Why we Love Twitter
We Adore Twitter
Despite the fact that Twitter is famous for its bugs, glitches, and spam, Twitter is my favorite social media site. Why do I choose to express myself in 140 characters or less? I do it because twitter offers opportunities, options and ideas that other social media sites have trouble conveying in the same simplistic, yet effective format.
Facebook “Friends” vs Twitter Connections
Too Close for comfort
The first thing that a people minded person notices when he or she logs onto twitter, is how easy it is to make new friends and connect to people. These are individuals that you never otherwise would have had a chance to speak with. Twitter’s interface runs on followers, rather than friend requests, and the culture is very different from other social media sites.
Facebook invites users to offer up too much personal information, and due to this decision, people are less likely to be open to connecting with strangers. There is no “add as acquaintance” button, Facebook uses the word friend. You must actually know people to connect on Facebook because of the personal nature of the site.
Through twitter you can strike up conversations, discuss other people’s work, and in general share ideas without having to show complete strangers your family thanksgiving photos from 2009.
This translates well into marketing because you can build business connections with professionals in related fields in a way that Facebook simply doesn’t allow for. I have met countless interesting professionals who have provided me with referrals, insights and advice just because I was able to reach out to them. Twitter is the easiest way to gain cheap exposure through social media and can work wonders for your brand’s consumer engagement.
How We Use Twitter
Longevity Graphics
Something that we do at Longevity Graphics for our Vancouver Social Media, is we like to make sure that we talk to people who recently followed us or tweeted us, and find out what they specialize in from a business perspective. If we do this, we can find out if they are a potential client, someone who gives referrals, someone who we can help or even if they are an interesting person to tweet to. We specifically target out social media to Vancouver, and the tri-cities, so that we end up talking to people in the area. Twitter is amazing because of the ease in which a business person can make new connections.
The Simplicity Factor
How to attract Clients using Twitter
A feature that gives twitter an edge is the pure simplicity of it all. Facebook takes a while to learn how to use, especially if you are operating a corporate fan page and trying to use the paid ad structure. To be able to effectively market on Twitter, all you need to do is follow a few guidelines.
For a complete beginner in social media, whether or not based in Vancouver , the first thing to understand is the more people who see your tweets, the more likelihood they will have of buying from you. Often when you follow individuals on twitter, they will follow you back. With this in mind, you can follow accounts that are in your target market, and use the technique as a lead generation formula.
Another principle to bear in mind is the more times someone sees your company, the more likely they are to buy from you. This means that literally, the more often you can tweet the better. One doesn’t want to completely clog their follower’s news feeds, but tweeting over ten times a day is a great way to stay in the minds of your customers.
Changes, Updates, and New Ideas
Another reason I like twitter, is the radical updates and changes it implements without changing its current user friendly interface. Twitter, has been making alterations left, right and center- making additions to the user experience and implementing new rules of conduct on the site. These changes send all sorts of ripples through the internet, doing everything from informing users of emergencies to sending Twitter-based tools like Manage-Flitter scrambling to keep up with the updates.
Alerts:
One of the newest introductions to twitter is the introduction of emergency alerts. The way that twitter alerts work, is users must subscribe to the twitter alerts system. You can do this by visiting twitter.com/[username]/alerts.
When you visit a profile on twitter that is offering alerts, your will see a message characterized by a picture of an purple cross that will deliver information if there is a crisis.
This new feature is used for situations such as the recent hurricane in the Philippines, to raise awareness about current events and give warnings to people in the areas.
Magic Recs:
A new feature that Twitter has recently implemented is the account @MagicRecs. Magic Recs is a recommendation engine that sends suggested pages to individuals based on their current tastes.
If you choose to follow @MagicReqs you will be tweeted pages to follow that twitter has deemed you will enjoy. Feedback from this engine has been largely positive, and sentiment is that Twitter does a relatively good job of matching interests. For Vancouver Social Media, it can even target your recommendations locally.
Scheduled Tweets:
Another change that Twitter has implemented is that “Twitter ad users” can now schedule tweets using their twitter account. Previously sites like buffer were used to do this, but twitter has decided to give the option in house to paying customers. This addition is not available to the average user, rather it is only accessible to individuals who wish to target the posting of a promoted tweet.
Twitter TV:
Twitter has announced that it recently joined forces with Comcast and NBC Universal and unveiled a partnership that will let users tune into TV shows directly from tweets. The program is called SeeIt and it is going to include features such as changing channel, watching shows from “On Demand” and setting recordings on their DVR. Twitter is hoping to extend SeeIt to other major networks as well, but new partnerships have yet to be announced.
Why we Love it
The people at Twitter are always working hard to expand, innovate and streamline the social media site.
The ability to connect to new people that Twitter offers is unparalleled, and it is a great tool to create engagement with potential business.