TWITTER 101JACOBS AGENCY | FLORA CAPUTO

TWEET MY BELLSOCIAL MEDIA 101

WHAT IS TWITTER?• What is Twitter & why is it different?• Twitter is like an open Chat room. Everyone answers just one

question; “What are you doing?” and the reply cannot be more than 140 characters. Easy to read and write. It fits our “ADD” lifestyle of today.

• Because it is OPEN, you an readily meet new people.• Messages are opt-in, so you need to be interesting,

otherwise, who cares? In following interesting people, the platform becomes very engaging and fun.

• Flexible for mobile phones, PCs, websites and in real time. SO Twitter fit’s in nearly everyone’s workflow.

WHATS THE BIG DEAL?• Great benefits as you think about personal and business applications• “Ambient Intimacy”, lightweight but meaningful connection, no

pressure to respond but good to know what is up with who you want to keep tabs on.

• Real time sharing of news, commentary and expertise about stuff you are interested in too.

• Breaking news and shared, common experiences• Mind Reading! See what individuals and groups are thinking about.

Search results update in real time. You can use this whether you have and account or not. Very valuable for companies.

• A new business channel. Companies and celebrities can engage with their fans in new, engaging ways.

WHO IS ON TWITTER?

• Barack Obama, Britney Spears, All A-listed Bloggers, Celebrities, Politicians, Techies, Web Enthusiasts, Real people

• Flora’s example * I am following Oprah, Neil Gaiman, and Gordon Ramsey! Some talk show celebrity in LA started following little old me out of the blue and INA GARTEN!!

READY, SET, GO!

HOW? STEP 1, Set up• To start with, you need to sign-up at twitter. You will get a profile page @ twitter.com/yourname.

Everyone out there has a similar page and this is the page where your updates will be seen. You can subscribe to the updates of another fellow twitterer (usually referred as tweep) by pressing the ‘follow’ button near the profile picture on his profile page. That’s how you keep track of what he is doing. The updates from your friends will be shown on your homepage.

• The best part of twitter is that, you can reply to your friends updates. Press the small arrow near his update (or type in @his_user_name in your update box) and type in your reply. He will get it in his @replies section of his profile.

• To send an @reply the recipient doesn’t have to follow you! Imagine how cool it would be to talk to Barack Obama in person!

• You can also send Direct Messages (DM) to your friends, but only to the people who follow you. DM’s are private to you and your friend.

• Recently, twitter changed @replies to @your_user_name and they call it mentions. Whenever someone mention your name in a tweet, it shows up in the @your_user_name section on your twitter sidebar.

• Make your page customized if you can, with branded art and a logo. You can even use free art background on the web. There are a TON of resources. But stay in brand if it is corporate related.

HOW? STEP 2, start talking..err tweeting

• Start updating with your status• Do you see the text box that asks: “What are you doing?”

Enter some text there and press ‘Update’. That’s your first update!

• If this sounds like more to handle on a day to day basis, you can use Twitter partners to help manage your social media updates, even preschedule and stack them. Even have an RSS stream feed into it to help keep up activity, such as TweetDeck or Hootsuite (more to come in the next section).

HOW? STEP 3, raise the volume• A fleshed out profile and followers are key to the convo and add

street cred.• Upload a profile picture that looks real just to prove that you are a real human. The o_O image

sucks. If you don’t like to be seen in public, upload your dog’s image, let him be the star. (Upload picture is under Home >> Settings >> Picture)

• Write SOMETHING in your bio. If you don’t have anything to say, just say ‘Hello” (Home >> Settings >> Account >> One Line Bio) This is visible under your profile pic, and may help entice someone to follow you. The more they know about you at first glance, the better. Make it fun! A series or phrases or a story, maybe?

• Make sure you fill out the location, or you will show up in fewer search results.• Fill out the more info url. It can be your blog, linkedin profile, website, Facebook page?• Make some updates. Others like to follow only real people and real people will be always doing

something. • Don’t be a “link Whore”, and don’t be there just to sell your products, be social.• Show community love, follow others. Start by following interesting people. Twitter also suggests

people all the time to follow based on your tweets and interests. Check them out and follow them, They will follow you back.

FOLLOW YOU, FOLLOW ME

FOLLOWING, be the pied piper

• TWITTER IS PUBLIC.• But the way to see a stream is to opt in to see it. The way nearly

everyone sees other people’s public messages is by choosing to get a stream of the updates from people you are interested in.

• You follow someone, you get a message every time he updates. When somebody follows you, he receives your message every time you update. Its called asymmetric. You don’t have to agree to follow each other in order to see someone’s messages.

• What does this mean?– Because you don’t have to verify each other, you are more likely on Twitter to find

people you don’t already know. That makes for great networking.– If you are not interesting, people will unfollow you, or never want to. The opt in

arrangement means that Twitter rewards interestingness. Use 140 characters wisely.

FOLLOWING, start with who you know

• Start with your own network.• At the top or Twitter account page, click find people,

– Do a name search– Find on other networks using your address book from Gmail, Yahoo, etc. It will give you options. Emails are

better because people get creative with their names.

• Click “follow.”

FOLLOWING, now move to people you wish you knew!• You will get suggestions from Twitter on cool

people to follow• Go to their page, check them out. Then follow them if you think it could be worthwhile.

• Click on find people, then head to suggested Users Tab. There you will find a heavy list of people and companies that Twitter finds interesting. See if you do too, and follow!

•There are great 3rd party tools to find followers:

WHO TALKS IN 140 CHARACTERS?

140. Period. (Included)• Its 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation. SO, One

sentence, maybe two.• How to shorten:

+ instead of andNo punctuation.Use common and creative ways to abbreviateOmit “I” and the verb “to be”Use numeralsMost of the times, you can cut the first few words of a sentence.

• http://140it.com uses common cutting conventions to whittle down potential posts.

Twitter lets you know as you type how any characters you have left to the right of the status bar.

140. Period. (Included)

• Linking in twitterMost urls are much longer than 140 characters, so how to share an interesting link in your tweet?

• http://bit.ly.com or http://is.gd.com will let you customize short urls. Bit.ly will track for you. Want a hint of the underlying domain name for marketing purposes? Try http://twi.bz.com.

Copy and paste the shortened url in your update.3rd party social media managers like hootsuite also include a web

shortening tool right there as you schedule updates. Its just a click. (more on that later)

The beauty of #hashtags• A hash tag or hashtag is a way of organizing your updates for Twitter

search engines. Users prefix a message with a community-driven hash tag to enable others to discover relevant posts. One commonly used hash tag on Twitter is #follow Friday where users network by providing the names of their favorite people to follow on Twitter. You can organize relevant content by hash tagging certain words relevant to your tweet so others can find it, gaining visibility and relevance.

• E.g.* Check out our new article on pinterest for the food industry! #food # foodbrands #pinterest #coolinfographic

• Also, search out used hashtags or most used ones so that you get hints on how to tag your content so it is most effective.

TWEET-AH-WAH? THE NEW JARGON

TWITTER DEFINITIONS• Twitter : Your Online Status Message.• Tweet : A Short Update of what you are doing for about 140 characters.• Followers : People who are subscribed of your updates or fondly known as Tweets.• Following : People you are interested for following by subscribing to their updates or tweets.• Direct Message (DM) : Sending a Direct Message to your followers.• At (@) : You can use this when you are referring him/her in your updates. You can prefix their

username with @ to display his/her Twitter account in the update.• Re-Tweet (RT) : You can Relay a tweet or update by a Twitterer or Tweeter to everyone who are

following you.• Hash (#) : When you want to tell something specific about some issue or subject, you can prefix or

end your subject with #. Helps in searching out a topic. A hash tag or hash tag is a way of organizing your updates for Twitter search engines. Users prefix a message with a community-driven hash tag to enable others to discover relevant posts.

• Tweet – Up : When a group of Twitterers or Tweeters arranges a meeting for a social interaction or for some bloggers meet and so on.

• Blocking/Spam : You may get requests from Spam Twitterers. You can block them in two ways. Directly from the User’s Twitter page or through your Followers list . Just hit Block and Twitter will confirm it.

TWITTER DEFINITIONS• TFTF: Twitter shorthand for "thanks for the follow."• TMB: Short for "Tweet me back."• NTS: Twitter shorthand for "note to self."• OH: Short for overheard. This chat abbreviation is used on Twitter, often in place of RT

(retweet) when the user does not want to provide the username of the follower they are quoting.

• PRT: Short for please retweet. This is a notation added to the end of a Tweet. PRT shows the user is asking others to retweet their post.

• IC: Often used on Twitter, it is the shorthand version for “I see.”• ICYMI: Short for "in case you missed it", the abbreviation may appear in a tweet that is a

repost from the same person, just incase their followers missed it the first time it was tweeted.

• idk: An abbreviated form of “I don’t know” frequently used on Twitter.

TWITTER DEFINITIONS• Follower / following: On Twitter, blogs, and other social media sites, a follower is someone

who subscribes to receives your updates. On the Twitter Web site "following" someone means you will see their messages in your own personal timeline. Twitter lets you see all the people you follow and also who is following you. FollowFriday (FF, or #followfriday): On Twitter, FollowFriday is a recommendation. It is used to call attention to a user's favorite followers and favorite people on Twitter. When you tweet a FF message, you are recommending that your followers also check out the people you mention in your post. When you send a FollowFriday message, you include #followfriday in your update so it can can be searched for using that hash tag.

• direct message (DM): Short for direct message, it is the function of the Twitter service that enables you to send a private message (direct message) to a person you are following.

• BFN: Short for "bye for now.”• @reply: The @reply means a Twitter update (a tweet) that is directed to another user in reply

to their update. An @reply will be saved in the user's "Replies" tab. Replies are sent either by clicking the 'reply' icon next to an update or typing @ username message (e.g., @user I saw that movie too).

DO’S AND DON’TS

SOME ETIQUETTE TO THINK ABOUT

NO to:1. People who use social networks but haven’t looked up the word “social” in the dictionary. 2. People who tweet links with no greeting. OK, it doesn’t have to be “good morning” because that apparently pisses people off. How about slow down on being a link whore and getting to know some people first? 3. People who don’t update. Talk about anti-social!4. People who don’t have an icon of some type. If you’re savvy enough to get on Twitter (no brainer) you can upload your picture. If you aren’t photogenic, use your cat. Otherwise, you’re not real. 5. People who are send me automated DMs that say “What Can I Do For You Today?” with a link to their “be a millionaire” e-book. Here’s what you can do for me: Write me the largest check you can, replace my knee with no pain and let me know when my limo is arriving to take me and the kiddos on a fantasy vacation.

• From thedailyblonde.com

SOME ETIQUETTE TO THINK ABOUT6. People who have thousands of followers yet follow two people…and both of those people are their alter-ego. You’re full of yourself.7. People who have no sense of humor. If you need one, I’ll sell you my e-book “101 Ways To Say Good Morning On Twitter and STILL have followers!”8. People who pretend they are flipping fantastic 24 hours a day. I know you’re not. I know you have a bad day here and there. Why not get real!? I also know you aren’t ALL making more money than you’ve EVER dreamed with your internet business. If so, take more vacations and tweet less. I tweet because it IS my vacation. 9. People who forget that there is value in being HUMAN. When you are human and not out just looking for the Almighty flipping dollar, it shows. In turn, you’ll make those dollars, if you want to, because people will trust you and relate to you as a human. I’ve got a degree in English, not Economics…but common sense is something I don’t need a degree in. Get real, people. 10. My final pet peeve is people who spend their days trying to figure out new rules for Twitter. Soon I won’t be able to tweet “How are you?” or “Did you make it home OK in all that snow?” Far be it for me to know how to thrive on a social network. I’m just a Mom tweeting bits and pieces of my this crazy thing we call life. No rules. Just real.

From thedailyblonde.com

SOME ETIQUETTE TO THINK ABOUTDO:

Thank your followers with retweets, and refollow shout outs, like E.g.* Thanks for the follow! @DMNEWS!Or #FF @DMNEWS!Be human, be personal, be relevant and be active at the right times.Send a Direct email thanking followers for the follow, and even adding some other places for them to get other content from you or your brand, a FB page, a pinterest page, a white paper or a blog.E.g.* Thanks for following me! For more delicious content, we’d love to see you at our blog, www.adchickscook.com (hey, that’s a good url….?)