Twitter Basics Part 1 – What is Twitter?
By Laura Wilson Web3.0Girl www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com www.iLearnInternetMarketing.com
What is Twitter? Hello and welcome to this 7-part Twitter e-Course! So, you‟re wondering what the heck this new thing you‟ve heard of called „Twitter‟ is hey? Well you‟re not alone. Twitter is a hugely popular and rapidly growing site…But it does seem to baffle a lot of people! If you‟ve recently joined Twitter or are considering it then you‟d be amongst the 10,000+ people joining on a daily basis and wondering what it can do and how best to use it. Lets start with a definition from Wikipedia: “Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.”
Twitter‟s been around since 2006 but it wasn‟t until January 2009 that it‟s seen a huge surge of interest and exponential growth. (See the Alexa.com graph charting Twitter‟s exponential growth at www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com) In essence, it‟s a micro blog platform and you are limited to 140 characters per post. This forces you to be concise and keep each tweet (Twitter post) to just one topic. 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, internet marketing and social networking fatigue! Twittering is also a less restrictive method of communication: you can Visit www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com now for a complete guide to using Twitter
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share information with people that you wouldn't normally exchange email or IM messages with, opening up your circle of contacts to an evergrowing community of like-minded people. 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 send your messages using the Twitter website directly, as a single SMS alert, or via a third-party application client, such as Twirl, Snitter, or the Twitterfox add-on for Firefox. I prefer Tweetdeck as it‟s easy to use, versatile and attractive. How to set up Tweetdeck is explained in The Essential Twitter Guide. So what can Twitter be used for? The key to effectively using Twitter is to understand that it is a conversation between people and about sharing information. It‟s a great tool to use for business and personal communications. For example, Twitter is a great way to keep in touch with your friends and quickly broadcast information about where you are and what you're up to. For example, "I’m just heading off for a coffee in Starbucks, anyone wanna join me?" For business, Twitter can be used to broadcast your company's latest news and blog posts, interact with your customers, or to enable easy internal collaboration and group communication. Here are some great uses for Twitter:
Keep your friends and colleagues informed of your whereabouts. If you travel frequently let your family, friends and colleagues know
Visit www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com now for a complete guide to using Twitter
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where you are quickly and easily. Twitter accepts updates from SMS so it‟s easy to post.
Notify your customers – You can utilise Twitter‟s RSS feed feature to send news out to your customers. Get your customers to sign up to the RSS feed of your twitter and use it to notify of new products or sales.
Monitor chatter about your brand. See what people are saying about you or your brand. Monitor your reputation and respond.
Arrange a meet up. Set up a spur of the moment meeting. By broadcasting your whereabouts you can easily organise a get together with people in your network.
Manage Employees and Projects. Your team can use Twitter to liaise with one another and keep each other up to date of any important happenings. You can set the updates to private so no one in the outside world will know your private business.
Get advice. Use your followers as a “Collective Brain”. Robert Scoble, a power user of Twitter, for example, has 100‟s of followers and regularly gets over 1000 replies to questions he asks.
In fact there are hundreds of weird and wonderful uses for Twitter, but I hope these 6 have inspired you to give Twitter a proper go.
Ok so that‟s it for today, I look forward to speaking to you in Part 2 of this Twitter Basics e-Course, where we‟re going to look at „How to Tweet‟ (that‟s Twitter jargon for posting a message by the way!) Visit www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com now for a complete guide to using Twitter
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To find out how to use Twitter for maximum benefits to you, check out my comprehensive 40+ page eBook at: www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com.
Some of The Things You‟ll Learn… How to customize your profile page How to get intimately familiar with fantastic FREE Twitter applications, fast How to systematically find and market to new business prospects How to leverage your time and efforts for maximum following, networking and exposure How to automate timed updates to your followers How to integrate Twitter with your mobile, website, blog… And much more! PLUS, you get 5 great FREE bonuses – eBooks and Twitter Video Tutorial Sharing This ‘Twitter Basics’ e-Course PDF You are free to share and give away this e-Course PDF as you wish but you may not edit it or change the content at all. You may wish to direct you friends and family to the website www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com, where they can sign up to receive the full 7 part e-Course easily and for free, straight to their inbox. Thanks for reading, wishing you Tweeting success! Laura Wilson Visit www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com now for a complete guide to using Twitter
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About the Author Laura Wilson aka Web3.0Girl (follow @LauraAWilson on Twitter) I have a wide variety of interests and occupations. I‟m an Internet Entrepreneur & Marketer; Lead singer in a pop/rock band; Dancer – I love LA style salsa, swing/lindy hop and street dance mainly; A fitness and health follower – completed marathons & Olympicdistance triathlons, qualified in Advanced Gym Instruction & Exercise to Music and eat raw & alkaline foods. I have several websites, that may be of benefit to you. Visit www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com for a comprehensive Guide to Twitter and Twitter applications. You can sign up for this Free 7-Part „Twitter Basics‟ eCourse too. www.iLearnInternetMarketing.com is my main website, where you‟ll find loads of useful information on how to go about earning a passive income online. It is designed to be a one-stop resource for all things internet marketing and online money-making related. Check out the articles, guides, freebies, tools, event/seminar details, product reviews... Principles of iLearn IM: Find a hungry niche Create your product Develop your website Drive traffic to your site Maximize sales & conversion Nurture & grow your customer base - add massive value Expand your online empire! You can see all my other websites by clicking on „Bookmarks‟ on the right hand sidebar. Go to my www.SettingEffectiveGoals.com site for a FREE 7-part e-Course on how to set and achieve meaningful goals, reach your dreams and stop procrastinating! You also get 2 FREE full e-Books – ‘Fitting Fitness into a Busy Schedule’ (41 pages) and ‘Let’s Get Organized!’ (54 pages) Follow me at http://twitter.com/LauraAWilson Visit www.EssentialTwitterGuide.com now for a complete guide to using Twitter
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