The Twitter Book - Softcover

O'Reilly, Tim; Milstein, Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1449314201 ISBN 13: 9781449314200

Publisher: O'Reilly Media, 2011

Synopsis

Twitter is not just for talking about your breakfast anymore. It’s become an indispensable communications tool for businesses, non-profits, celebrities, and people around the globe. With the second edition of this friendly, full-color guide, you’ll quickly get up to speed not only on standard features, but also on new options and nuanced uses that will help you tweet with confidence.

Co-written by two widely recognized Twitter experts, The Twitter Book is packed with all-new real-world examples, solid advice, and clear explanations guaranteed to turn you into a power user.

• Use Twitter to connect with colleagues, customers, family, and friends
• Stand out on Twitter
• Avoid common gaffes and pitfalls
• Build a critical communications channel with Twitter—and use the best third-party tools to manage it.

Want to learn how to use Twitter like a pro? Get the book that readers and critics alike rave about.

About this title

Review:

This practical guide will teach you everything you need to know to quickly become a Twitter power user, including strategies and tactics for using Twitter's 140-character messages as a serious--and effective--way to boost your business. Co-written by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein, widely followed and highly respected Twitterers, the practical information in The Twitter Book is presented in a fun, full-color format that's packed with helpful examples and clear explanations.

Twitter Tips

1. Even if you use Twitter primarily to post information that’s not directly about your company, you can—and should—use it to sometimes link back to your own site or blog. Many companies find that Twitter can become a top referrer to their sites, so avail yourself of that benefit—just do it in a smart way.
The key is to frame the link in a way that’s interesting to your Twitter followers. So instead of saying, “New Blog Post: Mundane Headline, http://yourblog.com,” try something like the examples here, each of which links back to the Bigelow Tea blog.

2. If you’re looking to get the most out of Twitter, don’t fall into the trap of posting an RSS feed of headlines from your site or blog. Although there are services that will automate such a connection for you, they simply help you create an impersonal account that duplicates the main feature of an RSS reader. Why bother?

Four Important Things to Search For

If you want really useful search results from Twitter, you have to spend some time playing with the advanced search options to figure out the relevant terms and topics people are talking about. Here are four topics to get you started:
1. Your name. It may be known as a “vanity search,” but keeping an eye on what people say about you is a smart idea. (Don’t forget that putting quotes around your name can help refine the results. Search for “Jane Doe” instead of Jane Doe.)
2. Your Twitter account name. Don’t miss messages to or about you.
3. Your company, brand or product. Peek into the minds of customers, competitors, journalists and other key constituents. If you’re a local business, use the advanced search “Location” option to narrow down results. Also, if your company name is common, use the minus sign to weed out inappropriate results. For instance, if you work for Kaiser Permanente, search for Kaiser -Chiefs to make sure messages about the band don’t overwhelm your results. (Here, a targeted search yields some relevant results.)
4. Your competitors. Get market intel and ideas.

About the Author:

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. Tim is an activist for open source and open standards, and an opponent of software patents and other incursions of new intellectual property laws into the public domain. Tim's long-term vision for his company is to change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. For everything Tim, see tim.oreilly.com.

Sarah Milstein is UBM TechWeb's GM & Co-chair for Web 2.0 Expo, an influential, semi-annual conference on the profitable intersection of entrepreneurship and technology. Previously, she was on the senior editorial staff at O'Reilly Media. Before joining O'Reilly in 2003, Sarah was a freelance writer and editor, and a regular contributor to The New York Times. She holds a B.A. from Rutgers University and an M.B.A. from U.C. Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Bonus fact: she was the 21st user of Twitter.

About this edition

• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1449314201
• ISBN 13: 9781449314200
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 256