Samantha Dooley

We have all heard of Twitter but how can we use it for our business?

Twitter is a ‘microblogging’ tool founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey

It is estimated, Twitter has over 700 million users

190 million unique site visits a month to Twitter’s website and 288 million active users

60% of tweets are made from 3rd party applications

500 million Tweets are sent per day

80% of Twitter active users are on mobile

77% of accounts are outside the U.S.

Approximately 40% of Twitter users don’t tweet and just follow (Source: Twitter and Huffington Post, Mar 2015)

Twitter announced in its Q4 earnings for 2014, that it has 288 million active monthly users

Twitter prefer to release info on their user numbers in terms of active users (as opposed to registered accounts which is estimated in and around 700 million)

While 288 million is very solid, growth of Twitter has slightly stagnated in recent times

Does it still have relevance? Especially with the large range of alternative communication apps available?

www.rte.ie 2016

Many have argued that Twitter is just a forum for celebrities and attention seekers to massage their egos

The reality is though that Twitter is used by a lot of key influencers – journalists, politicians, public figures and celebrities.

Twitter also provides an opportunity to stay in touch with customers, promote offers and engage target customers.

The use of Twitter at conferences and exhibitions have turned what was traditionally one way lectures into interactive and engaging experiences.

The advertising options on Twitter are improving – high traffic to Twitter which can be directed to our website.

Many companies use Twitter to carry out research, generate leads and also for networking

Donald Trump

Brian Cowan

Arab Spring

London Riots

Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, we can follow any other user on Twitter without their permission and will be able to see their ‘tweets’ appear in my timeline

Embraced by the media and celebrities, users can send short messages known as a tweet.

This tweet will appear in the twitter feed for ◦ On the user’s profile page ◦ On follower’s profile page If the follower chooses to ‘Re-tweet’, this is the equivalent of

forwarding on the tweet to the follower’s followers.

◦ Including a hash tag in the tweet, allows the tweet to be more easily found on searches

◦ Including another user’s address in the tweet is called ‘a mention’ and the other user will be able to read the tweet which references them

In Ireland

Many companies are still trying to work out just how to use twitter to promote or benefit their brand or products.

The AA Roadwatch have a very prolific twitter service providing up to date info on the traffic situation in the country, which is particularly handy for bad weather.

Garda Traffic, DART, Dublin Bus and Irish Rail also operate customer information twitter accounts

Television shows are encouraging participation and discussion by including hashtags in their programmes #millionpounddrop, #rtesoccer #xfactor etc...

For a long time, Twitter Advertising was a service that you needed to qualify for.

In its early incarnation, it was based on budget spend with a minimum $5,000 per month requirement

Then it became based on a series of eligibility criteria and now it is available to all interested users and has improved massively in terms of format and functionality in recent years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkIk0Ke0cuw

Twitter Name ◦ Begins with an @ sign, i.e. @stephenfry is the twitter name

for Stephen Fry ◦ Very often you will see a “Verified User” tick beside a

twitter name (their are many users pretending to be celebrities)

Tweets ◦ Was 140 characters now that has increased to 280

character message which can include links, hashtags for conversations, twitter names to address a tweet to a person etc.

Follower ◦ Somebody who subscribes to your tweets, they will be

able to see all your tweets through their own profile page

Re-Tweet ◦ You can re-tweet any tweet on twitter, this is the same as

forwarding on a message in email. You are re-tweeting someone else’s message to your followers.

Hashtags/Conversations ◦ Users can search twitter for conversations and can join in ◦ Anybody can add a hashtag to any tweet, their tweet will

then join that conversation

Direct Messages ◦ Direct (Private) Messages are possible between two users

who are following each other

URL Shorteners ◦ As users are limited to 280 characters, many people use

URL shortening services such as bit.ly, to redirect users to longer URL’s

Trending ◦ Twitter analyses conversations and ranks them in number

of tweets, the conversations which are being discussed most are said to be trending and twitter usually puts up the top 5 trending topics which people can read about and join in.