A GUIDE TO… SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter

WHAT IT IS:

A “micro-blogging” platform. Users can “tweet” messages up to 140 characters long to their “followers”. Tweets appear on the “Twitter feed” which is constantly updated in real time. Users can either participate in Twitter as a silent listener to discover what people are talking about and keep up-to-date with the latest news, or take an active part in the conversation – which is more useful in terms of marketing your brand/product and developing relationships.

HOW IT WORKS:

1. Again, make sure your profile is visually appealing and take care with your profile description. There are a number of customisable options including the background wallpaper, main image (get rid of the default “egg” as soon as possible!) and colour scheme.

2. Tweet regularly, but not too often. The maximum recommended number of tweets is 3-4 per day and many companies send out just one tweet per day.

3. You should be aiming for about 50 followers within the first few weeks. Following others will often prompt them to follow you back. Sharing links, responding to comments, highlighting good tweets with the “Favourite” button, using “@” to directly mention someone in a tweet and “retweeting” (RT) are also good ways of engaging, which will help to grow your followers.

4.“Trends” are a key part of Twitter. The left hand side of your profile displays the hottest topics of discussion, and you can adjust the settings to get the most relevant news for you. The “#”, or hashtag symbol, is used to mark tweets as directly relating to a topic so people can follow conversation, e.g. #XFactor clearly identifies what the tweet is about! A very popular example is “#ff” or “Follow Friday”, which is used to recommend a user who you think is interesting to follow and, as the name suggests, is only used on Friday. A more recent trend is #twittersisters which encourages retweets for women in business
and is specifically on Thursday evenings from 8.30-9.30pm. 5.“‘Lists’ are a very valuable way of organising your twitter feed”, explains Vicky. “The average Twitter user is following over 100 users, so it’s beneficial to actually sort them into groups for example ‘customers’ and ‘personal’ could be two different lists.”

DO: Be aware of libel. There have been a number of high profile litigations based on Twitter, so think before you tweet because you are liable for defamation.

DONT: Focus on driving people to your website. Blatant advertising is a huge turn-off in social media. It is recommended that only 5% of your posts should contain a direct link to your website.