The Twitter Book

The Twitter Book
| 2009-05-26 00:00:00 | | 0 | Web

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.

User review
Good introduction, but will be outdated quickly
A good introduction to Twitter and many of the 3rd party tools that have sprung up around it. Definitely aimed at novice users. Also, I suspect this book will be dated quickly simply because the Twitter universe is evolving so rapidly that many of the tools mentioned will be superseded by better tools and the Twitter API itself is also evolving, helping to spawn more tools and features.


So if you are considering this book and it is more than 12 months old and there hasn't been a 2nd edition, I would probably look for something more recent.

User review
The Twitter Book
Because I was a history major in college, and am approaching 60 years old, I needed this basic text. It makes Twittering simple to do, and explains the proper etiquette for `twittering`. Who would have thought that an Internet microblog site could be good for business?


For any skeptics of the power of the Internet, I say either get on board or get left behind.


William C. Head

Attorney at Law

Atlanta, GA

[,,.]



User review
Learn What You Need to Know About Twitter in 90 min
I am a person who is new to Twitter and still a Twitter skeptic. While this book didn't convert me (that wasn't the book's intention) it did a wonderful job of demystifying this new world.


Pros

1. The Twitter Book's strengths are in its brevity and structure. Most topics are covered in one page and it is just enough info to give you a good primer on each topic. From there you can take the tools & links it provides and dig deeper.


2. Clearly explained the lingo and jargon which was extremely help to a casual user like myself.


3. Very timely, all the examples and references are still fresh.


Cons

1. Unfortunately, this book won't age well. Things are changing so fast in the social media world that in another 6-12 months many of the examples and references may seem stale. Let's hope the sales of this version are enough to justify frequent revisions.


In conclusion, give the book a shot, you'll get enough tips and pointers from it to make it worth your while.



User review
The right info, the right depth
I used this to get started as newbie, but with some smarts about communication, and I found this book a marvelous blend of form and function. Every question, big or little, was answered quickly, and I found myself putting unexpected functions to work smoothly. I think this works best for learning-while-twittering, which is what Twitter is all about (and I'm a when-all-else-fails-read-the-manual guy, anyway). The emphasis is on Twitter itself, rather than other platforms like Tweetie or TweetDeck, which I found myself using almost immediately, but getting comfortable with the basic tools was the point I think. I ordered other books on Twitter, and this was the only one I really used.

User review
twitter explained in detail
`Really useful book to get you up to speed on Twitter. Grab this book before you get started, and avoid a lot of wasted time and mistakes. Also, helps you navigate the twitter subculture, so you'll finally understand hashtags, FF, RT, et al.`