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Twitter Basics | Plus The Things They Never Tell You

For the beginners and those who have been using it for a while and really should know better.

Be human (the golden rule)—if you need reminding on what being a good human means then maybe stay away from Twitter and other social interactive platforms.

It’s not a marketing channel—it’s a potential market in a channel which thrives on being human (see above).

Complete your profile (with image plus non-cryptic description)—this helps to indicate you’re not a spammer and aids others in getting to know you.

Follow good people and your industry / sector heroes (no celebrities allowed)—the good ones share ideas, links, insights, challenges, offers to help, steerage, provocations etc. (copy from them).

Listen twice as much as you tweet—read, gleam, understand the value is in sharing good content (see above).

Unfollow people adding no value—tweets about cats, lunch and kids is what Facebook exists for.

It’s not Facebook—don’t tweet about your pets, food your consuming or any offsprings you have (if you do, know folks aren’t that interested).

Don’t follow back everyone who follows—see point above.

Retweets are like forwarding an email—it’s always better to add some context though.

Don’t retweet tweets which talk about you—it’s just the same as telling folks who like you, what other folks who like you, like about you. Stop it. It makes you look arrogant and childish.

Learn how to reply or reference others—so many users still don’t know about the power of a full stop (or period if you’re an American).

Be aware that automation devalues—even if it’s an attempt to celebrate how many retweets someone gave you that week, an automated tweet has the opposite effect.

Use lists and hashtags—a built in private or public system to break through the noise and get to the signal.

Be human—see first point.

Have been using Twitter for over seven years and still think it’s a fantastic platform to learn from whilst connecting with good souls. What did I miss from above?

Slightly cropped from rosauraochoa’s image

BlackBox SocialMedia | Automated Communication

Going fishing.

It started with the casting of this tweet:

A little bait to catch a bite… four days later, they bit:

Much in the same vein as SplashMedia (please read the comments), it looks like BlackBox SocialMedia first capture mentions of Twellow, Facebook, Twitter and social media training, then hit these Tweetmailers with an automated reply service directing them to articles on their website (which is basically trying to sell you their services).

It’s easy to understand the above approach as social media presents an enticing opportunity to offer wisdom through targeted communication. And in sharing knowledge the aim is to build a connection (and for these guys, a sale).

There’s another way.

By creating a relationship first, not only do you become aware of the context (which is so important, otherwise, you’ll be responding to questions which haven’t been asked and you’re made to look a little silly—see my tweet and then their response) plus it’s simply more honest.

So what do you think, are BlackBox SocialMedia being savvy or is this lazy marketing? Have you experienced a similar thing on Twitter? Btw BlackBox SocialMedia, feel free to respond in the comments below.

Image credit

Splash Media U And Pete Aspen | A Twitter Mystery

Digital investigator.

Mr Pete Aspen recently tweeted me the following question:

do you know if @splashmediau is a good place for a newbie to learn how to become a social media manger?

Now I always click into the profiles of those who have taken the time to tweet me (especially if I’m asked to give an opinion on something). I’ve heard of Splash Media in the past and thought Mr Aspen had tracked me down due to my very previous role as a social media manager.

After scrolling through every one of Mr Aspens 1,906 tweets (at the time of writing this afternoon), it became evident though that all he’s doing is asking the same question about social media training and certification programmes.

However, nearly 25% of all tweets (448) references @splashmediau.

Note the timestamps on the right hand side of the tweets below:

Nothing wrong in using timed tweets as to not overload your followers or even strategically ensure it’s when most of them are online, but something is not right here.

As an experiment I engaged Mr Aspen with a reply to try and gain a response:

I heard nothing back (as of yet).

There are two conclusions to be made, either:

Mr Aspen is using Twitter as a micro-advisory or research platform, tweeting on only one topic / question in an attempt to gain insights for what could be a myriad of reasons; or
Mr Aspen is a poor automated attempt by @splashmediau to highlight their services

If it is the former then surely @splashmediau (who would be seeing his tweets they are mentioned in) should be all over Mr Aspen to either demonstrate their services (as he’s an obvious customer) or kindly asking him to refrain from referencing them constantly because he’s certainly not helping their reputation.

If it is the latter… well, you make up your mind. Maybe there’s a third reason. What do you think is happening here my little Magnums?

By the way, Mr Aspen and @splashmediau, the floor is yours, feel free to comment below as well.

Image credit to magnum-mania

UPDATE (a few hours later): take a look at the first (right at the botom) and seventh followers of our friend Mr Aspen:

UPDATE (10.11.12): As you can from the comment and this tweet below, there has been a response:

What do you guys think now?

Tweriod | When Your Audience Is Online For Engagement

Guiding and aiding engagement through data.

Tweriod is a neat little free service which offers an insight into when your Twitter audience are online and therefore what times to post content into the stream to gain maximum reach and response (see above).

As you can see from the graph below, the data offered also illustrates your optimum reply window (love that there’s an increase in responses around lunchtime):

Now, there’s an obvious danger of tweeting out during a short period of time and clogging up your networks stream with your stuff. However, managed correctly, will take the information above and do a little testing around focussing my tweets during these certain times to see if more engagement occurs.

Tweriod also offers an ‘Influence Graph’ which links in the Klout—bah, here’s my opinion.

I also dropped the $5 for the one-off pdf report but it’s not really worth it (as it’s basically the stats in presented in a daily graph—nothing else). If you know how to screengrab just don’t bother and save your money.

How do you decide when to tweet? What do you make of the above service? Would it influence you to tweet differently?

UPDATE Just came across this infographic by Fusework Studios:

How To Retain Links Whilst Retweeting | Hacking Twitter

This is for folks who use the browser based Twitter.

Ever get frustrated about why Twitter removes the copied links in tweets you’re trying to retweet?

Watch the video above for two fixes / ways / hacks.

Question for anyone at Twitter HQ: why do you force us to do this or what’s the reasoning behind removing the links from copied tweets?

YouTube version

Learning@School 2012 | Tracking Twitter Infographic

Another infographic for my fab employers regarding the recent Learning@School 2012 conference.

Approximately 1,300 teachers for two days of educational musings, wonderings, provocations, challenges, solutions etc

Some takeaways:

the increase in all numbers from Ulearn11 (our last big conference back in October—wonder if the 5 Step Twitter Newbie Start Plan video I did helped?)
the expanded use of links within tweets plus conversations which followed (probably a little due to the fact I set up open Google Docs so the audience could collaboratively take notes during the four main keynotes—can be found on the Learning@School blog)
the potential reach of the conversations (calculated by the TweetReach reports)

What did you take away from the infographic? Am I asking the wrong questions? What do you think of the results? Were you at the conference and tweeting out and if so how did it add to your experience of the event?

Ulearn11 | How Twitter Makes An Event Global

Above is a quick and dirty infographic created as a mini Ulearn conference evaluation (a superb educational annual event organised and run by CORE Education).

The big takeaways:

#Ulearn11 was trending in New Zealand the two main days of the conference
the massive reach the 300 active tweeterers accumulative follower network has (TweetReach indicated it at nearly 750,000 impressions and a reach of about 70,000 people)
how easy you can measure the ‘popular kids in the playground’ (those who tweeted and were tweeted about)

Couple this with twitter conversations not using the hashtag, the connections made through the tweeted ideas plus the retweets, then you’ve got an indication of how Twitter can enable an event to go global.

How do you measure the social media elements of your events? Do you display them graphically or in a different way than above? Drop some knowledge in the comments below.

For the beginners and those who have been using it for a while and really should know better.

Slightly cropped from rosauraochoa’s image

Many thanks to Peter Potter for the question.