Even by internet standards, the growth of Twitter has been phenomenal. It’s only been around since 2006, but has already risen to being one of the top 50 web sites in the world. The number of users has grown exponentially in 2009. Right place, right time.
But let’s backtrack a little first, because even though “twitter” has been designated as Top Word of 2009, many people have no idea what it is, still less what it can do for them, or for their business.
What exactly is Twitter ?
Back in 2006, it started out as an SMS or “text” service, with the idea of relaying messages to and from the mobile phones of small groups of people. Indeed, SMS facilities are still there, though they are less prominent because on mobile phones, the technological line between SMS and internet distribution has grown rather blurred in the last three years. And it soon moved on to the web in earnest anyway and since then there has been no looking back.
So how does it work ?
Well, the key concepts of Twitter are the tweet and the follow. Once you have registered for an account, you’re in a position to start “tweeting”. In other words, you can issue messages of up to 140 characters in length that address the question, “What’s Happening ?”
(It’s worth emphasising that by default, all tweets like this are public and can be seen easily by anybody visiting your twitter page. Some high-profile figures have got in to trouble for tweeting first and thinking later ! You can delete tweets, but nowadays things can move so fast that by the time a message is removed, the damage has already been done.)
On-line, your twitter account shows your own personal “timeline”, and your own tweets show up on these as soon as you make them. Eventually, this will have other stuff on it too, but we’ll come to that shortly.
I tweet, you follow !
But first, put yourself in the shoes of other twitter users out there in cyber space.
Maybe the content of your tweets is particularly interesting to them: maybe you’re particularly funny, maybe you live close by or work in the same profession.
Whatever the reason, some people will see your tweets and like what you say so much that they want to make sure that they always get to see your updates. So they “follow” you. That way, every time you tweet, your message appears in their timeline, along with tweets from others that they are following.
In fact, whenever you tweet, your messages are relayed to all of the other Twitter members that are following you, your “followers”. In this respect, Twitter is rather like a blog and that’s why it is sometimes referred to as a “micro-blogging” service”.
You get notified when somebody starts to follow you. Perhaps you’ll check them out when they do and, if you like their tweets, you may want to “follow” them back. So after you follow them, you will start to see their tweets in your time line.
Is that it ?
Although it’s taken several words to explain, that is essentially it !
If you’re new to Twitter, at this point you may be rather non-plussed.
This is understandable: for most of us, it’s not as if we’ve all been sitting around waiting for a new way of hearing exactly what other people are doing at any moment in time, particularly as most of them are likely to be strangers to us ! Even for people that we know well, there’s such a thing as “too much detail”.
But if you apply “Twitter thinking” to any topic that interests you, you will immediately find benefit. There are various ways of categorising Twitter users, but basically, they are all facets of this concept:
People are interested in other people that are interested in the same thing(s) that interest them. They want to communicate and share their interest.
Do you want to hear about what your favourite movie/pop/TV star is doing ? Follow them on Twitter. Interested in the latest news from your local football team, but can’t get to the match ? Follow them on Twitter. You get the idea …
So far, so mundane ? Well yes, there is an awful lot of “static” on Twitter, particularly if you end up following serial tweeters who are primarily interested in telling you about the minutiae of their day: “Just got up”, “Just having breakfast”, “About to have a shower”, etc, etc, etc. But Twitter is also being used for matters of much greater significance. For example, it’s recently been used by protesters in various parts of the world as a means of rapidly disseminating “hot” information “under the radar”.
2009: the year that Big Business got serious about Twitter
But between these extremes, there’s also huge potential for business use.
- Suppose that your favourite clothes store occasionally tweets about special discounts and short-term offers, would you want to follow them on Twitter ?
- Or the best restaurant in town offered a special “2 for 1″ deal to its followers one evening, would you want to follow them too ?
- Maybe you want to know when the local toy shop has fresh deliveries of this year’s must-have stocking filler for your kids this Christmas ?
Now, imagine that you are a rival to one of those businesses and you can’t quite work out why people are flocking to them, rather than to you.
Oh, in case you think that this is just an American phenomenon, think again. According to Evan Williams, one of Twitter’s founders, London is the “top Twitter city” in the world. And ask yourself why blue chip companies like Marks and Spencer, Debenhams and Asda are using Twitter to drive prospective customers to their shops and web sites.
Twitter Search
If this isn’t enough to convince you that you need to be on Twitter, consider this. Twitter is being used more and more for online searches. OK, it may never knock over Google, the King of Search, but this year several commentators have talked about the way that Twitter is becoming a much more important tool when researching on the internet. For example, Lew Moorman talks about how people are soliciting feedback on Twitter – he suggests that Twitter searches are better for “researching companies, products and services for real customer feedback, breaking news and live events/conference updates”. He goes on to talk about how he used Twitter’s search to find out about the car he was thinking of buying.
If people go to Twitter first, shouldn’t you make sure that you’re represented there ? For almost all businesses, there really is no reason not to be on Twitter.
Want to know more ?
If you want to know how we can help you to establish and grow your Twitter presence, call 0117 911 4187 now or send an email to info@italicmarketing.com.
