Twitter Tutorial

Allison Barker

Manager – Documentation, Training, and Support

nGenera Corporation

7April 2010

About Me

10+ years of experience in knowledge management

Cisco Systems – networking equipment (hardware and

software)

SolarWinds – network management software

nGenera – collaboration software for the enterprise

Over a year (gasp) using Twitter for personal and

professional purposes

AGGIE

Twitter: What You Need to Know

Origin and Terminology

Best Practices

Suggestions for Whom to Follow

How to Use It (Get Out Your Laptop)

What We’re Not Going to Cover

Other Third-Party Twitter Clients

Strategies for Social Media Campaigns Using Twitter

Origin and Growth

Created in 2006 as a real-time “microblogging” site

used to publish short messages

Tipping point for popularity: SXSW 2007, where daily

usage went from 20K messages (“tweets”) to 60K

messages

75M unique visitors (23.5M in the US) in Jan 2010

50M tweets are every day

Growth of 1400% in 2009

Stated Purpose

What we have to do is deliver to people the best and

freshest most relevant information possible. We think

of Twitter as it's not a social network, but it's an

information network. It tells people what they care

about as it is happening in the world.

- Twitter CEO Evan Williams

Terminology

Tweet: Message sent through Twitter. 140-character limit, which was derived from the same SMS character limit

Username: Account user’s “handle.” (Examples: @abwonderland, @BarackObama, @MyStarbucksIdea). The @ symbol denotes that this is a Twitter user, not a tag

Follow: Adds a user account to your list of users whose tweets you want to watch. They might or might not follow you. Updates for everyone you follow appear in reverse chronological order.

Retweet (RT): Rebroadcast someone’s tweet to your followers. Example:

RT @MyStarbucksIdea: win $10,000 for your idea to develop a more recyclable coffee cup. Join the Beta Cup Challenge: http://is.gd/bbSvx

Terminology (cont’d)

TweetDeck: the third-party Twitter client we’ll use to explore Twitter. It’s the most popular desktop application, and has an iPhone app also.

Tag or hashtag: helps spread information while organizing it. Use the # symbol to label a tweet with a particular subject. Also makes tweets more findable. (Example: search for #DallasCowboys) Helpful site: tagal.us, which helps you determine what tags people are already using

Twitpic: Twitter’s default image hosting service.

Bit.ly: Twitter’s default URL shortener. Shortens a URL of ANY length to a max of 13 or so characters, by redirecting it.

DM: A Direct Message is a private tweet from one Twitter user to another. You can only DM Twitter users that are following you.

Anything else?

Twitter Best Practices

Make sure what you say has value and is relevant

Remember that Twitter is real time, so subjects can become irrelevant quickly.

Make sure links work.

Spam is not tolerated, and the definition of spam keeps expanding, so carefully consider what you tweet to ensure that you maintain your credibility.

Self- and corporate-promotion are expected, but don’t be obnoxious.

Give credit to authors (use RT).

Respond quickly to questions or interactions from other users.

Tweets are forever

Check spelling and grammar. (There’s no spell check!)

Be careful about what you say and how you say it.

Never say anything on Twitter

that you wouldn’t want your

grandmother to read!

Getting Started - Suggestions on

Whom to Follow

Guy Kawasaki, Silicon Valley VC – www.twitter.com\GuyKawasaki

Mashable, an online social media guide – www.twitter.com\mashable

Bryan Person, social media “evangelist” – www.twitter.com\BryanPerson

Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) – www.twitter.com\rainnwilson

Austin American Statesman – www.twitter.com\statesman

Chris Brogan, marketer – www.twitter.com\ChrisBrogan

Wall Street Journal – www.twitter.com\WSJ

Dave Neff, local PR guy and blogger – www.twitter.com\daveiam

Elise Hu, local journalist – www.twitter.com\elisewho

IEEE US – www.twitter.com\ieeeusa

Whom to Follow

Do a search for any person or company you find

interesting or want to know more about.

Also follow people whom you want to follow YOU. It’s

not guaranteed, but it gets their attention

How to Use Twitter through

TweetDeck

Log in

Add Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts

Tweet

Retweet

Include links and select Autoshorten

Make tweet our Facebook or LinkedIn status also

Search

Follow people

Questions?

My contact info

abarker@ngenera.com

512-656-1225 mbl

http://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonbarker