What's All The Brouhaha About Twitter?

Unless you live under a rock, you've probably heard about the social networking tool that's turned the Internet on its ear.

This tool I'm talking about is Twitter. Twitter is responsible for starting this whole social networking craze.

Anyway, I'd heard about Twitter, but, quite frankly, I just didn't get it. If you answer its initial proposition, "What are you doing?", you get the basic concept.

For example, a sample 'tweet' (twitterspeak for message) from me, might be, "I just got up, ate breakfast, and read the paper."

I mean, who cares? Right?

But that was before I found an 'instruction manual' for this revolutionary communication tool. After reading it, I learned how to really use Twitter.

Indeed, I'm talking about the TwitterHandbook by Deborah Micek and Warren Whitlock.

In a nutshell, I guess the basic concept of this book is, how to market your product or service on the Internet, in a not so obvious, but entertaining manner.

Consequently, one of the first things I learned, was not to answer that basic, what are you doing, question. Instead, try to inject some personality into your tweets.

Or to paraphrase television personality Bill O'Reilly, if you feel the need to opine, feel free to do so with 'pithy' comments.

I had to look that one up.

Basically, pithy's definition is: "concise, and full of meaning."

Boy, I'd say that 'concise' definitely pegs it. You need to make the most of the 140 characters Twitter gives you.

Additionally, a whole new lexicon has developed around this tool.

For example, 'Twibe' means Twitter Tribe, which is what you become a member of, upon signing up.

Here's another one. Your friends on twitter are called 'fweeps', which is the concatenation of the words friends and people (or peeps).

Furthermore, you should copy and paste the "Twitter Badge' on all your blogs and/or websites. This allows interested parties to see what you're doing at any given moment by just clicking it.

As to what you post, post interesting comments, comments that make you worthy of being followed. Don't just use it to only market what you sell, offer something enlightening, or funny. Show some personality.

Apparently, in this new Internet world we live in, if you hope to succeed, you must interact with others.

All in all, this is known as 'permission marketing', which is the art of attracting clients, instead of getting them.

Also, according to CoachDeb (she likes to be called that), it can also be used as a means of communicating breaking news.

For example, the Chinese earthquake of 2008 was first shared with the world via Twitter.

Many more details of how it can be used are revealed in this book. You webmasters out there really need to read it.

Last, surprisingly, as I'm sure all of you will discover, Twitter turns out to be, uh, fun.

Well, although I'm new to the 'Twitterverse', I've certainly seen the light. I'm going to incorporate twitter into my Internet marketing strategy from here on.

So don't be a 'halftwit', or a tweeter who just doesn't get it. Jump in and join the party.

In the future, I hope to receive a 'tweet' from you.

Here is the web address for the TwitterHandbook: TwitterHandbook