A Brief Guide To Twitter – The Hype, The Power and How It Relates To You and Your Business
How do I describeTwitter
I like to describe Twitter as short, instant messages that are saved on a website for public consumption (there is a privacy feature if you do not like the sound of ‘public consumption’). Users are given 140 characters, similar to a text message, to share their thoughts, articles and links, ask questions or just about anything else you can think of with text and 140 characters.
When I ask people if they use Twitter, the three most common responses I get are…”What’s Twitter?” “I don’t get it…”or “Why would I want to do that?”
Some people feel like they get it right away and some people say they will never understand it. It is OK if you get it or don’t get it or only kind of get it. It’s there for you if you want to use it….and there for you to ignore if you would like.
So why would I use it?
From what I understand about Twitter, the hype revolves around two central themes, real time and one-to-many communication.
Real-time: Twitter will send your message instantly, whatever you’re thinking, feeling, sharing, etc., it goes out that second. Why is this interesting? Google will index what is new on the internet but it measures how recent content is in days and hours, not seconds. If you want to try this out, open up two separate instances of your favorite browser. Go to Google.com in one browser and search.twitter.com in another. Now search for the same thing. Take note of the different types of content. While Google might tell you the best source, Twitter will tell you what is happening or being discussed this second. One person example of when I found Twitter helpful (non-business related) was earlier this year, while having dinner with friends. We were having a nice early dinner, sitting outside enjoying the end of a beautiful sunny day. The only disturbance was an abnormal amount of police, fire and ambulance activity. We had no idea what was going on. I searched Google for “Hoboken police sirens” or something along those lines. Google returned tons of information on Hoboken, its Wikipedia page, a local blog and more…but nothing about the noise I was hearing. So I decided to go to search.twitter.com and type in the exact same information. Within seconds I was reading about someone who had tried to commit suicide by jumping into the Hudson River. While this was an unusually dramatic experience, it illustrates how relevant real-time search and communication is over Google.
More about real-time search here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/discovering_power_of_twitter_search.php
One-to-Many: Imagine if you yelled into a bullhorn and text came out…that’s sort of what Twitter does. It lets you talk to a fairly infinite number of people by just saying (typing) something once. Type in a quick message once and everyone who subscribes to your tweets will be notified. Twitter will then send that message to hundreds, if not thousands, of people who follow you. If it is something of interest or value, your followers might re-tweet it, sending it to their friends and followers and spreading your message. Some of the top Twitter users (mostly celebrities and other well known people) have hundreds of thousands to millions of followers. The ability to send thousands of people a message from almost anywhere, at anytime from a cell phone is pretty amazing.
Is it right for you?
Sign-up and find out. You can setup your account and make some basic connections either with friends or celebrities. Watch how they use it. Watch how competitors use it. Follow people in your industry. Download a Twitter client and install an app on your Blackberry or iPhone. It might not be right for you, but it is an interesting communication tool and you should certainly explore it.
Where do I begin?
Work on building a strong, captivated audience within your niche or business category. Share information and articles from what you know or from your blog, but don’t forget to share information generated by others! You’ll receive a very swift quick backlash from your followers if you do nothing but promote yourself.
Here is a great introduction by Chris Brogan: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/