Twee da da deet deet!

 Happy New Year everyone!  I hope 2022 brings you many blessings and opportunities. As many opportunities as Twitter's reach. With over 290 million users that would be a lot of opportunities.  I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for being silent for the last few weeks. I fell down a work hole and well Christmas and New Years dug it a bit deeper. I am half way out of said hole thus things should be back on schedule shortly.

Based on my stale title and reference today's post is about my thoughts regarding Twitter. Firstly I don't like Twitter as a consumer and at the moment I hate it even more as a wannabe creator. Now take my frustrations and opinions with some salt here. It is important to remember that I am a noob. While my marketing class takes things one step at a time to teach how this all goes, with floaties so the students can learn without fear. My internship on the other hand straight up 'yeeted' me into the Twitter pool and left me to fend for myself. When it comes to Twitter I was literally thrown into the deep end of this pool and I think I drowned.  I don't want you to drown like I did so let's do a quick rundown of Twitter.

Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that has a ridiculous reach. In 2019  Twitter had over 290 million active users and it is projected that it will increase to over 340 million by 2024. With short simple and sweet posts called Tweets that appeal to our ever shortening attention spans Twitter is bound for amazing success. Business can smell the opportunities  this platform brings with it miles away, and rightfully so. If you use hashtags properly it makes it easier to organically get your message or brand out in front of thousands to millions eyes quickly. You can go even further if you can spend as little as $0.50 - $2.00 USD per action on a promoted Tweet. It really only gets really expensive upfront if the business wants to promote a trend that can cost as much as $200,000 USD. In some ways that can balance out when you consider how many people will see said trend. Think of it like $1.00 per person. Webfx has a nice break down of Twitter costs in this blog post. 

Tweet Deck

Twitter also allows businesses to "keep an eye" on their competition. Users can create lists for their feed, which functions as subsets of the feed. With this they can stay up to date on specific trends, brands and people, including their competition. Twitter's Tweetdeck platform functions similarly to Meta's business suite for Facebook and Instagram. Tweet deck allows the user to partition the app in such a way that allows them to monitor their competition's posts and trends in addition to scheduling their own posts and other handy tools from a PC, Mac, Tablet or Chromebook. It can get a bit cluttered and confusing at times while learning how to use it, but it is an invaluable free tool that Twitter provides.

Twitter Spaces

Twitter Spaces is extremely interesting.  It is an auditory feature that functions like a podcast of sorts. It is likened to another platform called Club House but it is said that Twitter  Spaces is easier to use and already has a larger established user base. With a smoother learning curve and their audience already present it is the better option for many. In the past a user needed to have at least six hundred (600) followers to create a Twitter Space. Now anyone can create one. These are public and can function as an informal town hall which can enable high engagement with the audience. It is also great for conducting market research. Since the data from the space once closed is saved for about a month and can be downloaded; which makes said research all the easier. During the pandemic DJs used Twitter Spaces to stay connected with their audiences, the result was almost like a virtual party. This feature has visual engagement tools; so while people cannot see each other they can react and comment. This works really well for persons that are introverted whether they are the host or a listener.

So far Twitter sounds golden. When  considering the local market it sounds platinum as it is not a saturated platform yet. This gives creators and businesses great opportunities as it is great for organic reach and has the potential for great engagement on the cheap. Locals don't engage much but at least your message can be seen by them. I personally see tweets from all kinds of random people and organizations in my notifications. However it is still pretty new locally. Aside from News companies, major brands and recognized DJs it is going to to feel like an uphill climb but if you stick with it , things will pay off eventually. This post is way longer than I intended, please bare with me a little longer, there are a few things you should know.

Thing To Note

1. There are no "take backs" you cannot edit a tweet if you make a mistake. You can add a reply to your tweet thread correcting yourself but your initial blunder is there to stay, unless if you delete it and start all over again. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to start over.
2. You cannot schedule Tweets in the app. I have searched high and low but I have not found a way to do it in app you have to use Tweet Deck. The work around in the app would be to save your tweet as a draft and Tweet it later manually. While Tweet Deck will allow you to schedule posts there are limitations for example your images must be smaller than 5MB in size; this doesn't matter in the app but  it does on the deck.
3. If you want to post a long video it will get cut up into bite sized junks. My advice is cut your video when prompted to do so or before hand. The limit is 140 seconds per tweet. You can spread it out across a tweet thread or only put a 140 sec teaser in your tweet and link to the full video on another platform such as YouTube.
4. If options disappear while scheduling a tweet and you cannot scroll down just hit "tab" on your keyboard a couple times and you should be able to see them.
5. Take your time this app has a high learning curve for users coming from one of Meta's apps, take your time and enjoy the application.

I can say so much more but I don't want to bore you Twitter's Blog should answer any questions that you might have. I personally don't have things to regularly say on Twitter to keep up making content for it, but I am sure that over time I will figure something out. Give it a try I am sure you can find something handy about it. Until next time.