Last week, I made an introduction to the social media platform, Twitter.  Twitter (in my mind, and hopefully yours) has made a paradigm shift from time-waster to powerful marketing tool.  In the next few posts, I want to elaborate on a few of the basic functions of Twitter, and how you can use them to your advantage:

Creating conversation:  many will simply go out on Twitter and write what’s going on.  “I’m writing a post about Twitter” might be my tweet.  However, sometimes information grabs you, or someone who you’re following may ask a question or solicit a response.  In order to respond to someone, just start your tweet with @[twitter name].  For example, let’s say I see this in my feed:

CleanAirGA Fast Fact: In #Atlanta, HALF of all smog-forming emissions come from the tailpipes of cars. Clean your commute, clean the air

I think it’s something interesting, so I would write this:

mingledorffs @CleanAirGA makes me curious how much tele-commuting is on the rise…

It’s nothing profound, but I’m making an attempt to interact with someone else on Twitter.  I would hope to get a response, so a conversation has been created.  I can check to see all tweets mentioning me by clicking on the “@mingledorffs” menu selection, as circled below:

Once clicked, a list of only the tweets mentioning me appears.  No, I haven’t gotten a response yet, but I can keep checking:

So, I hope this example takes the first step in showing how Twitter is more than just a place to send texts about yourself.  It’s an (almost) infinite online community where you can interact with anyone…including potential customers.

Check back soon, as I’ll be digging into more ways to interact on Twitter.  These posts should (hopefully) unfold to create a vision of how these social medium can benefit you.