The Majestic Monitor guide to Twitter

Updated: Friday 8th October 2021: Twitter is a social media platform where users share short snippets of text, called Tweets, with their followers. Launched in 2006, Twitter has become one of the largest hubs for consumers, marketeers and individuals to share their experiences, brands and livelihoods.

Getting to grips with an wider understanding of Twitter's universe can be difficult, but by understanding the basics, it's easy to start exploring all the opportunities that this social media platform has to offer.

In this post we will go through:

• What Twitter is
• How many users Twitter has
• What a Profile is
• The anatomy of a Tweet
• What an Influencer is
• How Majestic Monitor can help find influencers

Twitter was created in early 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams and was set up as a micro-blogging platform.

Over time Twitter has become more of an ‘information network’ than a social network, and is now a popular platform to communicate with users, share breaking news and short content.

One of the most famous Tweets is from March 2006, and is when Jack Dorsey was setting up his own Twitter account:

just setting up my twttr

— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

Twitter has 186 million daily users. It’s important to remember that this is when a user is logged into their account, and doesn’t include people who visit Twitter.com when logged out, or who see Tweets when they are embedded on websites (such as the Tweet from @Jack above).

This makes the number of people seeing Twitter content much higher.

A Twitter profile, which is can also be known as a handle or an account, is a person or brands presence on Twitter.

As account can be customised with a profile image, banner image and the name of the handle.

Like other social media platforms, this short bio can also be personalised with a description, links to websites, location, etc.

Each account will have the number of accounts they follow (the Following number) and the number of accounts that follow them (Followers).

If an account follows another then they can see what they Tweet. This is great news because it means that they care about what they have to say, and are more likely to engage with the account than if they weren’t following.

A Tweet is a post / status update that is a message sent on Twitter. But that simple message contains a lot of information.

Let’s take a look at this Tweet from Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) and go through it to understand what it shows.

Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything. #JustDoIt pic.twitter.com/SRWkMIDdaO

— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) September 3, 2018

The top of the Tweet shows which account posted this message – this Tweet is from Colin Kaepernick and the handle @Kaepernick7.

To the left of the profile name is the profile picture and to the right is the “Little Blue Tick”, which is Twitter’s way of showing that they have verified the owner of this account. Normally this is reserved for celebrities and brands so that users know that this account is legitimate and not someone posing as them.

The main body of the Tweet comes next, and typically consists of a message that can be up to 280 characters’ long. It can also include a piece of media content, video, gif, links to websites, or an image, as seen above.

These messages will commonly include references to other accounts by adding their handle, eg @MajesticMonitor, or will include #hashtags, like the example above (#JustDoIt). Users use hashtags to include their messages in conversations on a specific topic – which amplifies their voice to a wider audience than their own followers.

Underneath the message are a number of icons and numbers, which show how much engagement the Tweet has got.

The () REPLY icon shows how many people have replied to the Tweet, either to voice their own opinion on the matter, or to start a conversation with the original tweet-er.

The () RETWEET icon shows how many other users have shared this message with their own followers.

The () LIKE icon shows how many users have ‘liked’ the Tweet, which generally is an indication of support for the message that has been shared.

Finally, the ( or ) SHARE icon gives a number of ways to share this Tweet, and crucially, gives an easy way to get a link to this Tweet which can be shared across the Internet.

Majestic Monitor finds influential profiles that have been linked to on the Internet. We focus on the 16 million most notable influencers by searching over billions of webpages, so you can be sure we have left no stone unturned.

An account is considered an influencer if they have a high level of engagement from their followers. The number of followers sorts them into certain levels of influencer categories, from nano-influencers (1,000 or more followers) all the way up to celebrities (millions of followers).

Influencers are important because they can help increase brand awareness and exposure with their followers. This can be achieved through collaborating with influencers to create unique content that their audience will engage with, or by paying them for a sponsored post to advertise a brand or product.

We can see an example of this below, with this @IdrisElba / @Ford advert which contains the important #AD hashtag, showing that this is a paid collaboration.

Here it is. So proud to tell the world about this gorgeous machine -powerful and just a lovely piece of work. 👊🏾 The all-electric Mustang Mach-E is here!

Love it in GT Blue! 💥💥💥 Reservations live NOW: https://t.co/WWmwzjeARF
#Ad #FordProud #MustangMachE #ElectricAndUntamed pic.twitter.com/iLRZCEq1IV

— Idris Elba (@idriselba) November 18, 2019

We have a suite of tools to help you discover and analyse influencers:

Our Profile Lookup tool gives you the key headline stats for a Twitter profile - from its Trust Flow and the number of websites that link to it, through to the number of webpages that an account has written. Take a look at our free profile, Taylor Swift, to see this page in action.

The Similar Profiles and Profile Amplifier tools find profiles similar to others based on the websites that link to them.

Finally, our Author Explorer tool finds profiles attributed as authors to web pages - a great way to find bloggers, journalists and content creators.