I remember being very sceptical about Twitter when I first came across it in 2008, but being encouraged to give it a go, and then persist with it, it slowly became my favourite (and most useful) of all the social media. I can’t really imagine life without it now. { As some of you may know, I once walked inside the Twitter HQ in San Francisco.}
Firstly, it’s the world’s best search engine. Search for something on Google and you see web sites; search on Youtube and you get videos; search on Facebook and you scroll through all the nonsense your ‘friends’ are up to… search a topic/person/business on Twitter and you get what everyone is talking about that right now. In many situations, this is immensely more powerful and useful than anything else.
Using Klout and Twitter together, you can see who is most influential, and who are the ‘amplifiers’ (heavy users who spread the word). Engaging with these people will send your messages further than you could on your own.
Searching google is fine for information retrieval, but if something has just happened (in sport, in the world) then Twitter is where you can get straight to the centre of things as they are unfolding. Usually from the horse’s mouth.
Twitter allows more than just 140 characters of text, but embedded within are links to web sites, photos, videos, and everything else you could imagine. It dissects and disseminates like nothing before, or since.
If you want to reach people, engage in conversations with those of similar interests, or see what’s happening, twitter is ideal.
Here are 10 ‘surprising’ facts about Twitter, courtesy of FastCompany
- Tweets with links included are 86% more likely to be retweeted
- Twitter engagement for brands is higher at the weekends
- Tweets with images get 2x the engagement (sharing, favouritising…)
- Tweets with less than 100 characters get 17% more engagement (even 140 is too much for some folks!)
- Twitter’s fastest growing demographic is 55-64 year olds (they started late, but are getting into it now)
- Tweets with hashtags (‘#’) get 2x the engagement (this allows you to look for similarly themed tweets, e.g. #perth or #worldcup)
- Mobile is responsible for 66% of brand-related tweets (people are out and about with their smartphones)
- Mobile tweeters are 181% more likely to be using it during their commute
- Amplifiers are 122% more likely to use direct messaging (a bit like email, to other twitter users who they mutually follow)
- If you ask for it to be retweeted, the tweet has 12x higher chance of being retweeted, 23% more likely if you mention the word ‘retweet’
The first tweet was sent on March 26th 2006 by one of the founders Jack Dorsey. Today, there are 750m users and 65m tweets are sent daily.
My latest presentation (‘How to be a Major Twit’) can be viewed here. Is it time for you to really engage in twitter, and see what it can do for you?
