TWITTER

#MC4002

GETTING STARTED

Decide your purpose. Are you building a company brand? Generating leads? Sharing ideas? Gathering news? Building relationships / networking?

Focus. Don’t be a jack of all Twitter subjects.

Define your brand. Do you want to specialize in one subject, or be more general? Are you going for casual or professional? Thought leader or celebrity?

Determine your strategy. Influence, promote, sell, listen?

Take a good picture. A close-up headshot of yourself or a logo of your business. Make sure the image is clear and well-lit, with your face recognizable and in the center. (Please no gifs or eggs!)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkrogue/2013/08/30/31-twitter-tips-how-to-use-twitter-tools-and-twitter-best-practices-for-business/3/

TWEETING SMART

Tap into existing traffic. It’s good to get creative, but also identify keywords (using Google Keyword Planner) and hashtags that are relevant, or make up your industry or market. #hashtags are tags that act as hyperlinks to all recent tweets

including that hashtag. Use hashtags intelligently – don’t over-# your tweets.

Create a great bio. Wordsmith your profile with keywords for search and fun facts for people.

Organize with Twitter lists.

Listen before you Tweet. Engage in conversations, Re-Tweet and Reply.

BUILDING A FOLLOWING

Publish your Twitter ID in your other media (e-mail signatures, blogs, etc.)

Follow Rule: I follow you then (hopefully) you follow me. You have to reciprocate (through “favorites,” Re-Tweets and Follows) in order to grow your own account.

TWEET WITH VALUE

Create and tweet great original content that fits your purpose. Create content that is informative and entertaining. Be original and useful. Don’t just regurgitate. Write about your passions. Share your own expertise.

Summarize and curate great content. Share facts, insights and statistics. Contextualize Re-tweets with your own expertise.

Pair Tweeting with Blogging, etc. Tweets that share links get Re-tweeted more often than those that don’t. Use Twitter to share website updates, blog posts, videos, pictures, other multimedia.

Keep in short. Try to keep your tweets to ~100 characters so others can re-tweet them with a mention and comment(s).

Keep tweeting – Resend tweets with different angles and for different time zones.

Retweet great content: It helps you make friends with other influencers on Twitter, and it shows your follows you’re an active member of your online community.

MOM, THIS IS HOW TWITTER WORKS by putting another person’s username at the start of a statement, it

limits who sees it (@username) But there are times when you want to share a reply with your followers

(e.g. if your reply contains something useful for your followers)… IF you don’t want to limit who sees it, add a period in front of the reply (

.@username)

as long as your username is somewhere in their post, it will be in your @mentions feed

“reply” feature recently which allows you to see a conversation string. There is a difference between “replying to” a tweet and simply beginning a tweet with a person’s username. The former will keep the conversation intact, and the latter will not.

@jessicahische

DIRECT MESSAGING

A way to privately chat on Twitter

BOTH USERS must follow each other to Direct Message. You can’t DM someone who doesn’t follow you.

THE PR PRO'S GUIDE TO TWITTER More than half of all journalists turn to sites like Twitter

for story research (Mashable, Guardian). (However, with 84% most journalists use information delivered via social media rather cautious as they think it is less reliable than information delivered via traditional media.)

Use Twitter to update people during a crisis: during a 2011 blizzard, Chicago Red Cross monitored relevant hashtags, used Twitter to disseminate weather and safety updates, and even connected volunteers with stranded motorists.

Find a job! (Help a PR Pro Out #HAPPO)

Crowdsource research and solve problems (by asking your Twitter followers questions)

THE PR PRO'S GUIDE TO TWITTER Participate in one of these Twitter Chats this week!

#measurePR -– moderated by Shonali Burke, every other Tuesday from noon-1 p.m. EST. Discussions center on effective ways to measure the value of public relations and social media.

#pr20chat — moderated by Heather Whaling (the author of this post) and Justin Goldsborough, Tuesdays, 8-9 p.m. EST. Discussion focuses on PR 2.0 –- PR and social media trends, best practices and what’s next.

BEST PRACTICES (TWITTER) Create Tweets that resonate. Combine exciting, useful content

with an engaging, unique tone to emotionally connect with your audience. Include links, pictures and videos.

Keep in short & sweet: your have 140 characters, but tweets with ~100 characters are easier for others to share with their own comments.

Tweet often (3 – 5 Tweets per day).

Keep in conversational (tweet like a friendly conversation).

Follow your interests (follow accounts interesting to you or your business).

Participate in Twitter trends, trending hashtags & chats.

Funny, helpful, newsworthy or inspiring content gets SHARED.

BEST PRACTICES (TWITTER)

Tweet exceptional content. “the most retweeted content tends to contain links, pictures,

videos or quotes.” - Twitter Write Good Tweets Tweets with photos get twice the response. DO include links. One of the beauties of Twitter is while you

only have 140 characters, you can link directly to the source. Paste a link of any length into the Tweet box and it will

automatically be shortened to fit the 140 character limit.

Engage Ask questions. Listen. Show people you are listening by

responding. Stop talking (all) about yourself.

STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE TWEETING Twitter is particularly powerful at driving “amplification”

for brand messages.

Tweets drive traffic to the web – so include links Make sure urls in your tweets have a space before them – or

they won’t be “clickable”

CLASS EXERCISE

In groups of 4, find a brand/organization on Twitter that is famous or interesting to you.

Evaluate their last 10 Tweets according to what we have discussed in this class.

Share! (Tweet/Blog)

BEST TIMES TO TWEET

But do audience research to see when best times are for YOUR specific audience. Best to Tweet during “busy hours” 8am-7pm

Twitter engagement rates for brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday compared to weekdays, but brands don’t take advantage of this trend.

http://twittercounter.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Strategies-for-effective-tweeting.pdf

ALWAYS ON…

http://twittercounter.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Strategies-for-effective-tweeting.pdf

BEST DAYS DEPEND ON THE INDUSTRY…

http://twittercounter.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Strategies-for-effective-tweeting.pdf

HOW DO WE USE TWITTER?

Most users access Twitter daily or multiple times per day.

TWITTER RULES DON’T Impersonate others, or in a way to mislead, confuse,

deceive Respect trademarks DON’T publish private information (other’s private or

confidential information) DON’T publish threats of violence, or harass others Respect copyright (include photos, etc.) DON’T user Twitter for unlawful use DON’T user promoted or verified Twitter badges unless

provided by Twitter Accounts inactive for > 6 months may be removed DON’T spam!

*also, sometimes Twitter thinks new users are spammers if they tweet lots of links instead of personal posts, follow lots of people all at one time, or post multiple unrelated updates to a trending hashtag, etc. So be careful.

DON’T pornography