Twitter 101

About
Twitter is a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices.

Interactivity Etiquette
Twitter is multiple times a day tool. You need to be communicating when other people check-in to read what is in their feed. You want to stay visible in your follower’s feeds. I use a lot of scheduled tweets to try to reach as many followers as possible.

Capabilities

• Send quick updates to a mass of people on multiple devices – i.e. cell phones, email, etc.
• Fundraise and take payments through TwitPay application
• Update your Twitter status via Facebook
• Share links with a wide audience
• Encourage people who are using your product or talking about your cause
• Live customer service – see an example
• Correct misinformation about your product or cause – use monitoring applications like TweetDeck
• Builds Google ratings by increasing visits by interested customers
• Friends invite friends to build your reach virally
• Social networking tool to find people you won’t find on other mediums
• Schedule tweets with third party tools like HootSuite

Drawbacks

• Only handles short (140 characters) messages
• Needs to work with another platform to convey information – i.e. links
• Up to the minute updates are only useful if you have a smart phone (iPhone, Blackberry, etc)
• Hard to keep information private – unless you protect your tweets and not really the point of Twitter
• TERRIBLE search function – I advise using Google to find users

Great Uses for Twitter

• Tweet as a mascot or character – it can be mind numbing to try to tweet in character or a long period of time, but worth a try
• Quick updates about an event –  create buzz with updates and reveals on event plans — This could even work on a personal level for family reunions or weddings – create a protected twitter account which protects your updates and only follow people who are involved in the event
• Offer Twitter only deals – tweet coupon codes and more fun stuff for your followers
• Add humor to your feed – you need to be entertaining and informative – Portland Red Cross does a great job of this!