By James Mott
What is Twitter? Twitter is a social network that connects you with millions of people & businesses worldwide. It is particularly popular in the UK, with London having more twitterers than any other city in the world. The concept is simple: In 140-characters or less, you communicate ‘what you are doing’, which is instantly viewed by the people who ‘follow’ your updates or ‘tweets’. You can also ‘follow’ the tweets of other users you choose to follow. Common Misconceptions It is commonly thought that Twitter is largely used by teenagers or people following the famous, notably Barack Obama or Stephen Fry. But this is only one part of the story. As a medium, Twitter above all attracts a wide range of media, businesses and professionals. “I’ll be on it all day and I haven’t got time for it”. The truth is, if you posted tweets on twitter all day people would get fed up of you very quickly!” You’ll find that there are easily identifiable times when twitter is busy – it is quite acceptable to post tweets say 3 times a day in 10min slots. Who’s on Twitter? The answer is surprising. Looking at the sector there are many heritage organisations like English heritage and the National Trust, professional bodies such as RICS, RIBA, along with a growing number of conservation professionals. Things you can do with twitter
Getting started. Unless you are the one using twitter, it’s essential that you choose someone trustworthy who can regularly tweet and who will has the ability and integrity to represent your business. Sit down with them and discuss how much time will be spent, content of tweets and agree any no-go areas, before anything is posted live on the web!
10 Do's and don’ts Engaging the twitter community is about being accepted as genuine, caring, authentic and interesting – it’s not about being overly controversial, negative, rude or blatantly selling, which is a sure fire way of alienating yourself. Here are 10 helpful do's and don’ts:
Applications Most people use a desktop applications, the most popular being Tweetdeck – Twirl – Twitterific which have the advantage of displaying tweets in a clear and manageable format. As an example let’s look at Tweetdeck which enables you to action a range of tasks at the touch of a button. Tweet: Simply insert your 140(or less) characters including links and hit return ReTweet: Sends a copy of one of your follower’s tweets for all of your followers to read Reply: Respond to a particular tweet Direct Message: Allows you to send a tweet to a user that others can’t view Shortening URL’s
Often these URL’s are very long, so you will find the need to shorten them to allow you to post text to accompany them. There are numerous ways of doing this including tinyurl.com, is.gd, bit.ly or snurl. To get started I suggest bit.ly as it is easy to use and enables you to track/get stats on your links. You can quickly compress URL’s on the site or simply allow tweetdeck to do it for you automatically (see above) Finding Friends/Contacts to follow In the beginning, the easiest way of finding people, is to look at who other people you know choose to follow. You can find people on the main twitter site and tweetdeck. There is also a wide range of directories and tools available to further assist you. They all work in slightly different ways, so try a few out.
In Conclusion Can you afford to ignore Twitter? I hope this article has gone some way towards helping you better understand how Twitter works. For experts working in the Heritage sector, engaging with the twitter community presents many opportunities, not only to promote your own products and services, but to actively participate in discussing the issues in the sector that we all care so passionately about.
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