Twitter – Quick Start Guide

Twitter® – Quick Starter

The Twitter Basics – A Quick Start Guide

www.million-dollar-networker.com

Why Use Twitter

• Great for breaking news

– Some true, some not, so BEWARE

• Great for following key people

• Great for insight into interesting stuff

• Great for marketing your brand

• Great for announcements

• Great for backlinks to your website(s), blog, etc

• All the news you’ll never need in one place!


Twitter Basics

• A tweet is maximum 140 characters long

• People who follow you receive your messages

• You receive messages from people you follow

• A Twitter name starts with the @ symbol - @rorymurray

• If you put a dot before a name - .@rorymurray your tweet also goes to all that person’s followers

• URLs are shortened when you send the message, so don’t take up the space they appear to consume when you paste them in – great for linking to websites and announcements!


mailto:.@rorymurray

mailto:.@rorymurray

Twitter Jargon

• Hashtags start with a “#” and highlight important words or short phrases

• People can Re-Tweet your tweets “RT”, but if you use more than about 125 characters in your original message, they may run out of space because RTs include your Twitter name!

• A Direct Message “DM” can only sent to people you are following and who are following you – it’s a private message and nobody else can see it.

• If someone edits your tweet, for instance if they need to reduce the number of characters or remove a swear-word, they may indicate this with “MT” – Modified Tweet

• If you want to show your appreciation for a tweet and bookmark it for the future, you can “Favourite” it with a little star


Twitter Basics – DON’Ts

• Don’t abuse people, RT abuse, bully or be libellous • Don’t respond to, or comment on, abuse by others • DON’T click on links from people you don’t know, or

from people you do know with messages like: – “Haha, did you see this picture of you”, – “Someone said something nasty about you here”, etc. – These messages are often a virus that hacks your account

and sends spam to all your followers!

• DON’T send, or RT, URLs and links you’re uncertain of – they could be spam or a virus!

• If you suspect the message may be spam and you know the person, let them know.


How to Use Twitter

• The main objective is to attract followers because these are the people who will see your content and may share it with others

• Integrate Twitter with other platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn

• The easiest ways to achieve this are:

– RT other people’s worthwhile content

– Post your own interesting content

– Engage people in dialogue by replying publicly to their tweets

– Thank people publicly who RT your tweets

– Thank people who follow you and follow them back if their profile looks interesting

– Be consistently active, drip-feeding content regularly, rather than bursts of tweets in quick succession that fill people’s timelines up with your stuff


Twitter Anatomy

• The following slides are screen-grabs of my account to explain how to navigate your screen.

• It shows you the key areas and functionality that you need to understand in order to use Twitter effectively.

• Enjoy!


Twitter Anatomy - Home


You are here – your basic profile view

Your interactions with others

Some tailored highlights. Not sure how/why they choose these, but always worth a look”

Your profile summary with your Tweets and RTs

Your total number of Tweets

How many you follow

How many follow you


Number of new tweets since you last refreshed your screen

Search names, hashtags “#” etc.

Settings – loads of stuff under here!

Compose a new tweet


Twitter Anatomy - Me


You are here – your basic profile view

A list of your Tweets

A list of who you follow

A list of who follows you

A list of Tweets you’ve tagged as Favourites

You can create lists, add people to them and manage them here


You profile pic appears beside every tweet

Your name

Your Twitter name

Your profile description – put some effort into this!

Usually your location hijacked for my LinkedIn profile URL Your Web address

Direct Messages “DM”s

Edit your profile here

You background can be edited by clicking on it


Twitter Anatomy - Settings

All the stuff you need to configure your account is here


Favourite Symbol

RT Symbol

Reply directly here

2 People Fav’d it

I’m 1 of 4 people who RT this

Things you can do

Who posted this

More allows: - Share via email - Embed in a website - Report inappropriate


That’s Twitter in a nutshell

• Loads of functionality - Slightly confusing at first

• News seconds after it happens

• Loads of unreliable stuff

• Full of self-proclaimed experts

• A potentially huge time-waster / distraction

• An enormously powerful research tool

• An amazing marketing tool if you use it properly

• Worth the effort


The Saw-Tooth Dilemma

• If your business suffers from large highs and lows in revenue, then you may find this book helpful:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Saw-Tooth-Dilemma-ebook/dp/B00EXB8Q0I











Twitter – Quick Start Guide

Business

Transcript of Twitter – Quick Start Guide