Using Twitter for Business Engagement

Sue Beckingham | @suebecksSheffield Hallam University

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecampbells/5042764163/sizes/o/in/photostream/

What is Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging site that allows you to send short messages with up to 140 characters. You can interact in three ways:

Send a message publicly

Send a message to a specific person publicly

Send a private message to a specific person

Number of MAUs(monthly active users)

http://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/

Type of Account

Company

• Keep your audience up to date on news

• Promote recent blogs articles, website updates or events

• Offer support and guidance

Personal

• Act as a liaison between the public and your company

• Make connections to expand your company’s network

• Communicate what you and colleagues are working on

Aims for using Twitter

• Establish thought leadership• Build academic reputation• Develop relationships• Promote events• Generate leads for your business• Interact with your client/customer base

http://visual.ly/twitter-and-science

Visibility

Approaches:• a) ensuring that search engines can easily

locate your content online• b) promoting that content through word-of-

mouth• c) using Twitter to share and amplify

information

Search

• Paid search displays sponsored links for certain predetermined keywords

• Optimised search

the practice of editing both the content and code of a website in order to improve its page ranking within search engines.

• Social search

relies on a user’s social network rather than traditional search algorithms to determine the relevance of search results.

Weisgerber (2012:36-51)

Building a Network

Involves:• attracting new followers on Twitter• building a community, • and most importantly, maintaining it.

Two way communication

Strategy

• Understand your audience• Create and curate content that will be of

interest to them• Schedule updates so they are well spaced• Monitor comments and respond

Impact

measurement

action

attitude

attention

Paying Attention

• Follows• RTs• Mentions• Clicks (on links)

Attitude of your audience

• Is there a dialogue?• Is it positive?• Is there interest?• How will you deal with

negativity?

Actions

Leading to:• Conversations• Applications• KTP requests• Invitations to speak• Media interviews• Collaborative projects

What to say…

• Broadcast updates and reminders• Share useful links to videos, audio• Promote events• Share expertise linking back to your

website or blog• Create share-worthy

experiences

Engage with your network

• Interact with your followers and open up a dialogue

• Ask questions• Reciprocity - RT others • Use DMs for personal one to one

messages

Be…

• Consistent• Relevant• Current• Personal• Patient

Monitoring activity

• Check for replies, mentions and new followers by going to the Notifications tab

• Consider receiving email updates• Use analytics software

– Twitter Analytics– Shortened URL tools such as bit.ly and

goog.gl

Orchestration

• Defining workflows• Content and message creation• Scheduling content in advance• Conversation moderation• Escalated response and tracking• Making use of social data

https://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-business-tips_b31823

Building Followers

• Be findable – select an easy to remember username• Promote your username on your business cards, email,

blog or website along with any promotional materials you may use

• Add follow buttons to your blog or website• Make it easy for people to connect with you

Your Profile

1. Photo, Avatar or Logo2. Bio3. Link to your website or blog

WHY would someone want to follow you? Your bio will help them make that decision

Finding people to follow

• Who to follow tool (makes suggestions)

• Twitter Search

https://twitter.com/search-home

• Look at the people your followers are following

• Follow Industry contacts

• Collect People’s Twitter name at events

• Build your connections steadily

Twitter Jargon

• Twitter handle: the username you select to represent yourself or your company

• Follow • Follower• Status update• Reply• Direct message• Retweet (RT)• Mention• Modified tweet (MT)• Twitter stream• Hashtag• Trending topics• Promoted Tweets

Twitter Shortcuts

Creating Liststo organise who you follow into groups

Examples of Lists

FilterBy developing good connections with shared interests,

collaboratively we can filter what is relevant to us

Use of Dashboards

• Hootsuitehttps://hootsuite.com/

• Tweetdeckhttps://about.twitter.com/products/tweetdeck

View your lists in columns

#Hashtags

• Hashtag confusion - use with care

#nowthatcherisdead

#susanalbumparty

• Uses: Events, TweetChats, emphasis

#SHUevent

#Sheffield#BYOD4Lchat

Always check a hashtag via Twitter search to see if it is currently being used.

Advanced SearchVia the url: https://twitter.com/search-home

Via the search bar.

Analytics

URL shorteners• Bit.ly

https://bitly.com/• Google url shortner

http://goo.gl/

Analytics

To sign up go to: https://analytics.twitter.com

Social Analytics

• Hootsuitehttp://signup.hootsuite.com/twitter-analytics/

Social listening

• Conversation histories:keywords, conversation topics, hashtags, timing of interaction

• Social user profiles:demographics, interests, connections

Learn by good example!

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal

from listening carefully. Most

people never listen. ~ Ernest Hemingway

http://first-tweets.com 

We all started with a first Tweet

Using Twitter to Build Business Engagement

The exponential growth of social media and ubiquitous use of mobile technology has changed the way we communicate both socially and for many also professionally. This workshops looks specifically at how Twitter can be used as a communication channel to build business engagement and an introduction to some of the ways this can be measured.

Sue Beckingham | @suebecksSheffield Hallam University