Twitter is a social media channel that I feel is underutilized. For many people, it can also be a very confusing channel to use. This week I will discuss the basics of an account and how to use your account. Below is an example post and I will walk through all aspects of the tweet.
First we see the user that posted this is Hamilton, which is the official account for the musical Hamilton. Their username is @HamiltonMusical, Then we can see how long ago this was tweeted. The the message of the posts starts. Twitter is infamous for its 140 character per post rule. This includes everything from letters, punctuation, and spaces. Attaching a picture to the post takes characters away from the post as well. We can see in the above tweet that there is not a lot of text due to the attached image. The symbols "@" and "#' seem to cause the most problems for people who do not fully understand twitter. An @ symbol is used when contacting another user within twitter. If a user click on @IAMSethStewart, they will be brought to his twitter account page. The # symbol is used to connect posts to related topics. In the tweet above, if someone clicks on the #HamiltonBway, they can see all the other posts that have the same #HamiltonBway in them. Below the picture we can see an arrow curving to the left. This is the reply button and will automatically set up a tweet with the correct recipients already typed in the reply. If a user clicks on the arrows that point to each other, this will "re-tweet" the post and will show up within the user's account. A user can also like a tweet by clicking on the heart. This will not attach the post to the user's feed. By clicking on the three dots, a user has more options regarding the tweet. A user can directly share the link with a friend, copy the link, embed the tweet, mute, block or even report the tweet.
Once a user knows how to create tweets and use all '@' and '#' symbols correctly, they can utilize their account to follow and contact other people and companies. For example, the picture above is from my personal account. I received a deluxe sample from Starbucks because I am a Gold Card holder. I took a picture of it and tweeted it out to them. I used @Starbucks, their official twitter page for their company. I could have mentioned Starbucks without the '@' symbol, but then the company would not have received a notification that they were mentioned. I then used #GoldCard. One of the most important rules about hashtags is that multiple words are grouped together as one word, but each new word is capitalized. If I were to use #Gold #Card, my tweet would be related to any tweet that was related to the words gold and card, rather than a Gold Card, which is a Starbucks loyalty program. Later that day, Starbucks noticed my tweet and replied.
Twitter is a great channel for companies to post snippets about articles and post a link to read the entire article on their website. Users can also follow celebrities and pop culture icons. It is a great way to stay up to date with trending topics both domestically and internationally. Adjusting to twitter's idiosyncrasies may take time, but can be an effective tool to communicate with massive amounts of followers. If twitter is not the social media channel for you, at least we can take time to appreciate Jimmy Kimmel's use of this channel. (Warning: NSFW: L & SC)
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