What is Twitter?
Twitter helps you create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers – Twitter
Why I use Twitter:
- News source – obtain the latest news I care about including in my area of interest. Many people use Twitter only for this reason and never post a tweet.
- Great way to connect with my customers
- I think of our clientele as customers shopping for information in the places they wish to obtain it. They may not have to pay for our information, but if our information is not in the places they wish to receive it, then our unbiased, research-based information isn’t even an option for them to choose. If it’s not in the form they choose to receive information, then they don’t know about us or our resources…thus they may question our relevance.
- Allows me to be timely and relevant sharing photos, videos, urls of what is occurring in the area which I work.
What are your Goals?
Goals are important to understand why to utilize any tool for programming. Knowing 
your goals will help you with building the brand around your social media accounts and in what you share. Examples of our goals:
- Nathan Mueller: Professional Twitter activity that engages regional stakeholders with timely & relevant information that impacts their crop production business
- Jenny Rees: Drive our customers to our unbiased, research-based info. on our websites so they have an opportunity to choose our information amidst the other information available
Why Is Twitter an Important Communication Source?
I’ll admit before I started using Twitter in 2010, I didn’t understand its value. After all, many posts at the time were about what people ate for a meal, etc…and who really wants to know about that? However, the light bulb finally went off. Think of it like a spiderweb. If I have 20 people who are following me and I share a piece of important information, each of those 20 people also may have 20 people following them. If even 5 of them share that information to their followers, that’s perhaps a different group of people than I could have ever reached with the same information…and those people may also share the information without even knowing or following me…you can see how quickly information can travel to groups of people we would have never other-wise reached as it is global in scale.
From PEW Internet Research, “Some 23% of all online adults use Twitter, a proportion that is identical to the 23% of online adults who did so in September 2014. Internet users living in urban areas are more likely than their suburban or rural counterparts to use Twitter. Three-in-ten online urban residents use the site, compared with 21% of suburbanites and 15% of those living in rural areas. Twitter is more popular among younger adults — 30% of online adults under 50 use Twitter, compared with 11% of online adults ages 50 and older.”
How do you begin with Twitter?
Check out the next blog post “Your Twitter Account“! You can also view the Twitter Presentation Nathan Mueller and I presented at the 2014 Nebraska Extension Fall Conference and the resources below.
