Twitter is a social media platform that is used by a wide range of people, from celebrities, who use it to communicate with their fans to companies and brands who can use it to engage their customers and attract new ones. It is also used by people for the social aspect – to chat and share information with friends. In fact, there is no restriction to who or what can have a Twitter account and often a larger company such as Starbucks will also have individual accounts for each product such as Frappuccino’s and even individual store locations.

Using Twitter successfully requires a significant commitment of time – being active is key to your success. It’s all about the image you create, and the best‐viewed companies are the responsive ones.

Twitter is a real‐time information sharing network where users can share messages, news, images, opinions and links via short bursts of information called ‘tweets’ – these tweets have a character limit of 140 including spaces, which may sound very short but you might be surprised at how much you can get into a little space and how much influence that can have. Even though Twitter is a fairly simple service, it’s still important to understand the mechanics of it thoroughly.