Hello, learners. I'm in the mood to talk about Twitter today, and I hope you are in the mood listen about Twitter. Now if you're watching this video it's probably because you're not familiar with Twitter, and I hope to give a good overview, and some reasons why it may be a good fit for you in promoting your brand. If you already know about Twitter and you're watching this video, I can only assume it's because I am super amusing and engaging. Thank you, you're so sweet. [SOUND] So Twitter, or whatever your country's version of Twitter is, it's a communication media, that limits you to 140 characters per message, which in Twitter's case, is called a tweet. Now some people always question, like how much real communication can you get done in 140 characters, and I can see their point. I think it really takes getting into Twitter, and following some people, to figure all that out. So if you want to get into Twitter, you'll need to make an account. And you want to choose your username, which is called a handle. And all handles have an @ sign in front of them. For instance, I am @kr_barker on Twitter. And with all things, remember everything we're doing in this course is going towards thinking about your brand and establishing your brand. Think about what handle will best promote a message about your brand. I think it's great to have your name out there. You can never have your name out there enough. So I like to use my name, but if there's something else that you would like to use like, you would never use this, no person would ever use this, but @ computer whiz. It's a terrible example. I'm sorry, but you get the idea. Your name or something that communicates something about your brand. So you first will create that. Then you can, there's a search box at the top of every Twitter page, and you can search for people who are rock stars in your field, and you can follow them. There's a little blue follow button you click on them. And you can start seeing their tweets in your feed. You can, in the search box, search for particular topics. And you can, those will pop up, and you can see a lot of times, they have hashtags. Now back in the day, a hashtag was used to indicate a number, but in this modern world of ours, it has come to mean a topic on Twitter. So if you are writing a tweet on a particular topic, for instance, if I want to write a tweet about 3D printing, I would put hashtag, and then 3D printing. And one thing that Twitter does that I think is pretty helpful is, once you type a hashtag and start typing whatever your topic is, like if I typed # 3, it would pop up a list of suggestions. So 3D printing, 3D printed, that kind of thing, and you can choose your hashtag. And don't fill your tweet with too many hashtags, but do fill it enough to get your message out there. So that anybody else searching for that hashtag is likely to find your tweet. So it's a good thing to do. So because it is so short in nature, limited to 140 characters, I like to think of Twitter as a fish hook. It's a small instrument that you use to lure people back to your boat and eat them. No, I'm just kidding about that last part. But I do like the analogy of a fishhook, because a tweet is a small thing that you're using to, hopefully, hook people, and take them back to your content. For instance, I have a blog, and if I write a piece on 3D printing that is two pages long, there's no way I could fit all of that into Twitter. But if I use a tweet to put in a link that heads back to my blog, and I hashtag it 3D printing, anybody looking for 3D printing is likely to find that, and be taken back to my blog. So I'm actually reeling people in to bigger pieces of content. So, if you've had a particular experience with Twitter, or whatever your country's version is, if you love it, if you hate it, I would love to hear from the community, share stories, and, particularly, for those folks who may not be as familiar with Twitter. If you decide to sign up, and want to lurk for a while, that is totally fine. Lurking basically means that you aren't creating content, you're just reading other people's content. That's a great way to figure out what Twitter is, and if it's for you. Again, all of these tools that I'm telling you about are to just give you an idea of what's going to work for you. Not everything is gonna work for everybody. So if you try Twitter, and it doesn't work for you, and it just doesn't fit you, and you find it cumbersome, drop it. Don't use it. Go on to the next thing. But if you do decide to check it out, please tweet at me, at @k_barker, and check in with me on social media, and I would love to see what your handle is, and tell me what you think about it. I'd be very interested to hear that. I hope you found this helpful.
