Thursday 6 September 2012

What is Twitter?


For those of you who are still not sure what Twitter is and what the point of it all is, but were too scared to ask, or just can't get along with the "War and Peace" Wikipedia version - here's the shorter, simpler Helepedia version, to clear things up, I hope it helps.

(My) Definition
Twitter is a communication tool that enables you to gather and share online information and in choosing the right people to communicate with, and in the right way, build an online following or community that share similar interests and build rapport and relationships.

It is a great free tool, for helping to promote individuals and businesses, helping them to raise their profile, demonstrate expertise and build interest in the products and services they offer.

Timely
It’s brevity and immediacy, allows information to be shared very quickly, allowing you to have up to the second news updates on any topic you choose.  For this reason it is great for current affairs, sport updates, weather, celebrity gossip, television and radio programmes. But also, any up to the minute news and information that may occur in your industry, can you think of some examples?

Accessible
Being free and accessible to anyone who has internet access, it also gives the general public the opportunity to voice their opinions on whichever topics take their fancy, at any time of day or night and regardless of the kind of day they might be having!

Public
As this is the first time such an opportunity for open, public broadcasting has been given, and on such a scale, there have been occasions when members of the public have over-stepped the mark of voicing their opinion and actually vilified others with their libellous claims resulting in legal action.

Celebrity
As anyone can use Twitter, this is also the first time that the general public and celebrities or people in the public eye have the opportunity to communicate directly with each other.  Again this can have it’s pros and cons, if celebs conduct themselves well and use social media well, it can increase their following and popularity or vice versa.

Business
You can have as many accounts as you like, but most people either have a work or personal account or one for each.  In terms of business accounts, these can be set up to represent the business as a whole, or for individuals within the company to build rapport with clients, or around specific products or services, or a combination of these depending on how your business works.

Business Benefits
When used well in business Twitter is brilliant for sharing your latest news and updates, promoting events, building an audience, answering questions, developing customer relations, providing great customer service, getting noticed by the right people, building relations with customers and suppliers, demonstrating how much you care and maximising the impact of “word of mouth marketing” by giving your customers the opportunity to share their great experiences with an even wider audience.

Business Precautions
When used badly, Twitter can make a business appear, self-absorbed as opposed to customer focused, too promotional, just caring about the bottom line, not providing good, information, service or products, not caring about the customer, not being up to date with what’s happening in their own industry, just out to promote themselves and not their customers needs.  Even large corporates like McDonalds can get Twitter wrong.

I’d like to hear from you - Please Tweet me!
I hope this give a good general introduction to What Twitter is?  If there’s anything you would like to add please feel free to comment below or better still tweet me @helencoldicott !


Like to learn how to use Twitter well for your business?
If you’re interested in learning how to maximise the impact of your marketing with Twitter, if you’d like to know how best to set up accounts for your business, if you’re worried that you don’t have the time or resources to update your social media – in fact any social media questions you have please give me a call I'd love to help make Twitter work for you – Helen 01905 23902.