Twitter is a social networking site where people communicate in short messages called tweets. Tweeting is posting short messages for your followers (people who follow you) on Twitter, with the hope that your words are useful and interesting to someone in your audience. There are many ways I can describe Twitter and tweeting, another simpler and shorter way to describe it would be to call it micro-blogging.
Some people use this social networking site to discover interesting people and organizations online, opting to follow their tweets.
Why Twitter Is So Popular
The biggest appeal of this social networking platform is how scan-friendly it is. Today, we live in a modern attention-deficit world; this makes Twitter ideal for us as it allows us to track hundreds of engaging Twitter users and read their content with just a glance.
Every microblog tweet entry is limited to two-hundred-and-eighty (280) characters or less; this purposeful message size restriction has made Twitter a popular social tool. It helps keep things scan-friendly. You may be thinking about how it helps keep things scan-friendly? Well, for starters, it promotes the focused and clever use of language, which makes tweets easy to scan and to challenge to write.
How Twitter Works
There is nothing hard about using Twitter whether you intend to use it as a broadcaster or receiver. You can sign up with a free account and Twitter name. You send tweets (broadcasts) every day, after every hour, or as frequently as you like. Go to the What’s Happening box next to your profile image, type two-hundred-and-eighty (280) characters or less, and click Tweet. Your followers (people who follow you), and potentially others who don’t, will see your tweet.
If there are people you know on Twitter, encourage them to follow you; they’ll receive your tweets in their Twitter feeds once they do. This how you’ll build up a following slowly. You should always remember one thing: when people follow you, Twitter etiquette calls for you to follow them back.
To receive other people’s tweets in your Twitter feed, find someone interesting (celebrities included) and press the “Follow” button on their profile to subscribe to their tweets. Following someone is not permanent; if their tweets aren’t as interesting, you can always unfollow them.
Go to your account at “Twitter.com” anytime you want to read your Twitter feed, which keeps on continually changing as people post.
Twitter is that simple.
Why People Tweet
Now, that’s an interesting question. From vanity to attention and from shameless self-promotion of their web pages to pure boredom, people send tweets for all sorts of different reasons. The vast majority of Twitter users microblog recreationally. It provides them with an opportunity to shout out to the world and revel in how many people read their tweets.
However, the number of tweeters who send out useful content is continuously increasing, and that’s the real value of this social networking platform. It provides a stream of quick updates from friends, family, academics, journalists, and experts. Many see it as a chance to become amateur journalists of life, describing and sharing something that they found interesting about their day.
Like other social networks, Twitter is also not free of drivel and is full of it. But at the same time, it also has a base of useful news and knowledgeable content. At the end of the day, it’s for you to decide which content is worth following there.
Twitter as a Form of Amateur News Reporting
Among other things, Twitter is a way to learn about the world through another person’s eyes.
Tweets may come from people in the Philippines as typhoons hit their cities. Your soldier cousin might describe his war experiences; your traveling sister in Africa shares her daily discoveries, or a football friend could tweet from the Football World Cup. These tweeters are all mini-journalists in their own way, and Twitter gives them a platform to send a constant stream of updates right from their desktops and smartphones.
Twitter as a Marketing Tool
As you know, we live in the age of Covid-19, where layoffs are happening everywhere. If you are among the people who just got laid off or are just sick of your current job, This platform can help you get a new job. Not only can you announce to the world that you are looking for employment, but many companies post their job openings on Twitter as well. Hundreds and thousands of people advertise their recruiting services, consulting businesses, and retail stores by using this platform, and they are getting good results from it.
The modern internet-savvy user is fed up with TV. Advertisements. Today, people prefer quick, less intrusive advertising and can be turned on or off whenever one wants. Twitter is precisely that; when you learn how tweeting work’s nuances, you can get good advertising results by using this platform.
Twitter as a Social Messaging Tool
Yes, Twitter is social media, but it’s much more than instant messaging. This platform is about discovering interesting people around the globe. It can also be about building a following people interested in you and the work you do and then providing those followers with some knowledge value daily.
Arrange a Lunch With Friends
This platform can be quite handy for arranging a time and place to get together. It’s like a conference call with text messaging. So, if you have a regular lunch date with a group of friends or want to arrange a get-together, Twitter can be an easy way to decide on a time and place that works for everyone.
Why Celebrities Like Twitter
Another reason why this social media platform is so popular is that it is both personal and rapid. Celebrities use it to build a personal connection with their fans.
Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and Donald Trump are some of the famous Twitter users. The updates that they provide everyday foster a sense of connectedness with their followers, which is powerful for advertising purposes and compelling and motivating for the people following the celebrities.
Letting It out
Did you have one of those days recently? When someone pulls in front of you in traffic, or you get served the wrong type of coffee, these things may seem small but can sometimes put us in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
The sage advice is not to keep it inside and instead let it out, but to whom? It’s probably not a good idea to vent to your boss. That’s where Twitter comes in because it lets you rage to millions of people. And who knows, you might get some sympathy tweets out of it too.
Just remember one important thing, and that is to watch the language.
Twitter Is Many Different Things
It is a mix of instant messaging, blogging, and texting, but with concise content and a broad audience. If you think there is a writer in you somewhere with something to say, then this platform is a channel worth exploring. If you don’t like to write but are curious about a celeb, a particular hobby topic, or even a long-lost family member, then Twitter is one way to connect with that person or subject.
Thank You For Reading!