The anatomy of a Tweet – what do all those symbols mean?
So, you’ve been told that Twitter is a great way of marketing your small business on an even smaller budget… but when you log on it all looks like gibberish. As a relative newbie to Twitter myself, I thought I’d jot down what I’ve learnt so far to help you make the most of this powerful communications channel.
Twitter is a Social Media website, where you ‘follow’ people in order to see their Tweets. You see the Tweets of all the people you follow in a chronological stream, and they will see yours if they follow you. The tricky thing is that a Tweet is restricted to just 140 characters, so a kind of short hand has emerged that helps people to communicate rather a lot, in this very small space.
Mastering this short-hand of special characters and reference tags means that you can deliver a powerful message. If structured intelligently, a Tweet can stimulate topical debate, get people to click a link driving to specific content, or simply start a conversation about last night’s TV.
So, let’s take a look at the journey of a Tweet, to highlight some key quirks of Twitter, so that you can make yourself understood.
STEP ONE: The first Tweet
The journey of a Tweet begins with the first Tweet.
In this Tweet, Clear Thought is sharing a link to some great marketing advice, using the company Twitter handle, @clear_thinking [1]. Clear Thought can also be identified by the profile icon [2], which uses a component of the company logo, creating brand consistency with the other chosen channels of communication. When Tweeting personally, the Twitter handle is usually an individual’s name [1a] and the icon used tends to be a photo of that person [2a]. This can prove very useful when for example, you attend networking events, as you can more easily put a face to a name.
Tweets can be sent through Twitter.com itself, or through Twitter management applications such as TweetDeck and Tweetie. This particular Tweet was sent from CoTweet [3], but viewed in TweetDeck as shown in the message footer.
The Tweet uses persuasive copy [4] as an incentive to raise the reader’s awareness of your content, offering them ‘free marketing advice,’ followed by a call to action [5] in the form of a link which acts to drive the user to the Clear Thought website should they have been sufficiently tempted.
[5] URL shorteners
The link within the Tweet is created using CoTweet, which has an in-built URL shortener. Given the 140-character limit that a Tweet has, it is important to use your characters efficiently. To include a full URL could potentially take up a whole Tweet, detracting from the accompanying persuasive message. You can save a substantial number of characters by using a service like Bit.Ly, so for example, taking the link to a Clear Thought 10 minute tips video on social media, the link in shortened
From 62 characters:
To 20 characters:
Saving you a grand total of 42 characters that can be used to further promote your business, content, or maybe even your weekends activities should you wish.
By hovering over the profile icon in TweetDeck, you are presented with a choice of actions that can be performed if you wish to interact with or share the information with other users.
STEP TWO: Passing the message on
[6] Re-tweet (RT) with a comment
RT is an acronym for Re-Tweet. A re-tweet is a way of sharing someone else’s Tweet with your followers. This shows that you find the information useful and you want to pass it on to other people who may also be interested. A re-tweet begins with RT followed by the @ sign and the originator’s Twitter handle, so that they can be referenced.
[6a] Following the link, there are two forward slashes and a comment. When I re-tweeted this message, I chose to add a few words to express my opinion on the content. Again, this is a great way of endorsing the message being delivered, inviting people to engage with it. This will hopefully affect the persuasive power of the message, further drawing the reader in to follow the call to action. There are other ways of adding your penneth. People sometimes precede the RT with their comment, and I’ve seen a few people use <— to point to what they’re commenting on.
STEP THREE: The message takes off
[6b] Re-tweet with a ‘via’
Another action that can be performed is a re-tweet with a via. This is effectively a re-tweet of a re-tweet, therefore coming via another user.
STEP FOUR: You get a response
[7] Reply
If you wish to create dialogue between yourself and another user in relation to a specific Tweet, you can reply [7] to them. A reply will appear in both your message stream and that of the person to whom you are replying. It will also appear in the stream of people who are following both of you; Bryony and I in this case. The handle of the person with whom you are talking will appear at the start of the tweet preceded with the @ sign [7a]. The significance of the persons handle coming at the beginning shows that the message is directed at them, helping to add context to the stream of messages. The footer [7b] also indicates that the nature of the Tweet is a reply.
STEP FIVE: Having a private word
[8] Direct Message
DM is an acronym for Direct Message. This functionality allows you to send private messages to other users with whom you have a mutual following. Placing DM at the start of a message along with your recipients handle without the @ sign defines it as a direct message [8a], visible to only you two, as opposed to when you use the @ sign, which would give visibility to your mutual followers. In Tweetdeck, the nature of the message can again be identified in the message footer [8b].
Putting it all together:
A few more handy hints:
- The Hash (#) tag: Is a system for tagging your interests. Twitter does not have a specific functionality for grouping topics, so the Twitter community has developed a tagging system that uses the # symbol. By placing a # in front of the name of the topic you are discussing, it is tagged and categorised. The phrase that you have tagged becomes searchable as a result. So, for example, if I wanted to look at Tweets that discuss B2B marketing, I would simply search using the key words #B2BMarketing. (Lists are another way of categorising things, but they are a whole different topic, so we will cover them another time).
- Trending topics: The things that are being discussed the most in the Twitter world. On the homepage of Twitter.com, they are listed down the right hand side of the page. You are given the choice to search by country or city, dependent on what you are looking for.
- The @ sign: Preceding a user’s Twitter handle, the @ sign ‘calls out’ that user from within the Tweet. A tweet with your handle after an @ sign will show up in your private feed and also the feed of those who both follow you and the person who has referenced you. The Twitter handle becomes a clickable link, which will take you to their Twitter profile. Additionally, if you chose to ‘mention’ someone in a Tweet, you would use the @ sign and the mention would appear in that persons live stream. It is also likely that the person mentioned in the tweet will ‘re-tweet’ the message, therefore posting the message to their followers, creating a viral effect.
- Placing a full stop before the @ preceding a Twitter handle (.@): Means that everyone following the person sending the message sees the tweet in their stream rather than just those being passed between mutual contacts.
- Emoticons: Are used to add further expression to a Tweet, examples being things like smiley faces; :) :( :|
- Acronyms: Are used to abbreviate phrases that either would take up to many characters to write, for example, atm; a shortened version of ‘at the moment,’ or to for example, express an action such as ‘lol,’ standing for ‘laugh out loud’.
Although there appears to be a lot of detail here, this is just the basics and as trends in the use of Twitter evolve, so does the language used by the Twitter community. What is relevant today may not be in two months, or even in 2 weeks. So, to keep up with the latest, keep your eye on those trending topics.
By Laura Champion | Assistant Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk
If this blog is of interest to you, you may also like to view:
- Blog: Three ways we use Twitter as a business tool
- Blog: B2B Social Media: Be There, Be Relevant, Be Proven
- Blog: One piece of content, 20 ways to use it
- Blog: What are your social media rules?
Clear Thought Consulting works with small businesses, equipping them with the marketing strategies, suppliers, skills and set-up that they need to become bigger businesses. We do this by planning and delivering 12-month marketing transformation programmes – supporting a small business through a step-by-step process to making marketing pay. We firmly believe that when you can’t out-spend your competition, you have to out-think them.
Published on 28 May 2010
