Episode Summary: Part 2 of a 3-part social media mini-series with livestreaming expert Ross Brand — this episode covers Twitter fundamentals, key stats, and practical tips for content creators.
What You'll Learn
- Twitter fundamentals: tweets, mentions, hashtags, likes, and retweets explained
- Twitter usage stats and the platform's biggest accounts as of 2018
- Practical tips for using Twitter for travel, customer service, and content promotion
- How to use Buffer to schedule and space out promotional tweets
Part 2 of the social media series with special guest Ross Brand from LivestreamUniverse.com — Episode 125 covered LinkedIn, this one covers Twitter, and Episode 127 wraps up with Facebook Live.
What Is Twitter?
Twitter is an online news and social networking service built around short posts called "tweets" — a micro-blog by design. The character limit expanded from 140 to 280 in November 2017. Text, photos, videos, GIFs, and live video are all supported, with live video being especially popular during breaking news events.
Tip: when traveling, Twitter is a genuinely effective way to reach airline customer service — rebooking, cancellations, standby lists.
Bonus tip: for service businesses, Twitter is a real customer-service channel in its own right — social media customer service was fully expected by 2018.
The Story of Twitter
Founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey (also the founder of Square), Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Ev Williams (also the founder of Medium).
Twitter Fundamentals
You can follow anyone; someone must follow you back before they can send you a direct message. Each post — 280 characters or fewer — is a Tweet. The @ symbol mentions someone directly; hashtags (#) mark topics. Liking (heart icon) and retweeting are the main ways to engage with and amplify someone else's content. The Twitter bird logo is named Larry.
The Numbers (2018)
Roughly 350 million users, over 500 million tweets per day, 80% of users on mobile, 80% of accounts overseas, 56% of users earning over $56K/year, and a company valuation over $16 billion at the time. Over 100 million tweets contained animated GIFs. Top followed accounts: Katy Perry (108M+), Justin Bieber (100M+), and Barack Obama in third — with the sitting president at the time ranked #20 with 47 million followers.
Q&A With Ross Brand
Is Twitter still relevant for content creators and personal brands in 2018, and why?
Read the complete show notes and resources on mikemurphy.ai.
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