Mar 10
9
Twitter is a popular, successful and exciting social media channel. Everyone wants to tweet and be followed. Many have become addicted to the social media site and can’t seem to stay away from it. So, what is Twitter?
Twitter is actually difficult to describe. It doesn’t have any tangible product direction or primary use behind it. Although Twitter is extremely relevant as a business tool in this age when social media is all the rage, it is not easy to explain. Twitter doesn’t have too many rules; however, one rule that it does have is that your tweets (messages on Twitter) cannot be any longer than 140 characters each.
Twitter is a great way to share thoughts, news and other interesting tidbits of information. It is perfect if you want to engage a whole group of people and give them the benefit of what you are saying. A great way to share your ideas and other valuable information is by adding links to your tweets. Because of the limit of 140 characters, you can put in shortened links, which will allow you to post a longer tweet. There are services such as tinyurl.com, cli.gs and bit.ly that can help you to accomplish this.
Twitter is an amazing source for people connections, unifying those with similar interests who want to bring about social change and work on worthy causes. Twitter has tremendous search capabilities. It not only searches the text of tweets but can also scan (or crawl) the links that are included in the tweets and index the results.
The Twitter search results include millions of web pages. Twitter also has the same capability as Google with regard to indexing pages. However, the one difference is that Twitter is faster than Google because tweets are sent so rapidly (as opposed to web pages, which take time to build).
Twitter search capabilities are very sophisticated. Twitter has a reputation of being a ranking system, among other things. That is to say that when the Twitter user searches on a popular topic (one that has its own link in the Twitter.com sidebar), Twitter considers the reputation of the author of each tweet and rank search results are based on that, in part.
Twitter is customizable. In other words, Twitter is whatever you want it to be. When people express that they are still trying to figure Twitter out or trying to adjust to it, it is because of this intangible concept. Once you create an account on Twitter, you are, unfortunately, left with the task of trying to figure out how to use it to its full potential.
There are many things that you can do with Twitter that won’t cost you anything.
- Provide updates on your products and services for your Twitter followers
- Offer your Twitter fans valuable information
- Offer scheduled information. You can send it out daily, weekly, or monthly
- Follow other experts in many different industries so that you can provide fresh information to your followers
- Post last-minute promotional deals to your fans on Twitter
- Have your tweets retweeted by organizations that have very large numbers of followers.
When you first look at Twitter, it seems as though it is just a large bunch of random thoughts. It is actually much more than that. Some of the positive ways that you can use Twitter are to:
- Allow clients and colleagues to get to know you as a person
- Show your intelligence, wit, charm and charisma
- Open up communication channels between the public and your organization
- Seek out and find new partners, members, clients and volunteers
One of the most important reasons to use Twitter for business is that you can learn what people think. You can receive instant feedback on anything and from anywhere. You might want to look at Twitter as a social news channel where you can gather news from everyone. Your news will come directly from the source in real time.
You choose who is important to you and your business. You choose whom you want to influence you. You can choose to follow people who give something of value to you. Remember, you need to listen before you speak. A great deal of listening is very beneficial when it comes to Twitter.
You might ask why other people use Twitter. Some people use Twitter to find information that they don’t feel they can find anywhere else. Sometimes, the search results are incredible. People use Twitter to continually learn new information on a variety of subjects that interest them. Twitter is also used to build relationships.
Another thing to remember is that when you use Twitter, you are greatly increasing your chances of being found by the search engines.
Twitter is used for commercial and personal reasons. Now that Twitter is in the mainstream, with all of its tentacles reaching as far into society as it does, it is not going anywhere anytime soon.
We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.
About the Author. Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications LLC. He has over 25 years of experience in IT and web technologies.
Mr. Cohn founded CompuKol Communications to help small businesses and entrepreneurs increase their exposure and reputation on the Internet. CompuKol consults, creates, and implements communication strategies for small businesses to monopolize their markets with a unique business voice, vision, and visibility.
Prior to that, Mr. Cohn spent a significant amount of time at a major telecommunications company, where his main focus was on initiating and leading synergy efforts across all business units by dramatically improving efficiency, online collaboration, and the company’s Intranet capabilities, which accelerated gains in business productivity. His expertise includes social media marketing strategies; internet marketing; web presence design; business analysis; project management; management of global cross-matrix teams; systems engineering and analysis, architecture, prototyping and integration; technology evaluation and assessment; systems development; performance evaluation; and management of off-shore development.
Mr. Cohn earned a Master’s degree in project management from George Washington University in Washington, DC; and a Master’s degree in computer science and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ.
Mr. Cohn is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Enter your email address to subscribe to our CompuKol Connection blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Hm hm.. that’s very interessting but frankly i have a hard time visualizing it… wonder what others have to say..
Terrific work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on the search engines for not positioning this post higher!
nice post. thanks.
nice post. thanks.