How many social media apps are there on your mobile? Wait, let’s make a count, there’s WhatsApp, twitter, facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. On average, how much time do you spend on these platforms? It would come to around 7-8 hours a day. Agree or not, social media is taken a front seat for entertainment now. Be it, senior citizens or teens, you would see everybody engaging on this platform.
In social media apps also, not all apps are the same and perform similar kinds of activities. Facebook and Instagram are so different from Twitter. Although all three of them are used to share information with the world, they are not perceived as the same by users. Instagram and Facebook are used to share bits and pieces of your personal life. Whereas, Twitter is considered as an intellectual platform where you can share your views on politics, sports etc with influencers, famous journalists etc.
Back in 2006, when Twitter was first launched, it took time for people to understand that this social media app was not here to replace any other app, but it was here to create its own path. Its character limit has made it even more strange for users. But slowly they got used to the idea of sharing their views and opinions within a character limit of 140 which was later increased to 280.
Twitter is must for all businesses, you get a chance to promote your business among your followers. You can collaborate with influencers to promote your products. You can connect with your customers regularly. You can mention them in your posts and re-tweets their testimonials. You can even keep an eye on your peers and collaborate with them if any chance provided.
What is twitter?
Twitter is a social networking site where people communicate with the world in small or short messages, which are called tweets. This platform has given birth to microblogging. If your message is interesting and useful your tweet may even go viral. Without a doubt, in the past Twitter has given birth to some crazy memes and equally heated debates. It has even started the meaningful protests with its hashtags like #metoo. All-in-all twitter is an excellent platform to interact with all the greatest minds in the world.
Most people use Twitter to discover companies and interesting people. You can follow and tweet and interact with influencers, celebrities, journalists who inspire you. And to make even better, twitter is scan-friendly making it easy to track interesting twitter profiles and their tweets in a single glance. Cool right? Because of its character restriction, it pushes people to think out of the box and come up with unique and interesting tweets with clever usage of language. In a way, you could say this restriction has made a popular social media tool.
How does twitter work?
So the important question how does twitter work? You must have understood that Twitter sends your message to the world as tweets. You can share from your adventures around the world to how you’re feeling right now. Every time you post a tweet, it immediately goes live to the public. If you don’t want everybody to see your tweets you can change your privacy and safety settings, and change it from the public to protect your tweets, so that only your friends can see and interact on your tweets.
Once you login into your twitter account you can see tweets from other Twitter users, for that to happen you must follow them. If you follow them, all their recent tweets will appear on your newsfeed allowing you to interact on their tweets. Same goes for others too, if you want to see your tweets in their newsfeed they must follow you.
Retweeting, hashtags and direct messaging
Twitter is not just limited to spending tweets and interacting on tweets. There are so many other things you can do on Twitter.
Retweet
Retweeting is nothing but tweeting other Twitter user’s tweets. When you find an interesting tweet of a celebrity or an influencer you follow, you can re-tweet that tweet so that the people in your friend’s list can see it. You can even mention them in your post using their username. For example, the username you want to mention is Qiel you can just add @sign in front of their username like @Qiel to mention them in your tweet.
Your tweet will appear in their notification feed. Retweeting can easily pass along the latest news and other discoveries. Re-tweeting shows that particular user that you have taken time and interest to actually share their message across your followers. You can use re-tweeting to grab attention for other influencers or customers across the platform and start a conversation with them.
Direct Messaging
Direct Messaging or D.M is when you have a personal conversation with someone on your follower’s list. You can’t send a D.M for a person your not following until and unless they have no privacy or security settings activated.
D.M is most used when you want to have a conversation with someone which cannot be concluded in 280 characters like responding to your customer’s grievances or requests. Most businesses use D.M to promote their products and services which can lead to getting their account flagged as spam.
Hashtags
Hashtags were introduced back in 2007. Basically, they’re phrases or words with no spaces. A hashtag is used by Twitter to index keywords or topics. These hashtags allow Twitter users to view all similar tweets based on them. These hashtags make it easy for users to find the topics they are interested in. Many businesses actually use these hashtags to understand their customer’s needs and interests. Trending on Twitter is also possible due to hashtags. When most of the users use the same hashtags that hashtag automatically comes into trending. You can say they are conversation starters. And businesses use them to talk directly to their customers.
Conclusion
Twitter can be easily considered as a platform that connects you with business leaders, politicians, journalists and celebrities. No other platform has made communication easy with these people. You can now connect with all these influencers and grab their attention just by mentioning them in your tweet. Catchy tweet grabs attention faster, so make sure your use clever language. On what other platforms can you interact with public profiles directly like twitter. It allows you to share your thoughts and interact with them with a single click. Tweet regularly, but not aggressively. Build your contacts and connections with influencers and other prominent personalities within your industry and help your business reach new heights.