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The PDR Guide to Twitter
13-10-2009 |
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1: What is Twitter?
Simply, Twitter is a service for people to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of Short text based posts
More comprehensively, Twitter is a social networking and micro- blogging site service that enables it’s users to send and read other users’ updates. These are known as tweets.
Tweets are text based posts of up to 140 characters in length, displayed on the users’ profile page. These are visible to everyone, though you can restrict the display of tweets to your circle of friends (followers).
Twitter was first developed to enable people to post updates on their everyday life and what they were doing. This site has now developed so much that now, many business people use Twitter to network, enhance their brand and give opinions on current events. Recruitment companies use Twitter to post vacancies etc.
2: Setting up an Account
You can set up a Twitter account here: https://Twitter.com/signup
We recommend that your username be something similar to your real name, rather than a wacky alias.
When you have completed this page, you have the opportunity to edit your profile. A good tip here is to paste the URL of you LinkedIn profile, if you have one, into the more info (URL) box.
Your profile should be a brief overview of your skills, specialities and interests. Often people will add a humorous element to lighten it. Such as…………..
“A senior business development manager in the telecoms industry, as well as a very slow marathon runner!”
People often use the search engines to locate who they want to follow, so ensure your bio is a good reflection of you.
3: Following
Now you have set up your account, it’s time to start connecting with people. On Twitter this is known as following. When you follow someone, you are subscribing to receive their tweets (updates), so try to follow people who say things you will find interesting.
To search for people to follow go to: http://search.Twitter.com and enter some relevant search items. For example “pdrrecruitment”
From this search you can follow us. We post our newest vacancies, our views on current events and anything else we think people will find interesting.
4: What to Say and How to Say it
This is a tricky one and there are many different opinions about this. We recommend you post a mixture of professional and personal tweets.
When writing professional tweets, you can voice your opinion on current news stories and how this may impact on your own area of expertise, you can even include links to the original news story or article.
Personal messages on the other hand, should give your followers an insight into your personal life and a view of the things you do in your spare time. This is a chance for people to see you as a real person.
To create these posts (tweets), type directly into the box at the top of your Twitter home page and press update. You have now posted a tweet.
Your tweets are limited to 140 characters, so a long web address can eat into this allowance. You can solve this by using a shortening service such as; http://tinyurl.com or http://good.ly. These sites allow you to paste the web address into the box provided and it automatically shortens to a tiny URL.
You should also be aware that shortened URL’s can also mask web addresses that lead to undesirable sites! More in ‘what to watch out for’….
Another thing to bear in mind is when referring to another Twitter user in your post, add an @ symbol as a prefix to their Twitter name. This enables other users to go straight to their page.
5: Gaining Followers and Networking
It is important to interact with other Twitter users and attract followers. The more followers you have, the more credible and respected you become on Twitter.
There are a number of ways to attract followers:
Re-Tweeting:
If you find another users post interesting or think your followers would benefit from seeing it, you can re-tweet it to your own followers.
To do this, simply copy and paste their tweet into your own box and write “RT - @originalTwitterusername” before their original post.
Replying:
If you read a tweet and you would like to reply, start your own post with “@originalTwitterusername”, and then write your reply. The original writer will then be able to see this as a reply to them. People are more likely to follow you once you have interacted with them.
Direct Messaging:
There will be occasions that you want to send people a direct message. These messages are private between the two of you. To do this, go to the home page of the person concerned and about half down the right hand panel, click the ‘message’ link. This will take you to a private messaging box. You are still limited to 140 characters here too.
Hashtags:
This is a way of entering additional context and metadata to your tweets. In other words, to label a tweet. For example, to label a tweet in the ‘job’ category, you write #job, beforehand. Other users can then find this tweet by searching for #job. Other elated hashtags include #recruiter, #hiring, #jobs and #job advice.
Publicise:
Adding your Twitter account to your blog, email tags, LinkedIn profile, facebook page etc, will attract more followers.
6: Search Engines
There are numerous search engines which allow you to look for a range of content on Twitter.
Twellow:
The twiiter yellow pages. This is an advanced search engine that splits Twitter users into categories dependant on their specialist area.
TwitterJobSearch:
This search engine aggregates all job tweets and makes them searchable. This can be a great way to search new jobs.
7: Things to Watch out for
As with anything, there are a few people using Twitter with an ulterior motive. If someone who is following a million or more people starts to follow you, block them, they are only advertising junk. Shortened URL’s are often used to mask web addresses that lead to undesirable sites. Keep a close eye on your followers and anyone you think is questionable, you can block.
Have fun and happy tweeting.....!
Copyright © 2009 PDR Partners, incorporating Bob Gammon Associates. |
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