Social Media Marketing

Advertising using Twitter

Lancashire Childcare Sufficiency Team

Using for your Childcare Business

What is Twitter? Twitter is a 'microblogging' system that allows you to send and receive short posts called tweets. Tweets can be up to 140 characters long and can include links to relevant websites and resources. Twitter users follow other users. If you follow someone you can see their tweets in your twitter 'timeline'. You can choose to follow people and organisations with similar academic and personal interests to you such as in early years and childcare or childhood studies. You can create your own tweets or you can retweet information that has been tweeted by others. Retweeting means that information can be shared quickly and efficiently with a large number of people.

Why use Twitter for your childcare business?

The snappy nature of tweets means that Twitter is widely used by smartphone users who don’t want to read long content items on-screen. Perfect for reaching mums and dads who may be future users of your childcare setting and want to hear more from the individuals who own and run the business. Or indeed current parents who can get to know more about you and recommend your nursery or setting to their friends.

Twitter can allow you to:

 reach a large number of people quickly through tweets and retweets  easily promote your setting and childcare offer  follow the work of other experts in your field  easily promote your early years/childcare research for example by providing links to journal articles and news items  build relationships with other early years and childcare experts and other followers  keep up-to-date with the latest news and developments, and share it with others instantly  reach new audiences  follow and contribute to discussions on events, for example conferences that you can't attend in person  express who you are as a person/business

Getting Started The below link will take you to Twitters official webpage to help you set up an account. www.business.twitter.com There are also many YouTube tutorials to show you how to set up a twitter business account. Click on the links to these short videos below or copy and paste the link into your web browser. Part 1 https://youtu.be/w_QfszTktso Part 2https://youtu.be/nPU9QBuTQ3A The basics are outlined here: Step 1: Go to twitter.com or download the app and sign up using your name and email address and a user name which will be your twitter handle i.e. @tinytotsnursery Step 2: As with Instagram and Facebook business accounts you can add your business location and website in your profile. On your user profile is your own personal feed displaying all the photos/tweets you have posted. Learn the Lingo - some twitter jargon you'll need to become familiar with!

 Tweet: A 140 – character message to your followers

 Retweet (RT): Re sharing or giving credit to someone else's tweet.

 Feed: The stream of tweets you see on your homepage. It's comprised of updates from users you follow.

 Handle: Your user name i.e. @littleacornsnursery

 Mention (@): A way to reference another user by his/her username in a tweet e.g. @nurseryworld. Users are notified when their @.....is mentioned. It’s a way to conduct discussions with other users in a public realm.

 Direct Message (DM): A private, 140 character message between two people. You can decide whether to accept a Direct Message from any Twitter user, or only from users you are following. You may only DM a user who follows you.

 Hashtag (#): A way to denote a topic of conversation or participate in a larger linked discussion (e.g. #earlyyearsfoundationstage #childcarefees). Like on Instagram a hashtag is a discovery tool that allows others to find your tweets, based on topics. You can also click on a hashtag to see all the tweets that mention it in real time – even from people you don’t follow. This way you can find people and things that interest you.

Use the Bottom Icons to Navigate Twitter

 There are four icons at the bottom of each tweet that let you engage with other twitter users. Tweet i.e. create your own message Comment, here you can comment on a tweet, retweet i.e. share a tweet, like show acknowledgement of a tweet.

There are also four icons at the bottom of the screen on a mobile device. Home – this is where you see your news feed of all the twitter users you follow, search where you can find other users, notifications a list of your activity and messages where users can contact you directly.

Tip**Before you send your first tweet take some time to follow other relevant childcare or early years twitter users and get used to how things work. Even if you don’t use it to advertise your business it can help you stay connected and up to date in the world of early years. You can also use it to find content for your other social media platforms such as your Facebook or Instagram page.

*For tweet/content ideas for your Twitter page please see our useful Facebook marketing guide