The Checklist Book: Twitter Edition. A.J. Hammond Lapre

tion>

      

      The Checklist Book: Twitter

      A Concise Guide on How to Use Twitter to

      Grow Your Business or Non-Profit

       A.J. Lapré and Christopher Gallegos

      Copyright 2011 A.J. Lapre,

      All rights reserved.

      Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com

       http://www.eBookIt.com

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0476-9

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

      Preface:

      What this book will help you achieve

      The Checklist Book: Twitter has one goal: To help business owners effectively use Twitter.

      By “effectively” we mean more than just increasing visibility (quantity doesn’t always mean quality); we want to help give your company a valuable voice in the Twitterverse.

      The effective use of Twitter can help grow your brand and company equity. This guide will provide basic but essential information on how to utilize this social media tool as a public relations device and as a means to communicate to key external stakeholders.

      The Checklist: Twitter

      Here it is – the checklist that will help ensure you are effectively using Twitter as an external competitive advantage to boost your business:

      Chapter 1:

      What is Social Media?

      So you – the bold, smart, savvy entrepreneur – want to dive into the world of social media or, if you like, social networking. Good for you! But have you ever taken a step back to understand exactly what social media is or what it can – or can’t – do?

      If you already know, then press on to chapter two. If not, here is a very brief description of social media. Drum roll, please:

      Social media is:

      1. A way to communicate

      2. A way to promote things while talking about stuff online.

      The first point may seem obvious, but is important. Online, a person can type a few sentences on Twitter, Facebook or other website about how his or her day went, hit the “ok” button and, instantly, his or her friends, family and foes can read this update. This individual can also add a photo of their lunch and, as example, include a link to a funny online video of a chef trying to cook a meal.

      With social media, then, people can magnify their thoughts. Instead of calling friends one at a time to catch up, today we can now potentially inform thousands of people all at once pretty much anything we want, include videos and images.

      The second part is less obvious. Back in the “good old days” – before the Internet really began to take off – only the huge, powerful media networks had the capability to reach thousands or millions of people at one time, most typically through TV, radio and print advertising. And how did most of these media companies make money? From advertisers. You sit down, watch your favorite program and inevitably you also end up watching a number of ads along the way.

      With social media, the new “program” is reading about your friends, family and colleagues and the ads (at least for Twitter) come in the form of various, random “tweets” that may carry a link to the latest hot viral video produced by a company or a hash tag (#) with a brand name. Twitter has also added what it calls Promoted Tweets, which are similar to ads. (We’ll explain more in Chapter 3.)

      There are plenty of resources if you want to know more about the miracle of social media, but in the most basic of nutshells, this is what makes social media so different than other forms of communication. For our purposes, we will now focus on Twitter in the context of public relations. But, keep in mind, social media continues to change and evolve and the average online user will be exposed to more branding communications, not less.