What’s all this about twitter?

Unless you’ve had your head under a rock lately you’ve probably heard a bit about Twitter but you’re not sure how to get started. Perhaps your Mentor/business coach/Virtual Assistant has mentioned it to you and your still not sure of its benefits. But what is Twitter exactly? This definition is from www.twitternet.com

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, “What are you doing?” by sending short text messages 140 characters in length, called “tweets”, to your friends, or “followers.”

The short format of the tweet is a defining characteristic of the service, allowing informal collaboration and quick information sharing that provides relief from rising email and IM fatigue. Twittering is also a less gated method of communication: you can share information with people that you wouldn’t normally exchange email or IM messages with, opening up your circle of contacts to an ever-growing community of like-minded people.

You can send your messages using the Twitter website directly, as a single SMS alert, or via a third-party application such as Twirl, Snitter, or the Twitterfox add-on for Firefox.

Your tweets are displayed on your profile page, on the home page of each of your followers, and in the Twitter public timeline (unless you disable this in your account settings.)

You can receive tweets by visiting the Twitter website, IM, SMS, RSS, email or via a third-party application.

Thank you twitternet.com but how do we use it?

It depends on what your goals are. Do you want to have a virtual watercooler? Do you want to connect more personally with your target market? Do you want to find information quickly and simply? Do you just want to keep up with the latest ‘fad’ online? Do you want to sell your product or service?

Fact is that humans are social beings. We need contact with others to stimulate ideas and make us feel connected to a community. Twitter is perfect for this very reason. Regardless of which goal you choose, Twitter can help you to achieve it. You just need to be clear in what it is you want to do, be authentic and be yourself.

Tagged as: social media, twitter