Learning to Love Social Media What is Twitter? Why use Twitter? Taking a tour – Lingo & navigation How to get started Etiquette Tools & Resources Presented by Rebecca Page

What is Twitter? Microblogging site with 360 million profiles globally. 460,000 new Twitter accounts are created every day. -Free and available to anyone -Public to anyone, even people not on Twitter -140 character limit, including punctuation -Instant posting of what you enter -No need for special software or program

Why use Twitter? Conversation. Discussion. Sharing. Personal Interests Hobbies, stage of life, health issues Politics and Academic World events and issues, headlines, news stories Small Business - Networking in your community - Sharing information and asking advice Big Brands/Corporate - Customer service - Product launches, events, sales, surveys Twitter is a conversation. Participate consistently, or dont bother.

Why use Twitter? Social Media Strategy & Issues to Consider Who is your audience? Are they on Twitter? What do you want to represent? What do you want to say? Message and image. Who do you want to follow? Beware of bots! Personal vs Business profiles Credibility and professionalism Twitter is a conversation. Participate consistently, or dont bother.

Taking a tour – Profile Avatar Name Bio Handle Profile Website link

Taking a tour - Lingo Tweets How active on Twitter? Lists Following How many and who do they follow? Followers How many and who follows them? Followers are the other Twitter users who will see your tweets in their feed. When you follow someone, their tweets show in your feed Feed is the stream of tweets coming from your followers Lists is a way to organize your followers by whatever category you choose.

Background Feed or Stream Tweet

Review of Terminology @WBN_Ottawa Avatar – photo of yourself or your company logo Bio – 140 characters about you and why you are on Twitter Followers – list of who is following your tweets Following – whose tweets you are following Profile – snapshot of the above information Tweet – message or post of up to 140 characters Feed or Stream – flow of tweets Hashtag # - method of tracking content for measurement or searches DM (Direct Message) – private message between followers RT (retweet) – Forwarding on a tweet to your followers Tagging – using a handle in a tweet. Met lots of awesome #Ottawa women event last night Mentions – seeing when someone has tagged you in a tweet

Review of Terminology

How to get started 1.Decide on handle, avatar, message, strategy 2.Sign up and set up your profile 3.Start following, listening, and looking for opportunities to engage

Twitter Etiquette 1. Dont oversell your business. Bring value to your followers. 2. Thank RTs. 3. Reply to DMs. 4. You are not obligated to follow back. Have a reason to. 5. Use good manners and language.

Tools & Resources Free websites which lets you set up a dashboards to manage lists and streams. Ideal when maintaining multiple accounts. Can also schedule Tweets.