Page 164 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

When marketing through Twitter, focus tightly on building the relationships, and
everything else will follow. Don’t worry too much about pushing messages to the
community. But when you have to, there are smart ways to do that via the Twitter
ad products that don’t hurt your reputation in the community.

If you do not take ownership of your company or brand name on Twitter, someone
else may do so on your behalf. This could be a competitor, another business with
a similar name, a customer, or a fan. If that happens, you’ll probably have to
spend a lot of time (and maybe money, too) to get back the username. Most
Twitter users automatically associate your brand name on Twitter with your
company. Many may not realize that the person behind the Twitter account is not
from your company.

Figuring Out the Basics of Twitter

Twitter is fundamentally an asynchronous communication platform that drew
inspiration from SMS (short message service, or texting) and Facebook when it
was first designed. It allows you to publish 280-character tweets and view tweets
from other Twitter users. To view other people’s tweets in your feed, you simply
have to follow them. In a direct contrast to Facebook friending, when you follow
people on Twitter, they’re not automatically made to reciprocate in return.

A second important contrast to Facebook is that on Twitter, your account is auto-
matically set to public viewing by default. This means that anybody can view a
tweet that you publish. This differs from Facebook, where posts by most people
are private and viewable only by their friends. On Twitter, you can choose to make
your account private, but most people don’t. As a result, tweets by the millions of
Twitter users around the world serve as a treasure trove for academics and mar-
keters who want to learn how people talk online and what they talk about.

Following are some of the activities you can engage in on Twitter:

» Mentions: As a user on Twitter, you can publish tweets as soon as you’ve
signed up. Just enter your tweet in the message box with the question “What’s
happening?” and you’re on your way. To draw attention to another user, you
can mention her account in your tweet by preceding her account name with
the @ symbol. For example, to use the Pepsi Twitter account in a tweet,
you would need to type @pepsi. Then when a user clicks the Pepsi handle
(@pepsi), she will automatically be taken to the Pepsi Twitter page.

» Retweets: Another Twitter feature is the ability to resend (or retweet)
someone else’s tweet. Think of this as a Forward button. You can retweet by

148 PART 3 Reaching Your Audience via Mainstream Social Platforms