Tag Archive for ‘twitter’ at Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech

Tag Archive for 'twitter'

Twitter, twittering, tweets: How to make Quality Content on Twitter

Published

on December 10, 2008

. 4 Comments

I might be on a Quality Control string here, judging by the title of this post and my recent SSIR post, but I think it’s valid.

More and more people and organizations are using Twitter, the micro-blogging tool that lets users answer the question, “what are you doing?” with short 140-character sized posts to the world. Even more people and organizations are talking about Twitter. I’m sure you’ve heard buzz, whether you meant to or not, and whether you are a Twitter-er or not.

Darren Rowse’s post today on TwiTip focused on the question, “What value are you creating for your followers on Twitter? What’s in it for them?” I think this is a great question for individuals AND organization to consider and here’s how…

Quality Twitter-ing from Organizations

No one wants to be friends with a building, a billboard, or a fundraising flier. They want to be friends with people. Even though your Twitter account (or you Facebook group, or anything else for that matter) is representing the organization, people still expect real people to be behind the messages.

Keeping your organization’s Twitter feed from feeling too impersonal is easy:

Have a conversation (using the @ feature on Twitter to reply to others’ messages)
Show some personality (comment, don’t just advertise)
Show some emotion (don’t fear the emoticon or web laugh hahaha )
Be real (your organization probably doesn’t have an answer to everything, share links that aren’t just from your website)
Be helpful (use search tools like TweetScan or Twitter Search to find people talking about subjects you can help with and send them a link or info)

Recently, I looked at The Womens Museum’s Twitter feed for a slide I contributed at the NFPTweetup. I examined the messages that appeared on the main page of The Womens Museum’s Twitter feed (the most recent 20 or so) at the time I visited - I was looking to see how balanced the messages were so created some categories and tallied the messages where they fit:

Self Promotion with Links: 6
Self Promotion without Links: 6

Questions with Links: 4
Questions without Links: 3

Fundraising with Links: 1
Fundraising without Links: 0

Affinity Promo with Links: 4
Affinity Promo without Links: 0

Information with Links: 0
Information without Links: 3

I think the numbers are pretty balanced! The messages are true to mission/vision of the museum by including retweets (or forwarding on the messages of others), links to websites other than their own, compliments, transparency, and inclusion.
If you use Twitter for your organization, try measuring the messages with the above categories and see how balanced your messages are! Or create new categories and see how the numbers work out.

Quality Twitter-ing from Individuals

Of course it’s always hard to lay yourself on the line by putting forth strategy, guidelines, or even tips. Because, hey, look at me - oh wait, I’m not perfect either

Dan Bowsher, of Newbury, UK, nails the value of Twitter, I think, in his comment on The Evening Standard’s piece about Twitter (emphasis:

Twitter is not something you can gain any value from if you dip into it for a couple of hours. Twitter is about engaging with and building a community of people and allows you to tap into information, trends and opinions far quicker than traditional media. To that end, I find it invaluable. The fact that Twitter also enables developers to create applications that allow users to capitalise on its functionality, is also a major benefit.

Quality content on an individual user’s perspective is really rooted in engagement. Days when I feel like I’m disconnected, Twitter and email are too quiet, or I’m out of the loop with news and conversation, it’s becuase I haven’t connect with anyone. Replies on Twitter are made using the @ and someone’s user name, like @amyrsward if you wanted to talk to me. All I need to do is start listening, by browsing recent posts, and then responding to individuals using the @ to jump into the conversation, ask questions, or provide responses. And as quickly as that, I’m back in.

It’s definitely a good idea to measure or gauge the balance of your individual Twitter stream as well, but it isn’t as easy as examining the organizational stream. Here, because of the above point that conversation and engagement is key, it’s more important to measure between @ messages and standard messages.

Remember:

You are, every day, building that personal-brand, but that doesn’t mean you get to be blowhorn
Potential clients, bosses, friends, or significant others could be reading what you say
People are ultimately good and have come together on free community tools like Twitter to share information, you should too
You get out what you put in; don’t be disappointed with the tool if you don’t have the time to set it up or use it

Ultimately, the Golden Rule of Twitter: Provide the links, information, conversation and content that you would like to find in everyone else’s stream, too.

Happy Twitter-ing, all!

NFPTweetup: Nonprofits + Twitter in London

Published

Amy Sample Ward

on November 25, 2008

in community and events

. 0 Comments

Last night was the NFPTweetup - or the Not-for-profit Twitter-users gathering. Essentially, many great people in nonprofit organizations and serving nonprofit organizations that are connected on Twitter, the micro-blogging tool, wanted to get together offline and really hang out with each other without computers in the way. There certainly were computers and gadgets floating around the room, but it was mostly just people and drinks and lots of great conversation.

You can see who was there and how it was organized on the NFPTweetup wiki if you are interested in organizing one in your area!

Collaborative Presentations

To add to the educational side of the meetup, Rachel Beer (the woman who wrangled the event together completely) organized a collaborative presentation. Each of us created a slide about nonprofits using Twitter and sent it to her. The topic was pretty broad and the slides covered all kinds of information. Plus, none of us saw the slides, but our own, until the event! It was great fun to see a new slide pup up and someone surprised to see their work on the wall. We each took a minute or two to quickly explain our slide and got a lot of discussion going. Today it was even featured as a Top Presentation of the Day on SlideShare!

NFPtweetup Collaborative Slideshow

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: collaboration socialmedia)

My slide is the one focused on The Womens Museum’s use of Twitter. Here’s what I did:

A bit of Twitter Metrics:

I visited The Womens Museum’s twitter page online at http://twitter.com/thewomensmuseum

I created some categories and tallied the messages into the applicable categories to measure how balanced the messages were. Here were the results:

Self Promotion with Links: 6
Self Promotion without Links: 6

Questions with Links: 4
Questions without Links: 3

Fundraising with Links: 1
Fundraising without Links: 0

Affinity Promo with Links: 4
Affinity Promo without Links: 0

Information with Links: 0
Information without Links: 3

I think the numbers are quite balanced! The messages are true to mission/vision of the museum by including retweets (or forwarding on the messages of others), links to websites other than their own, compliments, transparency, and inclusion. If you use Twitter for your organization, try measuring the messages with the above categories and see how balanced your messages are!

Congrats to the NFPTweetup for a tons of fun, connections, and a great way to share information!

Good morning from Chain Reaction!

Published

Amy Sample Ward

on November 17, 2008

in events

. 0 Comments

We’re here and setting up at Chain Reaction. Looks to be a great two-day event! I’ll be keeping you up to date on how to engage if you can’t be here in person.

Connect to the community here on Crowdvine!

Stay tuned here for live coverage from sessions using CoverItLive!

Follow the conversation on Twitter from me and Chain Reaction!

Watch videos from presenters and participants on YouTube!

You’ll want to watch for the video (on YouTube this morning) interview with me and Jeremy Gilley of Peace One Day!

Election Day Reminder: Go Vote!

Published

Amy Sample Ward

on November 4, 2008

in events

. 0 Comments

Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

In the U.S., today is election day. This is your reminder from NetSquared to make your voice heard by voting today and helping get others to do the same.

This year, we have seen social media leveraged within candidate campaigns like never before. We even posted about some of the tools and strategies being used - you can read that post here.

One tool that has really seen a lot of press and interest lately is the Twitter Vote Report: “a non-partisan, all-volunteer network of software developers, designers, and other collaborators have teamed up with the award-winning blog techPresident to launch this effort. The only resources contributed to this project are the participants’ time and expertise!”

Millions of Americans will be voting this Election Day. Many of these voters will have terrific experiences and we’d love to hear about those. But many voters will experience voting problems that we have been hearing about for years: long lines, broken machines, and registered voters who can’t vote because their names aren’t showing up on the registration rolls.

Using Twitter Vote Report, voters will be able to share their experiences and resources with one another (e.g. “#wait:120″ meaning that the wait time is 120 minutes). These messages will then be aggregated and mapped so that we can “see” voting problems around the country in real-time.

This election cycle has seen, as usual, some ups and downs but the new ways of engaging with supporters and energizing voters via social media are worth paying attention to and learning from. It’s been a long time coming, though - so get out and vote!

How are you, or is your organization, engaging in get out the vote efforts? Are you using social media in your efforts? We’d love to hear from you, just comment on the NetSquared blog here!

Good rules for using Twitter

Published

Amy Sample Ward

on September 29, 2008

in issues, marketing and socialmedia

. 5 Comments

Is your organization using Twitter? Are members of your staff using Twitter to representat your organization? The wave of companies and nonprofits joining the growing Twitter community is increasing rapidly. That doesn’t mean every group signing on has a good set of rules though…

Jeff Trexler asked if nonprofit staff using Twitter, Facebook and other social media during the election are doing so responsibly. On the uncivilsociety blog, Jeff writes:

One effect of online social networking technology is that it intensifies the environment that Marshall McLuhan called “all-at-onceness.” Old divisions fall away–near and far, high and low, word vs. picture–in favor of composition.

Part of this integrative process is the fusion of the personal and professional. Topics that were once taboo in polite conversation–money, religion, politics–are now a salient feature of the connected self.

In most respects I have no problem with this. I see myself primarily as a Watcher when it comes to organizational technology–I’m interested in seeing what happens but have little to no personal stake in any particular tool.

But there’s something going on that’s gotta stop.

Namely, political campaigning in social networking accounts connected to 501(c)(3) organizations. Read more…

Jeremy Pepper, a friend and PR-Social Media guru, coins a new term with Twitteriocy, claiming too many companies joining Twitter are doing so irresponsibly. He suggests six rules for organizations adopting Twitter (and really, these rules can be expanded to work for most social media tools):

1. Don’t have your PR firm set up and be your Twitter account.
2. Don’t follow everyone willy nilly.
3. Get Tweetdeck.
4. Be engaged. Be personable. Be responsive.
5. Be a person.
6. Twitter is not for everyone.

You can read more of Jeremy’s post as well as explanations to all of these points on the POP! PR Jots blog.

What concerns has your organization had with using social media? What policies has your organization adopted that really work for helping staff use social media tools responsibly?

Twitter at use for Tu Diabetes community

Published

Amy Sample Ward

on September 4, 2008

in case studies and community

. 3 Comments

Originally posted on the Net Squared blog.

Twitter is a service for people to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of short (140 character) messages. This micro-blogging tool has seen growing use over the last two years from individuals, activists, organizations and even news companies. (Click here for the Common Craft video on Twitter.)

Tu Diabetes is a great example of a group using Twitter to engage with communities online. Tu Diabetes is an online community where members help each other out, educate themslves and share the steps taken every day to stay healthy while living with this very serious condition. Tu Diabetes employs a gamut of web tools in its process of reaching out to new community members, keeping the community informed, and educating the public.

I recently spoke with Manny Hernandez, Tu Diabetes community founder, to take a closer look at Tu Diabetes’ Twitter story.

I asked Manny if Tu Diabetes has a policy or strategy for building the followers/following lists. He explained that, “every week or two, we do a search for the term “diabetes” on Twitter and selectively add certain people. We avoid adding people who are clearly using Twitter for SPAM or strictly commercial purposes. The Twitter search only looks in the people’s profiles, so we go a step further and use TweetScan to do a search in tweets containing the term “diabetes”. Then again, many of them are SPAM but a good number of them are legit and are made by people who could potentially be interested in what our community has to offer. We add those folks to our list of followed people. When you take a look at the product of our “adds” you see a very diabetes-centric timeline, which makes for a very interesting and inspiring reference. Also, we typically see people we add on Twitter joining the community. When people get a chance to see that you are for real, that the community is offering valuable information and support, people take the extra step and join. I don’t think this is something that works this way outside of nonprofit, but it is a model that I highly recommend for non-profits to try.”

I also asked what the specific strategy is for posting content via Twitter. Manny explained that, they “use Twitterfeed to automate the posting of a few of the RSS feeds that TuDiabetes has: forum topics, blog posts, etc. Depending on their volume we have Twitterrific posts to our Twitter account periodically (typically a few times per day) with relevant content (all our content is centered around diabetes). We also post manually periodically, every time there is a relevant topic or announcement that we want to make sure appears in our Twitter timeline.”

Twitter is a great avenue for cultivating and igniting conversations as well as getting your information out. I asked Manny if they had been part of some conversations within Twitter, and not just their online community space, and he confirmed that “occasionally other Twitter users contact us with questions. We’ve had a few media people contact us through Twitter too.”

I think Manny really nailed a great idea for organizations or online communities looking to explore Twitter’s use: “When people get a chance to see that you are for real, that the community is offering valuable information and support, people take the extra step and join. I don’t think this is something that works this way outside of nonprofit, but it is a model that I highly recommend for non-profits to try.”

Twitter, and other micro-blogging tools like Identi.ca and others, is another way organizations can be more open, transparent, and available in real-time to answer questions, provide information, and keep the community informed about both the work being done and ways to get involved. Here are some other organizational Twitter accounts you may want to check out:

Is your organization using Twitter, or are any of your staff members using it? What questions do you have for organizations adopting micro-blogging tools like Twitter?

Net Tuesday Portland tackles Twitter and beyond

Published

amysampleward

on February 27, 2008

in community and events

. 0 Comments

Last night, we held the second Net Tuesday meetup here in Portland. It was a great event with very engaging conversations (one great aspect of having such a new group is that there are still enough people to have long, engaging, changing group conversations!).

I started the meeting with a Twitter overview, as it came up in the January meeting as something people have heard about but not many had experienced. Here is the short slide show, really used as a jumping off point for conversation based on each slide (not a text-heavy person!).

My awesome co-organizer then launched from my presentation forward into a broader discussion of all the various forms of and relating to “micro-blogging” which was a great conversation, but lead into an even greater one on open source alternatives for micro-blogging and design work.

We even talked about the Net Squared Mashup Challenge as we had many questions about the challenge and what mashups were and could be. We had some great ideas for proposals (so I’ll let you know if and when those go up!). We also had with us the father of a current proposal - Howard from EcoTrust is part of the Portland Net Tuesday group and we think you all should check out the mashup proposal from EcoTrust on mapping watersheds - you can read about it here!

If you are in the Portland area, we’d love to have you join our group online to stay connected, and come meet up with us at our next meeting: March 25th at 6 pm! We have a great thing going, so far, and would love to have you on board to make it even better!

Thanks to those who came last night and created such dynamic conversations and offered experiences, ideas, and questions!

Talking about Twitter

Published

amysampleward

on February 15, 2008

in socialmedia and webtools

. 6 Comments

Today, I had an opportunity to get out of the office and attend an event with other staff members of grantmaking organizations to talk about and think about some out-of-the box, but not really, things (hopefully additional blog post about that to come!). So, my mind was elsewhere and now I’m feeling a bit behind for all the great conversations happening today. I just saw this post from Beth and the interesting comments that others have left so far. In it Beth discusses some of her observations of social media use, including Twitter, and what others have said.

They were all on Facebook (turned their noses up at Myspace), watch YouTube videos, and use IM applications, with more 20 people on their IM lists. No surprise there. But, none used RSS readers or knew what they were. (Not sure if this matches demographic studies of RSS users or not because this group was under 18) They were aware of tagging, but in the sense of how it is used on Facebook - to tag your friends in photographs or notes, etc. None of them had heard of Twitter, let alone used it.

Click here to read all of the post.

When it comes to my use of Twitter, it is purely as an individual and not on behalf of or associated with my employer. But! One of the most frequent recommendations I have about the micro-blogging tool is its use as a broadcasting/community building/reputation building tools for organizations. For example, the Cascade Climate Network (full disclosure: this is an organization I frequently volunteer with) just started a twitter account and are going to integrate it into their blog/website as well as use it to build community and spread news, calls to action, information, and event opportunities to those interested in the youth climate change field. Why use it? Like I have said in the past, Twitter can open a window into the conversation already taking place in your industry and bring you into that conversation as a participant, as an information provider, and as a partner in shaping the conversation.

Beth quotes an interview with Walter J Carl in which he says:

“The people who I see using it are an older demographic, people in marketing or P.R. or advertising, who use it for work, to present themselves as particular types of people. They’ll twitter, ‘I’m traveling,’ or ‘I’m going to interesting restaurants.’ They’re using it to do identity work.”

I disagree. I think that many people in nonprofits using Twitter are truly building a community of people interested in their work or that can share insight in their work. They are using the tool as another facet of information gathering, listening, dispensing information, and having a conversation. I think this is what makes Twitter so powerful; not the “look at me” of going to a fancy restaurant (or at least twitter-ing that you are going there), but the “look at me” of please let me contribute, share knowledge, ask questions, and provide information.

As with most social media, I believe the resource and utility comes with the golden rule: do until to the tool and the community as you would have the tool and community do unto you! You have to give if you want to get and the Twitter community is growing to do just that!

What do you think?

How can nonprofits use twitter?

Published

amysampleward

on January 10, 2008

in issues and socialmedia

. 2 Comments

NetSquared’s monthly Net2ThinkTank question this month is: How can nonprofits use twitter? Should they even bother?

My first response is, “Sure! Totally! Maybe!”
So, my second thought is really the more important one. I have said it before and I will probably say it a million more times, but, nonprofits need to use the tools that will best help them reach goals for projects and the organization. Not everyone needs a facebook profile. Just because of that though, not everyone needs a facebook group. Some organizations don’t need some tools at all but could benefit a great deal from others.

How do you know if it is right? Use the POST method!
I blogged about POST before and still think that it is one of the best ways to approach new media planning (thanks, Forrester!). If you have identified your goals and hoped-for outcomes and Twitter is then identified as something to use to meet those goals, then dive right in!

How could Twitter help? By helping you listen and learn!
Twitter is a terrific tool for listening to and gauging the conversation of your audience (and with Twitter, you can sprawl out to hear voices beyond the community you may think you are in). You can ask questions, make comments, and otherwise participate with Twitter in the conversation like anyone else, of course. But it offers a window into live conversation about your industry, organization, or niche that you would probably miss if you weren’t using it.

Still nervous about jumping in? Use it yourself!
Twitter is just like all of the other available tools online when it comes to getting started: You should really use it yourself, in a non-organization-realted way first. This will let you feel out how it works, how to make connections and participate in conversations. Figure out areas you don’t understand and how to get answers down the road when new things come up that you may not understand. Most of all, using the tool personally will let you better visualize how it can be used most effectively and efficiently for the organization, and who at the organization would be the best to handle it (maybe you!).

Thanks to NetSquared for the great question this month! Are you using Twitter personally or is your organization tweeting away? You can also follow me to get started!

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