find relevant, based on its algorithm. The most recent updates will be at the top.
- Reply: A reply is a response to another person’s tweet, and can be used to engage in conversation with individuals and brands.
- Retweet: This is where you take content and share it to your timeline so that your followers can see the tweet. Basically, a person’s timeline will normally only show content from people they follow. A retweet boosts exposure because it is shared to others’ timelines.
- Favorite: In order to favorite a tweet, click on the star icon below it. Favoriting can be used to either show appreciation for a tweet, or to bookmark a tweet for later reading.
- Hashtag: A hashtag is any word or phrase without spaces or punctuation, beginning with the # symbol. Hashtags are used to organize conversations and to find all content related to a given topic, and allows others to find your tweets based on topics. Click on a hashtag to see all tweets for that term, even from people who you don’t necessarily follow.
- Mention: A mention is any Twitter update that contains “@username” in the tweet. Replies to tweets are considered mentions, and users are notified when mentioned.
- Direct Message: A direct message (DM) is a way to privately message another Twitter user. You are only able to DM individuals who follow you. DMs can include pictures and links as well as text. Recently, Twitter added group-messaging capabilities to DMs.
Another advantage to Twitter is that you can set up searches for different topics or hashtags. When someone tweets using that particular term or hashtag, it will show up in your search results. You can then engage them in conversation and potentially drive them back to your website. Searches can also be limited to a certain geographic area, which is useful for local businesses.
GTECH Designs is a Baltimore-based web marketing firm that is committed to helping impact-makers spend more time doing good. For more information, contact us at 410-775-011, email us at [email protected], or visit our website.
