Okay okay. Before you roll your eyes…
Raise your eyelids and open your mouth … that’s it… now you look surprised. And you should.
If you’re not Tweeting (slang for making Twitter posts), you could be missing out on a novel and (somewhat) effective way to market yourself and/or your business. Below are five things you (probably) don’t know about Twitter.
1. Essentially, Twitter is micro blogging. Each post can only be up to 140 characters (about a sentence in length). This makes it great for delivering quick, easy messages. And that also means you don’t have to spend a lot of time on Twitter, if you don’t want to.
2. Twitter was started in July 2006 and as of January 2009, it surpassed Digg (a social news, aggregation site). It now has more than 1,000,000 active users,
45 percent of whom are ages 25 to 34. D-e-m-o-g-r-a-p-h-i-c-s. (here’s one bloggers take…)
3. Twitter is rapidly becoming one of the web’s most prominent "go to" breaking new services. Have a hard time believing that’s true? Consider…
a. the Hudson River plane crash was covered very early on Twitter by Janis Krums with a dramatic photograph
b. coverage of Obama’s inauguration provided insight and information for the world
c. the terrorist attacks in Mumbai was initially spread by Twitter well before the mainstream media aired the story
4. Twitter can be a novel way to market a business, service or product… as long as you follow the "rules." First and most important… be authentic. Be real with your tweets. At its best, Twitter can showcase you, your personality, your products/services and truly benefit those who follow your tweets.
5. You can use it as much or as little as you want… but be careful, because you can get "sucked" in. Twitter, itself, is fairly self-explanatory. But there are an array of services that users can utilize to interface (for a variety of reasons) with the Twitter mainframe… including: SMS, RSS, TwitterMobile, Tweetie, Twinkle, Twitterrific, Feedalizr, Facebook, and Twidget, a widget application.
Will Twitter change your life? The jury’s still out. But it is definitely an emerging technology worth following, and for the peerless, worth trying.
Follow Julian on Twitter here.