Twitter is a real-time information network that connects people to the latest information about what they find interesting. It is now reporting to have over 200 million registered users, that use small text based status posts of up to 140 characters to spread their views, news, and general
Simply find the public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations.
Examples of the popular ‘Tweeters’
- Lady Gaga – twitter.com/#!/ladygaga
- Stephen Fry – twitter.com/#!/STEPHENFRY
- Play.com – twitter.com/#!/playcom
- Amazon UK – twitter.com/#!/amazonuk
Twitter Buttons & Widgets
Similar to other social media platforms, Twitter also offers a number of tools and widgets that encourage social engagement with your users.
1. Tweet Button
The Tweet button lets users share pages from your site back to their Twitter profile page with one single click. This is excellent for increasing your content distribution and building traffic back to websites.
“Sites like Quora.com receive roughly 30 clicks for every Tweet that comes from their site using the Tweet Button.” – Twitter, 2011
High Impact Areas
Product Detail pages:
- www.poised.co.uk
2. Follow Button
The Follow Button allows visitors of your website to “Follow” (or subscribe), to your Twitter feed. This can help to build your audience of followers, which the goal of general growth over time.
“Leading video sharing sites on the Web have seen 70% increase in Replies, 131% increase in Retweets and 150% increase in Favorites.” – Twitter, 2011
High Impact Areas
- In the global header or footer of the website, displayed across all web pages.
3. Twitter Widgets
Twitter offer small customisable widgets that you can embed directly into your website, which allow you to display status messages (or “tweets”) associated with your Twitter account. This can help build social engagement and awareness of your Twitter activities from your existing website userbase.
- Profile Widget – Display a feed of the most recent Twitter updates.
- Search Widget – Show real time search results for any search term.
- Faves Widget – Display favourite tweets from your account.
- List Widget – Enables you to display favourite tweets
4. Web Intents
Twitter’s Web Intents make it possible for users to interact with Twitter content directly in the context of your site without leaving the page. Essentially this means that visitors on your website can reply directly to tweeters, re-tweet your posts, favorite and follow directly without having to leave the your website.
5. Custom Twitter Profile
Twitter provide the ability to apply a customised design to your profile page. This enables you to give a professional, but branded feel to your profile, which makes your page more attention grabbing, and can help to build followers. See some examples of branded Twitter profile designs…