What You Need to Know about Twitter as a Business Owner

Twitter is one of the most commonly used social media platforms. There are over 313 million active monthly users as of January 2017. This unique social media tool is one of the most popular platforms for businesses to be active on. However, you should understand how Twitter works before deciding if it is right for your business.

 

Users can follow other users, read “tweets,” and send out their own tweets. The caveat is that these tweets are restricted to 140 characters. Twitter is especially useful to sharing up-to-date information. Because of this, many people use it as a news source. However, you can use it to share new information about your business or other relevant content.

 

Twitter Followers

When you open Twitter as a user, you will see a feed of the users you follow. Their tweets will show up on this page, starting with the most recent. So, you should follow the users that you feel will post content that you want to see.

Tip: If you click on a user’s picture, you can see their profile. This will give you a little more information about them.

 

Tweets, Retweets, Likes, Replies, and Direct Messaging

Twitter offers multiple ways to communicate with other users. It might seem like a lot at first, but once you start to use it, it will make sense.

Tweets – As mentioned before, tweets are the main ways to send out messages and can only be 140 characters long. These are broadcasted to all of your followers and show up in their feeds.

Retweets – If you see a tweet in your feed and want to share it with your own followers, you can retweet it. Retweeting will share that same tweet with your follower groups. In order to retweet, just press the little square made of two arrows that is below the tweet.

Likes – Let’s say you appreciate someone’s tweet but don’t want to send it to your followers. Well, then you can like their tweet.

Replies – Replying to a tweet is essentially commenting on a tweet. It will show what you reply with right below the tweet. If the user replies back, it will show up in a small conversation view.

Direct Messaging – Direct messages (or DMs) are only visible between you and the sender. These are private messages that allow you to contact other users.

 

140 Characters

Twitter only allows you to use 140 characters. This means that anything you want to say must be limited to that. This even includes punctuation characters such as periods, commas, hashtag symbols, etc.

140 characters may not seem like a lot. And it kind of really isn’t. However, with some creativity, you will learn to make effective tweets. Just keeping playing around and see what works!

 

#Hashtags

Hashtags essentially a method of labeling tweets. For example, if I was writing a tweet about marketing, I should include the hashtag #marketing. There is not a limit to the number of hashtags you can include. However, they are counted against you in the 140 character count.

People can search for hashtags in the Twitter search bar. Then, any content that includes that hashtag, will show up. In addition, certain hashtags can become trending (they are very popular at that time).

 

Mentioning Other Users

If you want to mention another user in one of your tweets, you can using the “@” symbol followed by their username. For example, if you want to mention Open Prospects, you would include @open_prospects somewhere in your tweet.

When you do this, the other user is notified and the tweet may show up on their profile. This is useful to let someone know you are talking about them, to get another user involved in a conversation, or to give credit for an article posted.