That cookie last night was so tweet.
Twitter has become somewhat of a phenomenon, coming from nowhere, achieving extreme popularity, and like all things “viral” it’s been abused by marketers. It’s also been used very effectively and creatively by those same people. Since it’s become such a ubiquitous tool, I thought it would be a good time to help people understand what it is and how it’s used.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a free service that allows users to provide status updates, called tweets, to people who subscribe. These come in the form of SMS messages made up of 140 or fewer characters. Messages can be compiled on the user’s website, sent as a syndicated feed, or transmitted as SMS messages to cell phones. Those messages can also be limited to only permitted subscribers, so Twitter users can control who is allowed to receive tweets.
Where did it come from?
Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, and it began as an R&D project at Odeo.
What are some examples of use?
There are a ton of ways to use Twitter, and for each of those ways there’s a different person doing it. This section is devoted to examples of people who are using it everyday.
- Whole Food Markets sent Rich Brooks, president of Flyte New Media, a gift card after Brooks tweeted about their product to about 300 of his subscribers. (the tweet was unsolicited, WFM happened to pick up on it and decided to reward him)
- The Scottsdale, Arizona police are providing citizens tweets about closures, crimes, and crime scenes to keep them updated on news affecting their neighborhoods.
- The Los Angeles Fire Department, with a spark of genius, got on Twitter to allow residents to subscribe and keep track of the wildfires.
- NASA announced the discovery of ice on Mars using, you guessed it, Twitter. They also let you keep up to date with the space station. In fact, NASA may be Twitter’s biggest fan….
- Because there is no social network untouched by politics, it comes as no surprise that Barack Obama used twitter to spread the word about Hope and Change, while Ralph Nader paired his tweets with google maps to let you know where his ballot access teams were. In other news, less than 1% of the population cares.
- University of Texas San Antonio College of Engineering (whew…) uses it to update their students. No one saw using technology to reach engineers coming….
- Westwinds Church uses it in an interesting way: they solicit real-time thoughts from congregants. Wonder if we can use it to tweet Jesus? Tweet Jesus!
- Activists used it to coordinate protests at the RNC.
- Even the British Prime minister tweets people to some of his daily routine (da dun, ching!)
- UC Berkely journalism grad student James Buck was arrested while photographing a protest in Egypt. On his way to the police station, he tweeted his arrest and his followers contacted the US embassy, the university, and the press on his behalf. He was released the next day.
- New Scientist magazine found Twitter to be a more effective tool during the Virginia Tech shootings than the tradition form of media. It’s like college students have cell phones in class or something…
- The Red Cross uses tweets subscribers to keep them alert in the case of disasters.
What are some creative uses?
Glad you asked! (or at least that I implied you asked!)
- You can offer time sensitive offers. Baskin Robbins has tweeted about 31 cent scoop night. If you were a subscriber, that was a sweet tweet.
- You can let your subscribers know your schedule
- You can “stumble” websites to people who follow you
- You can offer daily promotionals
- You can recruit for open positions
- You can reinforce your brand
- You can solicit user feedback, get their opinions, or do on the fly market research
- You can update about live events for those who can’t attend. Radiohead, like, totally is ending with Creep! In under 140 characters!
- You can update about new products, like those introduced at the Apple Keynote.
- You can provided internal updates (this is where limited subscribing might be a good idea…)
What are some things you should do with Twitter?
- learn to create brief, but engaging, statements and questions
- use it like a press release. Whole Foods was able to inform it’s 3000 subscribers about a recall instantly
- Search for what others are saying about your business, or the products of your clients
- Talk back. Information doesn’t only benefit the person who asked you for it.
- Improve your relationship with clients.
- Track trends.
- Drive traffic to your home URL and to your business
- Claim your identity. Before someone else does.
So, what are some things to avoid?
- Don’t spam people. No one likes spam. Lots of people like SPAM. No one likes spam.
- Don’t be mundane. Give readers a reason to subscribe, and remind them why they did.
- Don’t tell your life’s story. There is such a thing as TMI, and frankly, in a 140 character or less format no one cares.
I hope you’ve learned more about Twitter today. If not, try it out and you’ll learn a lot more than I could ever teach you. There’s also this crazy internet thing. Take advantage of it.