Twitter

Everything you ever wanted to know but didn’t know

what to ask

Andy Stitt, SME(Social Media Enthusiast)

How is Twitter used?

• Primarily used to build community

• Rapid (and viral) sharing of information

• Real-time communication

• Invent words that sound like slang for eight-year-olds (i.e. tweeting, tweeple, twollow, twellow, twibe)

Key Concepts

• Tweet• Following vs. followers• @ replies• Direct messages• Retweeting• Twitter search• Hashtags• Trending topics

Quick Quiz

A “tweet” is

a. The sound a bird makes

b. How a four-year-old says the word “treat”

c. A short 140-character or less message on Twitter

d. All of the above

Answer

d. All of the above

Your Home Screen

• Serves as your dashboard, or “master control”

• Tweets from those people that you follow are shown

• From this screen, you can:– Send out a tweet– Check your replies and direct messages– Perform a Twitter search and check trending

topics

Your Personal Page and Twitter Stream

• Displays your name, location, website, and bio

• Twitter stream shows all of your tweets• How many people you follow and how

many are following you• IMPORTANT: Your page is how you are

viewed by others in the Twitter world; brand it with a good picture and background!

Following vs. Followers

• The difference between the two columns on your home screen and personal page:– Following: list of those that you have

chosen to “follow” on Twitter– Followers: list of those that have

chosen to “follow” you

Privacy Controls

• You can choose to block a follower

• You can choose to protect your updates, or “tweets,” so that only those who you grant permission can see them

The use of the @ character

• “@” is used to signify a Twitter username when used in a tweet, i.e. “I read a great book written by @andystitt829”

• Whenever you use @username in a tweet, that person will see it in their “Replies” stream

• If you reply to someone using this method, it will show up in your public Twitter stream

Direct Messages

• Private two-way communication; like a 160-character e-mail

• Does not show up in public Twitter stream

• Users must be following each other in order to use DM feature

• Twitter command to direct message is: d username message

Retweeting

• If you want to quote another Twitter user or simply share something from someone else with your followers, then you can “retweet”– andystitt829: Check out this cool

website– dianefromm: RT @andystitt829: Check

out this cool website

Two types of retweeting

• Directly quoting– dianefromm: RT @andystitt829 Check out

http://www.pmief.org for brand new scholarships for college students

• Paraphrasing– dianefromm: http://www.pmief.org has lots of

scholarships you might be interested in. Thanks, @andystitt829 for the info

• REMEMBER: RT indicates a direct quote

URL shorteners

• Due to the 140-character limitation, Twitter users use URL shorteners to share URLs

• Examples are: tinyurl.com, twurl.nl, bit.ly

• Desktop Twitter clients usually have a URL shortening feature

Link before URL shortening

Link after URL shortening

Twitter Search

• http://search.twitter.com is the “Google” of Twitter

• Allows you to search for tweets with specified keywords

• Search results come up in real time; the screen refreshes if more tweets are posted after you finished the search

• This can also be done from your Twitter home screen

Initial Twitter Search Page

Search Results Page

Hashtags

• Hashtagging is similar to search engine and blog post indexing using keywords

• Hashtags can be used to communicate to a group: “Hey project managers, I have something for you #pmot”

• Hashtags can also indicate a particular event: “I am about to go to a session at the IFC Online Fundraising conference #ifconline”

• You can search for hashtags at Twitter Search or your home screen

Trending Topics

• Topics that are heavily tweeted about at any given part of the day are tracked and shown on Twitter Search and your home screen

• Each trending topic is shown as a clickable search term

• Examples: #swineflu was a trending topic in April, and the new Star Trek movie was one during its opening weekend

How can you use Twitter?

• Twitter website: http://www.twitter.com• Desktop clients

– http://www.tweetdeck.com– http://www.twhirl.com

• Smartphone apps– http://www.twitterfon.com for iPhone– http://www.ubertwitter.com for Blackberry

How will your activity on Twitter help your organization?

• Spread the word of programs, activities, etc. to your followers

• Find people who might be interested in supporting the cause

• Use the search function to find mentions of key terms that are relevant to your organization

• Use the search function to listen to what others are saying about your organization

Thank you for your time

Now go out there and tweet to your heart’s content!