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davis_squareGreetings, one and all. I’m hoping the DSLJ community can offer me a little help and advice. In my ongoing job search, the interview phrase used most frequently by prospective employers is “overqualified” – and we all know what that means. But the second most common phrase is “social media” – as in “What do you think of social media as a tool for message delivery for our [public agency, academic institution, business]?”
Now, thanks to what turned out to be an entertaining if rocky experience here on LiveJournal, I take a back seat to no one on the use of interactive media to establish a useful communications channel. Facebook and LinkedIn hold no mystery for me, either (though there's always more to learn). Ah, but Twitter is something else again: It seems like a great way to point people to more extensive or nuanced info about news, events or ideas, but much of what I see on Twitter (other than personal status reports) tends to be generic or trivial – and sometimes either downright embarrassing or self-damaging. So, for those of you who use Twitter regularly, here are my questions:
- What do you recommend in the way of Twitter rules, usage and best practices?
- What are your favorite examples of the best uses of Twitter as an effective communications tool?
LATE UPDATE: Many thanks to all for what has been, on the whole, a very helpful set of responses – especially from those of you who provided examples of specific Tweeters (Twitterers?) that, in your view, get it right or wrong. It should come as no surprise that your assistance was the subject of my first tweet. G'night, everybody.
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Date: 2011-05-19 05:43 pm (UTC)So, not sure if that's helpful, but I think a lot of people need to figure out how to make their #FF a lot more effective.
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Date: 2011-05-19 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 05:56 pm (UTC)More info than you cared for? :)
Date: 2011-05-19 06:00 pm (UTC)But, like I said, it's just dumb when there's no context. You'd see a lot more results if you do this tomorrow, but here's a link to a search of tweets with the #FF tag:
http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23ff
And for specific examples that just pulled up...
This person gives you one suggestion and tells you why. Now I know if I care to click!
http://twitter.com/#!/iamHINTON7/status/71273220468256768
This person... Why am I going to bother to click any of these?
http://twitter.com/#!/alpalann/status/71273199580618752
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Date: 2011-05-19 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 05:54 pm (UTC)My biggest recommendation would be to not mix personal tweets with ones representing whoever you're working for. It can be done, but it's very very hard to get the tone right, and very very easy to mess up, as you note. If you want to see an example of a organizational Twitter that does get this balance right, in my opinion, have a look at SFMOMA: http://twitter.com/#!/SFMOMA
The other thing that Twitter is great for is watching for your organization or your product to be mentioned, and then responding to the person. Even if it's just a quick "glad you liked it/us!" (assuming it's a positive opinion ;-), it makes people feel like you are responsive and on the ball.
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Date: 2011-05-19 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 11:39 pm (UTC)As someone with the keys to the organizational account and my own personal account, I live in fear of ever crossing these wires.
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Date: 2011-05-19 05:55 pm (UTC)I use Twitter as part advertising, part knowledge sharing, and part humor outlet. Here's a good view of social media from a guy who is known in the arena: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/socialmediaetiquette/ (In the interests of full disclosure, I work for Chris. He's pretty darn awesome in my book, always has been.)
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Date: 2011-05-20 03:41 pm (UTC)...but only if the contact person actually responds.
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Date: 2011-05-19 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 06:16 pm (UTC)It's personal and yet also newsy and isn't just links to his blog, which annoys me about a lot of other "newsy" twitterers.
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Date: 2011-05-19 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 06:35 pm (UTC)First, I'm an information junkie, so one reason why I like twitter is because I can get breaking news pretty quickly. I keep telling people that as the semester heats up, if news doesn't come through twitter and I didn't see it when it did, I don't know about it. The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona is a good example, but also demostrates a limitation- because the information goes out so fast, there isn't time for fact-checking (the news that she had died went out pretty quickly- I think i remember NPR reporting it, and hundreds of people retweeted before we got confirmation that she had not died). People have been getting better about confirming reports, but it's still a problem.
People have used twitter to organize political campaigns and protests. The Wisconsin Union people were using the hashtag "#wiunion" to organize the protests at the capitol, keep people informed about who was saying what, what doors were open, and to make the outside world aware of what was going on. The protest in Iran 2 years ago were primarily organized via twitter because the Iranian government couldn't block it all (people outside of Iran wee setting up proxy servers as fast as the government was trying to shut things down so people knew where the police were, where it was safe, who was still alive (and who had been killed) and again, making it possible for the outside world to witness.
I've "met" a large number of lawyers and law students from around the country, and we give and get a lot of moral support to each other, plus networking. So there's that.
There's celebrity stalking- Most celebs use it as a bit of a marketing tool, but there's still the little "glimpse in the window of their lives" thing which, for some people, is awesome. For others, you find out what their political beliefs are, and you lose respect for them (Adam Baldwin, for example, is an annoying kind of conservative).
There's a lot of funny stuff that comes though- @preschoolgems, @tfln, all of the West Wing characters that are on twitter... it's FUN.
The @mayoremanuel twitter feed (a fake Rahm Emanuel during the campaign for Chicago mayor) threw twitter into a literary art form, and was sometimes the funniest thing that ever happened.
It's social networking in little bits. I like it, and find it very useful, and a lot less intrusive and with less privacy concerns than facebook.
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Date: 2011-05-20 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 06:35 pm (UTC)It helps that the name is nearly unique (there is a Latin American pop star whose name is misspelled that way) so they can figure out when someone is tweeting about them. I use TweetDeck and that really changed the way I saw Twitter.
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Date: 2011-05-20 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 06:41 pm (UTC)You might want to check out the Mashable blog: http://mashable.com/ -- great blog with a strong applied academic examination of social media.
As for how to do the twitters, I personally believe that's like asking "how to use the telephone" -- both are basic channels of communication that have a huge # of options at your disposal. If you apply your basic experience with delivering and listening to messages from your target audience you will be a-ok (also, interviewers like to hear stuff like that even if not totally true).
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Date: 2011-05-19 07:08 pm (UTC)I find that the experience of Twitter as a logged-in user is very different from the experience just looking around the site. In particular, it looks a lot more trivial when you're not logged in because you'll see everything in a person's feed. When you are logged in, you won't see their @-replies unless they're talking to someone you both follow. (That is, if you tweeted something, and I responded "@tomchampion zomg that's so awesome!", other people would only see that if they were following you AND me -- and if they were, they'd be more interested in those trivialities of our relationship...)
I think good users of Twitter have a mix of the more informative and the more personal. People or organizations who only ever post links are, frankly, usually pretty boring to follow, because there's no engagement there. Even if the information is high-quality, they're missing out on the opportunity to make me feel connected. On the other hand, people who only post minutiae aren't going to hold my attention (unless they're actually real-life friends of mine and I care about their day-to-day lives). Similarly, I think best practices include posting your own content (meaning stuff you've found as well as stuff youv'e written elsewhere), but also retweeting others'. This is especially true if you're representing an organization; engaging with your community and local organizations by valuing their content makes you part of the ecosystem.
Also I think it's important to recognize that people will vary in the tools they use to read Twitter and how comprehensively they read it. Some people will read everything posted by the people they follow; some people will just dip their toe into the stream and see what's happening now. So it's not a great way to get news out unless you plan to be posting it repeatedly, at different times. I think it's worth trying out a few different Twitter clients to get a sense of how the user experience is different, and also to get a sense of what features you like (and keep in mind that the features that are important to you are likely to change over time, particularly if you end up following a ton of people).
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Date: 2011-05-19 07:12 pm (UTC)Twitter is also really useful when combined with other tools; e.g. if you or your organization have a blog, automatically tweet whenever you've written a new post. Or talk about what's going on on your Facebook page, invite people to join conversations there. Et cetera.
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Date: 2011-05-19 07:30 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I run the @svillesnowemerg (http://twitter.com/#!/svillesnowemerg) twitter account[1] for unofficial announcements of snow emergency. since I wanted it to be useful for people to have forwarded as an sms message to their cellphone, i wanted it as information-dense as possible - i have only ever posted snow emergency messages (just over 20 messages across 2+ years), no extraneous updates, since if people pay for text messages, i could be costing them money. No other events, no other traffic; a very specific niche twitter feed.
[1] I set this up when the city didn't have any official twitter presence. As they've rolled out various twitter accounts, I keep meaning to talk to someone there about handing over the account to them, or figuring out if i should just shut mine down as redundant
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Date: 2011-05-19 07:34 pm (UTC)The first major fandom convention I went to (a 1,500-person Harry Potter con), the organizers used twitter to push out updates. People used the #infinitus hashtag to burble happily, so it was an amusing way to tap into some mindless energy (the hashtag) and get real content (stuff pushed by @HPEF).
An ideal use of twitter, I thought.
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Date: 2011-05-19 11:55 pm (UTC)*steps back into the shadows*
ETA: we have a common bud...and I'm on twitter too. You can email me at mom in mudville at yahoo dot com, and we can tawwwwkkk! :D
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Date: 2011-05-19 09:27 pm (UTC)reply to people, reach out to them, thank them, engage in their conversations at least 75% of the tweets you do. the other 25% can be your own stuff (promotional, statements, events etc)
the other thing is to tweet often. at least once a day, even if it's just to say "hi" - it lets people know you're around and your account is active.
the best thing i can recommend to you is the book "unmarketing" - http://www.unmarketing.com/category/unbook/ it's not your typical BS book about stuff that is either stupid-obvious or in corporate speak. this guy explains in clear language how to make social media work for a business or any other kind of venture.
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Date: 2011-05-19 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 12:25 am (UTC)Thanks, I was holding my tongue, trying to avoid making the DS snark page again.....
:P
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Date: 2011-05-20 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 01:39 am (UTC)Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's inherently bad....just means YOU don't like it.
I'm not saying you should like Twitter, I'm just saying broad sweeping statements of "I think it's crap, so clearly it is" are a little much. I'm sure there are those who would say "I hate LiveJournal and automatically think less of those who use it." Goody for them...they should just not use LiveJournal. But to attack anybody who does like LiveJournal as somehow "lesser"...wouldn't you have an issue with that?
(no subject)
From:Grrrrr to inability to edit comments...
From:no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 12:24 am (UTC)I use twitter and I love it. However, I only use twitter on a personal level to interact with (mostly) fandom friends, some real life friends, some news/info sites (like @universalhub, @somervilleinfo, etc), a few famous types (Neil Gaiman, The Letterman show, etc), and just some random tweeps who's tweets I find interesting.
I do know of some professional types who use it soley to promote their brand, company, etc, and I hear some of their tweets can get quite spam-ey on a daily basis, but if, for example, you're working in their field, getting the information they have to say immediately can put you at an advantage professionally.
I'm not going to say anything any more eloquent or informative than other's here have said, but I do think that twitter is not a fad (as someone mentioned), and I think it would be helpful to at least know how it's used, and what it's potentials are. Even if you don't like it or use it often, knowing how to use it would put you in and advantage in my book.
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Date: 2011-05-20 01:58 am (UTC)What do you recommend in the way of Twitter rules, usage and best practices?
Most have been covered by others, like, listen first and the fact that it's a conversation, not a bullhorn/soapbox---it should be used as a dialogue, not as RSS feed of links/headlines/proclamations. The best thing is really to try it for yourself. Sign-up. Find a few people to follow either by searching out individuals/organizations you are interested in (Twitter Fan Wiki (http://twitter.pbworks.com/w/page/1779796/FrontPage) and WeFollow (http://wefollow.com/) are good sources) or by running a search on some issues/topics you're in and following people who are talking about them. Sign in for 5 minutes a day for two weeks. See what the people you found are posting, talk to them, do some additional searching here and there. After 5 minutes a day for two weeks (i.e. a little over an hour of your life), you haven't found something of value, then no...Twitter is not for you. But hey, at least you tried.
What are your favorite examples of the best uses of Twitter as an effective communications tool?
Stand out for me has to be NPR's Andy Carvin (http://twitter.com/#!/acarvin). He's done some phenomenal reporting, has helped coordinate disaster response using Twitter, and still manages to straddle that personal/professional divide that an earlier commenter mentioned with grace and humor. If you're into environmental issues at all, Grist's David Roberts (http://twitter.com/#!/drgrist) is not to be missed. And from an organizational standpoint, Red Cross (http://twitter.com/#!/redcross) is a great example to follow.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 02:13 am (UTC)(go ahead, ask me how often i watch live TV...)
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Date: 2011-05-20 04:02 am (UTC)I really recommend trying out Twitter with a client, like TweetDeck, that will let you filter your Twitter stream. I follow some pretty prolific Tweeters, so it is nice to have a column for my close friends so their tweets don't get lost in the shuffle.
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Date: 2011-05-20 04:19 am (UTC)Oh, I never thought of that! Good suggestion!
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Date: 2011-05-20 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 04:19 am (UTC)Second, the biggest difference between twitter and all the other services you mention (Facebook, LJ, LinkedIn) is that all of them are heavily dependent on the graph of connections - who friends who, basically. Communication flows mainly through that graph. Twitter has "following" so you may be deceived into thinking it works that way too, but it doesn't. Twitter allows for rapid ad-hoc reorganization of the flow of information without pre-existing connections, because everything is completely public, search is easy, and hashtags and trending topics encourage people to follow conversations on whatever's interesting at the moment, without knowing or caring whether the people involved are their followers or followees.
Consider this story, which happened last year IIRC: One of the major back-end credit card processing services went down on a weekend. People started posting about it to twitter. They searched to see if anyone else was, found a hashtag, and started using it. Someone from the company, which had no twitter presence at all, noticed this, so they started a twitter account, followed the hash tag, and began replying with status updates. Everyone else searching for what was going on, or following that hash tag, immediately saw that, and within a matter of hours the community of service provider, customers, and people affected by the outage, had all coalesced around one conversation where everyone could see what was going on. Other social media do not reorganize nearly so quickly, because they're so much more oriented towards pre-existing connections between people.
If Google or Netflix or Wikipedia is acting weird, and you wonder if they're having a problem or if it's just you, twitter is the first place to look. If a big site like that has a problem, people will be posting to twitter in droves within a minute, so just do a twitter search and you'll see. And because lots of other people do the same, even subtle problems will get puzzled out fairly quickly, if they affect a large number of people.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 04:46 am (UTC)I have actually found out about major MBTA delays (like, fire, floods,
locusts) on twitter BEFORE I hear about it on the news. Also, street closings, water main breaks, etc.And shall I mention the fact that some dude in Pakistan was tweeting about helicopters flying over his neighborhood. Ok, that might have backfired, but, well, there you go.
It's really a powerful source of news and info, along with the fluff.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 03:44 pm (UTC)Oh, and I suppose it is also good for microhumor.
But for people's lives? Never.
The City of Somerville on Twitter
Date: 2011-05-20 09:20 pm (UTC)www.twitter.com/Somervillecity , this is the official voice of City Hall, follow it for information on upcoming events, press releases, and city news.
www.twitter.com/311Somerville , this is a direct line into the 311 Office of Constituent Services, follow this feed to submit and follow up on work orders that you used to only be able to do by calling or emailing the office. 311Somerville makes it easy for residents to request needed services like pothole repairs the moment they see them and updates residents instantly in an emergency.
www.twitter.com/Svilleschools , a fantastic resource for parents, teachers and students. @SVilleschools can alert parents immediately regarding school closures and other news no matter where they are,
www.twitter.com/SomerVision , updates on SomerVision: Somerville's Comprehensive Plan and information on land use & development policies. @SomerVision is bringing civic participation directly to residents on their own time,
www.twitter.com/SomervillePL , the Somerville Public Library staff tweet about library and community events happening in and around the Somerville / metro-Boston area.
We hope that you have found our venture into tweeting, informative and useful.