ABC’s of Twitter
Twitter- It's what's happening.
Twitter can be an effective digital tool to put forth one’s ideas/thoughts or to market business. With 206 million monetizable accounts Twitter has changed the dynamics and perception of social media marketing. Twitter is a place too ambitious for business, hence pushing boundaries of individuals to explore, enlighten, promote and share. While people tend to inculcate understandings, facts, humor, and savviness in tweets, thus granting themselves the liberty to put forth ideas in their extraordinary ways.
While the main aspects of Twitter marketing are similar to those of Instagram, the main differentiating factor is that Twitter usually consists of microblogs rather than full-fledged graphic posts. While, Twitter does support mediums like graphics, audio, and visuals, the point of attention usually remains the text.
Twitter Vocabulary to look out for:
- Username: A username is also known as login name, account name, or handle, is solely an identification tool. It begins with the “@” symbol, is unique to one’s account, and appears in the profile URL. The username is used to log in to the account and is visible when sending and receiving replies and Direct Messages. People can also search for others by their username.’ Twitter usernames consist of alphanumeric characters only except for underscores.
2. Thread: Tweet threads prove to be an exquisite way to create intriguing posts or to build suspense to a story and start engaging conversations. Threads are a staggered format of tweets often used to link similar tweets together. Twitter gives you the ability to add up to 25 tweets in a single thread. Each tweet further can consist of all the elements of a standard tweet. Tweets are a great way to widen a conversation and they can even help get older tweets noticed by resurfacing them if a thread consisting of them is made. On average, Tweet Threads have proved to bring in more engagement.
3. Lists: Twitter Lists allow you to customize, organize and prioritize the Tweets in your timeline. You can choose to join Lists created by others on Twitter, or create lists of your own by group, interest, or topic. Lists on Twitter can be both public and private, public lists are visible to anyone who has the URL to the list or is linked to the list. Public lists are searchable, whereas Private lists are only visible to the user who created them. Even with the URL to a private list, they remain inaccessible other than to the user. Steps to creating lists include:
Step 1: Click on Lists in the navigation bar.
Step 2: Click the Create new List icon at the top.
Step 3: Choose a name for your List and a short description of the List. List names cannot exceed 25 characters, nor can they begin with a number. Then select if you want the List to be private (only accessible to you) or public (anyone can follow the List).
Step 4: Click Next.
Step 5: You can then search for people and add people to your list.
Step 6: Click Done.
4. Newsletters: Revue is Twitter’s editorial newsletter subscription service. Users choosing to subscribe to a Revue newsletter from a Twitter profile will enter into a free subscription for that newsletter. Any creator with a Twitter account connected to their Revue newsletter can turn on the feature to let a test group of people on Twitter subscribe to their newsletter directly from Twitter.
5. Hashtags: Essentially, Hashtags are online tools that indeed are masked in the form of simple, related words preceded by a hashtag. Hashtags can be added to a post as a part of the caption. Hashtags help in gaining reach by fuelling the visibility of your page by ranking it higher in search results. Twitter usually suggests using 2 hashtags, but there are no limits otherwise. While adding hashtags to a post, you can see how popular a particular hashtag is and also shows other related tags. The best hashtag research tools include:
a) Hashtagify
b) TweetBinder
c) RiteTag
6. Cashtag: A Cashtag is a company ticker symbol preceded by the U.S. dollar sign, e.g. $TWTR. When you click on a Cashtag, you’ll see other Tweets mentioning that same ticker symbol. A Cashtag is a unique identifier for businesses and individuals using CashApp. A Cashtag automatically creates a shareable URL through which private and secure transactions can be executed. Cashtags are authenticated with the user’s contact number, email, and Cash Pin to provide extra security
7. Twitter Alerts:
“With Twitter Alerts, organizations can enhance the visibility of critical Tweets”
Twitter Alerts is a feature that bridges the gap to help users get important and accurate information during emergencies, natural disasters, or when other communications services aren’t accessible. In case of sudden breakouts of weather or safety emergency, the Government, Emergency responders, and other related agencies are in action on-site and on Twitter to deliver timely information. Priority access is provided to law enforcement and public safety agencies, emergency management agencies, city and municipal governments, county and regional agencies, and select state, federal, and national agencies and NGOs.
8. Trending Tab: Trends are determined by an algorithm and, are tailored for the user based on who they follow, their interests, and location. The algorithm identifies topics that are popular in real-time to help the users engage in likewise communications. The number of Tweets that are related to the Trends is just one of the factors the algorithm looks at while ranking and determining trends. Algorithmically, Trends and hashtags are grouped if they are related to the same topic.
