By Chuck Sink
Twitter is the place where industry thought leaders, celebrities and other news makers break their ideas on the public scene first. It’s the place to chronicle short bursts of thought, leading followers and the online public to a new video, website, landing page, blog post, news article or single idea.
Twitter has absolutely nothing to do with telling a group of followers what you happen to be doing, which is what most people thought it was at first. Sure you can try and use it for that but few will notice or care about your tweets. Twitter is really the driver of breaking news around the world as well as an amazing connector of people with the same or similar interests.
Of course, people tweet whatever they want and Twitter can be a great medium to share inspirational quotes and ideas whenever they occur. I very often use it for that purpose myself. I enjoy scrolling through my Twitter feed now and then when I’m in 
need of some ideas. There is never a shortage of them springing from the well of minds out there in the cyber world.
The hashtag (#keyword) makes Twitter the most powerful search engine for real-time conversations. When you include a hashtag in your tweet, it will automatically and instantaneously be indexed and bundled into a group of individual tweets using the same hashtag – every single one in the world. Hashtags are created for every big event going on – business, social and political.
Enter the hashtag in the search bar and you will see every single tweet using it in chronological order. Do you see the usefulness of this in connecting like minded people worldwide at any given time, including potential customers?
See the twitter feed here? It’s a snapshot of what’s being tweeted around the world about the recent Consumer Electronics Show #CES2014. Notice the big tech brands making hay over it.
Talking Twitter 101 can be a reminder to us marketers about how important this powerful social and business conversation engine can be for getting our messages noticed on a worldwide scale. The key to using it successfully, like anything else, is how relevant and interesting you can be to your audience.
Thanks, Chuck. This is the best explanation of Twitter that I’ve read. You’ve cut right down to the essence of why it’s useful, and caused me to rethink my opinion of Twitter.