Using Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking, microblogging, and news platform. It allows registered users to connect with each other and share posts of up to 280 characters, along with images and video clips. These short posts are called tweets. Twitter’s global following enables its users to share their thoughts, news and have conversations with a mass, or restricted audience.
Twitter functions
Tweets – Twitter users need to be succinct with their words and get their point across in a maximum of 280 characters including punctuation, spaces and emojis. Users can also post photos, images and videos. Twitter generally requires videos to be less than 140 seconds long.
Followers – Registered users can follow accounts they’re interested in to keep up to date with their news and stories. If an account is protected, the account owner will be able to approve or deny requests to follow them.
Public or protected - Tweets are publicly visible by default. However, account owners can choose to protect their Tweets so they can only be seen by their followers.
Like, retweet, quote Tweet – Users that can see your Tweets can choose to like them, retweet them or quote tweet them. Retweeting is a feature that allows the user to share other people’s Tweets with their own followers. Quote tweets allow users to share other people’s tweets and add further comments to them. These can be useful for organisations looking to form relationships with partners and the community.
Personal and business accounts – Twitter offers accounts for both personal and organisational (business) use. Personal accounts are designed for individuals to express their own views and business accounts are designed for organisations to share their activities, values and goals and build their following. Business accounts have more features, a resource hub, enable you to schedule your Tweets and give you the ability to track and drive performance.
Hashtags - Using relevant hashtags (i.e., #community, #sport etc.) in your captions is an effective way of helping people find you.
Twitter Ads – You can build a tailored advertising campaigns by using Twitter Ads. There’s lots of different formats to suit different goals, audiences and budgets.
Get set up
- Go to the Twitter website or download the Twitter app.
- Sign up using an Apple account, google account, mobile number or email.
- Once you have created and verified your account, you can use the ‘what’s happening’ text box to create your tweet. You can add photos and videos to these tweets.
- You can search for people you know and start following them. You can also follow topics.
- To create a business account, click Twitter for professionals, or go to your profile settings and select professional tools, Twitter for Professionals and follow the instructions.
Things to consider
- To create an account, users must be 13 or over.
- But be cautious of inappropriate content or language in comments or videos.
- You will need to pay to use Twitter Ads and set up an Ads account. You can set up multiple logins for the same account.
- Twitter posts appear in real-time so it’s important to keep your feed up to date.