TWITTER 101

Kristen Etzel, Communications Specialist

Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, & Clinical Research

And General Internal Medicine

Why Twitter?

■ Twitter is growing fast with 255 million active users

■ 500 million tweets generated daily

■ 76% of users using it on mobile devices

■ Connect with other universities, researchers, and community members

Your Handle

@JHUWelchCenter

Tweets

■ A tweet is a message. You have 280 characters (this is new, used to be 140

characters), including spaces, to put down your thoughts.

■ Rules of grammar and punctuation fly out the window when you send a Tweet.

– Abbreviate with to w/

– Turn people into ppl

– And even make for or four into 4

Replies

■ When you want to reply to a particular tweet, you can click the Reply button offered

by all Twitter clients or the backward arrow next to the tweet you want to reply to on

Twitter itself.

Hashtags (#)

■ You can use hashtags to create groupings and help generate popularity around a

particular keyword or topic. You can create a hashtag about a city, local event, news

event, brand, sports team, or anything you want by preceding it with the hash mark

(#).

■ When you include a hashtag in a tweet, it becomes clickable.

■ Tweets with hashtags receive 2x engagement

#HopkinsWelchCenter

Trending

• Top twitter trends right now in your city

Retweets

■ Reposting a tweet from another user

Pin Tweet

■ Make a certain tweet appear at the top of your page

Live Tweeting

■ Post comments as tweets about an event on Twitter while the event is taking place

■ Most events will have a corresponding hashtag to create conversations with those at

the event

■ Raise brand awareness, increase engagement, and draw attention to an event

Direct Messages

■ Also referred to as DMs

■ Direct messages let you communicate privately with other Twitter users who are also

following you

■ To send a direct message, type the letter D followed by the username of the twitterer

you want to reach, and then enter your message in the What’s Happening? text box.

■ You also have the ability to send direct messages directly to the individual through

your “Messages Inbox” on your profile.

Shorten Your Links

■ If you have 280 characters, you don’t want to use 50 of them by including a long

URL. You need to shorten the URL so that you can save yourself some characters.

Most URL shorteners shrink the links to anywhere from 16 to 20 characters.

Bitly

Ow.ly

Schedule Tweets

■ TweetDeck

■ Hootsuite

■ Buffer

■ Sproat Social

Best time to Tweet

■ Twitter gets the most traffic from 9am-3pm

■ Most engagement from 1pm-3pm

Tweet Activity and Analytics

• Free Analytics on tweet impressions, profile visits, mentions, new followers, top tweets, top mentions,

and engagement at https://analytics.twitter.com

Don’t forget to follow the Welch Center@JHUWelchCenter