Online Marketing: A User's Manual

Twitter

INTRODUCTION

Twitter was founded in 2007 by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone. The problem they wanted to solve? They were looking for a way to share messages with everyone in the office at the same time that would work from their cell phones and was smoother than the clunky email list. They came up with Twitter and changed social media forever.

TWITTER BASICS

Twitter is simple to use and doesn’t take long to set up. And it’s user-friendly. Whereas many people find it hard to blog because they don’t think of themselves as writers, Twitter actually limits you to use only 140 characters per post (originally due to SMS texting limits).

Twitter is often called “micro-blogging,” which is essentially using short communication snippets to do what blogs do – relate or comment on news, present views and opinions, or communicate with customers, colleagues and new people. Twitter is made up of 50 million+ users, all of whom can say whatever they like and have the ability to listen to everyone else. The possibilities are incredible.

Twitter, like many things in life, has its own set of jargon and terminology. Unless you have used Twitter, it can seem baffling. The great thing is that the basic terminology is actually very limited. On Twitter, there are a few key terms to know when you’re ...