twitter

How Not to Tweet

by David Lee King on July 21, 2009

how not to do twitter

Update: Cynthia Gregory, who works at MSJ Library, added some helpful info – check out the comments! Basically, they locked the account when they initially set it up, and I saw it during the set-up process … and apparently Twitter suggests followers for new users (I don’t think it did that when I signed up). So I’m glad – MSJ Library seems to be on the way to a great Twitter account. Again – not picking on them, and I think there’s some good stuff to ponder in my post (’cause I HAVE seen other organizational Twitter accounts that are locked). As always, your mileage may vary!

Every once in awhile, a library follows me on Twitter. When they do, I usually check out their Twitter feed (but rarely follow them). And every once in awhile, I see something like this.

This isn’t “Pick on MSJLibrary Day” – I’m sure they’re a fine library, and I commend them for jumping into Twitter to figure it out. But maybe this post will help other libraries as they work on figuring out social media sites like Twitter.

What are they doing right?

  • Named themselves with a form of their library’s name. They’re the library at the College of Mount St. Joseph.
  • Added a picture of their library
  • Added a web link to their library website
  • Their bio is great: “Helping You Research, Learn & Connect”

What are they doing wrong?

  • Updates are locked/protected. This means that no one gets to see their updates unless they follow MSJLibrary … and MSJLibrary has to approve all follows. This is bad. Most Twitter users want to see someone’s tweets before they start following that user, so it’s an added hassle to send a follow request/wait for the request to be approved/then check out the tweets. I’d rather not bother with it. But more importantly – they have, in essence, locked their front door. I’m guessing they don’t do that at the physical building … so why do it here?
  • Following the wrong people. Look at their following list – They are following other libraries, CNN, ALA, me, National Geographic, etc. Only about 3 of the 35 tweeps they’re following are in any way related to Cincinnati. But a quick search shows LOTS of Cincinnati-related twitter accounts. And a search in something like TwitDir or a “near:cincinnati within:15mi” search in Twitter Search finds LOTS of Twitter users int he Cincinnati area. It makes more sense to me for a Cincinnati-based academic library to follow other people/organizations located in Cincinnati. Extra credit if they follow MSJ students or other MSJ-related accounts (which they’re not).
  • I said their bio was great … but since they’re locked, it doesn’t make much sense – they can’t help you connect if you CAN”T connect!

And I should say this – there’s nothing wrong with following me, CNN, ALA, or the National Geographic. In fact, following others is a great way to start figuring out how to use Twitter. But when you test out a new service using your organization’s name (ie., MSJLibrary), the organization ends up looking a bit less than professional. Start off learning … but use a personal account to do it (and for the record, I’ve killed more than one service at my library for that very reason).

Before you create an organizational account, do some planning and goal setting. Answer these questions:

  • What do you want to get out of it?
  • Why are you setting it up?
  • Who’s going to maintain the account?
  • Who’s going to answer tweets?
  • Who do you plan to connect with?

Answer these (then stick with the plan for awhile), and you’ll be well on your way to organization twitter success.

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Topeka Tweetups

by David Lee King on July 9, 2009

Topeka tweetup @ wibw studiosAnyone ever attended a Tweetup? I attended my first, last night. What’s a Tweetup? Simple – a Tweetup is a get-together of people who use Twitter. The tweetup I attended was for Topeka-area people using Twitter, hence it’s called a Topeka Tweetup.

It was fun! This tweetup was hosted by WIBW Studios, a local television station. About 50 or so people attended. And I met some people that I have chatting with on Twitter, but never met in person, so that was cool. And it was fun hanging out at the studio, and seeing what “the other side” of the news cast looks like.

OK – Digital Branch Managers, Digital Initiative Managers, webdudes, marketers… you should be attending this type of gathering. Why?

  • If your library has a Twitter account, these are the people following you. Go meet them!
  • This group tends to be highly active, they get stuff done … you want to hear from them about library initiatives.
  • In Topeka, many of them work in highly connected jobs, i.e., tv stations, newspapers, marketing and advertising firms, political campaigns, etc. It’s always good to make those connections.
  • They all use the web, probably in an advanced way. They are your digital branch users (or at least potential users).
  • They’re just really cool people!

Want to find out more about last night’s Tweetup? We made a couple of news sites:

Question – How are you connecting with your social media users?

ps – I’m @davidleeking on twitter – feel free to follow me!

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Tweetworthy Twitter Policy

by David Lee King on June 13, 2009

I just read A Twitterable Twitter Policy, by Jay Shepherd, who writes the Gruntled Employees blog (looks like a great blog for managers).

The article includes a brief intro to Twitter, then Jay talks about employee policies and Twitter use. The best part of the article is this – he created a Twitter policy using only 140 characters (so it’s Twitterable):

Be professional, kind, discreet, authentic. Represent us well. Remember that you can’t control it once you hit “update.”

Good stuff to remember when posting ANYTHING on the web, I think!

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Making Connections – the Institutional Version

by David Lee King on May 29, 2009

Last post, I covered things I think about when making personal friend connections in a bunch of social networks I use. I also said “for MPOW, it’s slightly different – I might cover that in another post.” Here’s that other post.

As an institution, who should you friend? Why? This is pretty subjective of course, but here are some general guidelines to get you started:

Friend patrons/customers/members. Friend people living in your service area, or who are likely to use your services. Find them using tools like Twitter’s Find People search or any number of third party search services. Your goal is to share your stuff, your events, and yourselves with other people and organizations who can actually use and benefit your content in  a social network.

If someone friends you, check them out. Look at their posts, look at their bio, and where they’re from. If they live close by, friend them. Then start sharing.

Friend other local organizations. Again, the goal is to share your stuff with other organizations that can potentially partner with you, or otherwise send people your way.

Friend others who are interested in your stuff. Have a local history collection that focuses on a certain individual or era? Friend others who are interested in the same things. This should hold true especially on social networks that focus on multimedia, like Flickr and YouTube.

Other Considerations

Facebook Groups – these can have a narrower focus, so you might be friending fewer people in a group, especially if it’s more of a niche group. For example, if you have a Facebook Group focused on teens, you’ll want to friend actual teens, rather than just anyone of any age.

YouTube – do your local news media outlets have YouTube accounts? Make sure to friend them, and favorite some of their videos.

Finally, be friend-neutral. Don’t agree with what the person says, or don’t like their content? Remind yourself that this isn’t your personal social network you’re developing, but your organization’s network. And most likeley, you take all shapes and sizes of friend connections.

Further reading: my set of posts on attracting friends, starting with Don’t Friend Me.

What am I missing? Any other groups it might be good to friend? Not to friend?

photo from sausyn

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New Media Meets Old Media

by David Lee King on March 22, 2009

David's on the NewsOn Friday afternoon, I was interviewed again about Twitter – this time, by our local NBC affiliate, channel 27 news. They interviewed me, our head of Communications and Marketing, and our Communications Editor (I think that’s her title). It was a fun interview – here are some pics from the interview, and here’s a link to the web version of the interview.

Hannah Wooldridge interviewed us, and during the interview, asked me to ask my Twitter friends some questions. First we said “hi” – and 36 people quickly responded with some form of “hi” back within minutes (interestingly, the first reply came from the Netherlands!).

Then I asked this: “what should our tv reporter ask about twitter? What’s cool“? Here are the replies I received:

Everyone who replied – you rock – thanks! Everyone – make sure to read and think about the ideas in the above responses. Twitter started with a simple question – “what are you doing?” The ideas presented above go WAY beyond that. It touches on the community experience I wrote about in my book!

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The Social Web and Libraries: Twitter Alerts

by David Lee King on August 9, 2008

Twitter Search (name recently changed from Summize) is a great tool for listening to your community. Here’s what Twitter says about Twitter Search: “Keeping up with interesting news and people you care about is one dimension of Twitter, but what if you need to find out what’s happening in the world beyond your personal timeline? There is an undeniable need to search, filter, and otherwise interact with the volumes of news and information being transmitted to Twitter every second. Twitter Search helps you filter all the real-time information coursing through our service.”

How do you use alerts to listen to your community?

OK… but how do you listen using Twitter Search? That’s easy. Do a search in Twitter Search… and along with the results page, you get an RSS feed of the search. Voila! You have just created a Twitter Alert for that search.

Here’s what I do, for both my personal blog and for my library, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library. For both, I have a number of alerts set up:

David Lee King:

  • David King
  • David Lee King
  • davidleeking
  • dlk (because some of you call me DLK)

Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library:

  • topeka library
  • topeka

The library alerts were much harder to set up – not too many people want to type in “Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library” – that uses up most of the 140 characters allowed by twitter! But Topeka Library captures some library-related conversation. Other libraries won’t have the same problem – for example, here’s what people are saying about the Seattle Public Library.

My Topeka alert is much more interesting, because it captures a variety of conversation – what’s happening in Topeka, what people are doing, what they like and don’t like. It’s capturing the general “feel” of the community, which can be useful. I’ve picked up on some pretty interesting thoughts from people this way:

  • (my library in the local news): “local headlines New Phone Book Honors Topeka Library: AT&T unveiled its new phone book cover …”
  • (people sharing their likes/dislikes about Topeka): “dude, what did you expect? it’s Kansas. I have to goto Topeka for biz sometimes. that town creeps me out.”
  • local news can be interesting (quite a few local broadcasters use Twitter): “Melissa_Brunner: topeka police bomb robot is now approaching the suspicious package”
  • This was cool – apparently, local realtors are discussing uses of web 2.0 for their business: “I’m looking forward to lunch with @rebr and @76cad to discuss WEB 2.0 uses in real estate in Topeka, KS”

So… what can you DO with this knowledge?

For some libraries and organizations, you’ll be eavesdropping on conversations about YOU. Respond accordingly. For example, someone had this to say about Kansas City Public Library: “Kansas City Public Library is awesome, and totally right by my house. appears to block im, though. strange.” Easy enough to respond to, right? It’s either a yes/no answer with a bit of explanation. Here’s another one: “Carrying my super-cool Wichita public library tote onto a plane to denver then to seattle.” Thank the person for loving your bag!

For other libraries (like my own), there won’t be too many direct conversations about the library… but you can still use Twitter alerts to:

  • get a general feel for what’s going on in your community
  • to connect with people using twitter (I’m connected to some local media types – those can be valuable connections)
  • use it to push the library’s tech (I could contact those realtors interested in web 2.0 and  discuss 2.0 and topeka with them, for example)

So – lots of value for your organization using Twitter Search!

photo: http://flickr.com/photos/banlon1964/46324162/

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Why Use Twitter?

by David Lee King on July 9, 2008

I frequently give “Cool Stuff” presentations at my library’s weekly management meetings. Tomorrow’s presentation focuses on Twitter – so I thought I’d gather some ideas on Twitter use from my fellow Twitter users. Here’s what I asked: “working on a twitter presentation for management – anyone want to share what you like about twitter?”

Within 20 minutes, I had received over 23 answers! Look at the interesting variety of answers:

  • amylibrarian - “keeping informed on technology and library issues”
  • digitalsista - “twitter is a resource on news and local grassroots activities”
  • pghgurl30 – “I like it cuz I can follow a variety of people easily, librarians, blogfriends”
  • Jill_HW – “Twitter = Instant support, feedback, solutions, etc.”
  • book_luvr – “I learn so much from all of you that I follow! I’m able to share with staff here.”
  • kenleyneufeld - “I find Twitter useful for professional networking.”
  • julian2 - “The conversation is very quick and enriched.”
  • jessewilkins – “more specifically crowdsourcing of links to resources.”
  • ehampton – “quick and easy networking!”
  • strnglibrarian – “the networking! the instant news! the connection to the outside world (from anywhere). are the first things that come to mind”
  • baldgeekinmd – “twitter can be quick and dirty, reach many easily and frustrating when it is not working right.”
  • bschu1022 – “The networking! I can get an answer to a question (in seconds!) from colleagues around the world & not just by email or phone!”
  • MyCreativeTeam – “twitter likes: follow/pitch journalists, query experts, gather blog fodder, promote blog via twitterfeed, quick friend contact”
  • sarchet62 – “I’m following as many health care providers I can find on twitter and learning learning learning helps in my work!!” and “if all you did was follow news channels the tweets are worth it”
  • bckhough – “Twitter made this year’s ALA my best ALA experience yet. It added an energy or connectedness that has been missing”
  • NikkiPilkington – “Quick and easy way to get marketing messages out to interested people”
  • coyenator – “connecting with people, cross-pollinating ideas, apps, experience, info, tools, innovations, and of course, opinions!”
  • znstrk – “quick responses when you ask a question, and interesting tweets from others.”

Themes that stand out: crowdsourcing, news, networking, sharing ideas and messages, staying connected. This quick question turned into an amazing crowdsourced answer the question “why do you use Twitter?”

Do you have anything to add?

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Twitter Best Practices So Far

by David Lee King on June 25, 2008

I’ve just spent some time subscribing to a bunch of Twitter social media and community manager types (via twitterpacks.pbwiki.com) My goal in doing this is to learn more about digital community management, and how that relates to the library version of digital communities.

But while doing that, I started noticing some similarities in twitter account pages, and thought I’d share those with you.

Twitter Best Practices:

1. Have a bio. When people see an interesting tweet, they might click through and want to read a bit about you – the first place they’ll look is your Twitter bio. Most bios provide a brief outline of who you are. For example, mine currently says “I write about, talk about, and work in libraries!” (yes, that’s a very boring bio – I should change it). “I write about, talk about, and work around libraries, social media, and digital communities. Also check out my videoblog: http://davidleeking.com/etc” (just changed it :-)

Even better – include an invitation in your bio. Here are two examples:

  • I’m a 35 year -old marketing professional who is learning about new media. Help me learn Twitter please! Follow me and I’ll follow you!
  • New followers: please @ me to start or join a conversation.

2. Extra links in your bio. You can add links to pertinent sites and services in your bio. If the URL is long, make sure to shorten it with one of those tinyURL services. Otherwise, the link text will run into the background of the page… and make you look like you look bad.

3. Spell check your bio text. Misspellings look bad. Nuf said.

4. Use a good headshot for your picture/icon: Best practices for the little pic that accompanies your tweets – a headshot of you, smiling. Or maybe you being silly. If possible, show your personality.

Don’t frown – if you don’t look friendly (or you look scary), others might think twice about friending you. And on the web, thinking twice means you’ve lost them.

5. Add a background image. Any image. Silly. Professional. Ugly. The point here is that using the default Twitter background on your account makes you look like a newbie. And that’s bad, especially when it’s so easy to add an image.

Brownie points for using the image like these two tweeters. See what they’ve done? They smartly positioned an image version of a link list that appears in the far left portion of their twitter page. Nice way to share links and promote themselves!

6. Say “Hi” to new followers. When someone follows you, reply back. That’s nice! Here’s one example: “you might be the first librarian I’ve met.  HI!”

Even better – one person direct messaged me with this message: “Welcome New Follower!! How goes it?  Have you tweeted anything that I should know about that I may have missed?” Wow – he’s asking you to introduce yourself in a very direct and helpful (to him) way. Nice.

7. Silly observations:

  • Social media and community manager types tend to play guitar in a band and mention it in their profiles…
  • they all subscribe to Chris Brogan’s twitter account.

8. Finally, don’t do this: I saw one twitter account (that I didn’t follow) with these characteristics:

  • Bio said the person is a “key executive in digital media”
  • No picture/icon was included
  • No background image was used
  • He’s not following anyone
  • He has 7 followers
  • He’s only written 5 updates

Notice the irony here? This person’s bio and his actual Twitter activity don’t match up. He doesn’t sound like a key executive in “digital media” He needs to take 5 minutes to add a pic, add a background, follow a few usual suspects in his field, and add a couple more tweets. This will make his account look “normal” – and he’ll look more knowledgeable to boot.

Update: after writing a whiz-bang twitter article, I completely fogot to add a link to my own twitter account (twitter.com/davidleeking)! Duh…

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Big Juicy Twitter Guide

by David Lee King on November 7, 2007

Want to find out more about twitter, but don’t like the screencasts David Free and I created? Well then… you’re in luck! Go read The Big Juicy Twitter Guide, by Caroline Middlebrook. She covers everything – from what is twitter, to twitter tools, to multiplying your twitter audience.

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Twitter Explained for Librarians, or 10 ways to use Twitter

by David Lee King on March 10, 2007

good bookFirst – what is twitter?
Think of Twitter like a personal IM account that can be shared with everyone. Once you have a Twitter account set up, you can send short IM, SMS, or web-based messages to Twitter. Others who are marked as your friends or followers receive those messages. And there’s a public timeline that displays everything everyone is texting (there’s also an option to keep messages private, and to send messages only to individuals, which triggers an email).

It’s growing rapidly in popularity right now among the uber tech geeks of the world because… well, just because. It’s a geek fad, if you will. And SXSWi (an emerging tech/web 2.0 conference) is going on right now, and everyone there is apparently having fun with Twitter.

Second, for the library part
Apparently, some in the library blogosphere are questioning why they should pay attention to twitter, and are wondering how it can be useful to libraries.

good bookHere’s what I’d say to that. Simply stated, if you’re asking why you should pay attention, you probably don’t need to. It’s not an interest of yours, and that’s cool. I didn’t have a facebook account for a long time for the same reasons – I simply couldn’t think of a good reason to get one, so I didn’t (I have one now). I have a linkdin account, but don’t do much with it (ie., I probably didn’t need one).

And that’s ok. With emerging trends, you really should play with the stuff you’re interested in, and let others mess with things that don’t interest you. But then – and this is important – SHARE. So with Twitter, I’ll watch twitter and tell you if I find something useful for libraries. You go watch something else, and report back, too – that’s how the blogosphere works! Make sense?

And third, what in the world might twitter be useful for? Here are my 10 Ways to Use Twitter:

  1. staying in touch with geek friends and colleagues
  2. Using private messages – then it’s really about staying in touch with true friends and family (that is, if your friends and family sms and IM frequently)
  3. keeping up-to-date with emerging tools (remember – Flickr started out as a silly web photography game, not the amazing social tool it’s turned into)
  4. News updates – CNN and BBC both have twitter feeds (ooh – a library use!)
  5. loosely following a well-wifi’d geek/techie conference
  6. Following the thought processes of emerging tech trend thinkers. Ex – Robert Scoble has a twitter account and over 1000 friends. He’s been asking his friends questions – and getting 1000 replies. Think of how blog posts and comments and trackbacks work – but on steroids. Instead of waiting a day or so for other thoughts, with twitter you get them within the hour, tops. Setup correctly, that could prove to be an amazing “collective brain current awareness” database that you could tap at any time.
  7. when interviewing someone for a job, check to see if they twitter – then check their twitter feed just like you’d google them and check their blog (if they had one)
  8. Check out a potential colleague’s twitter feed to see if you’d personally like them or not
  9. twitter as a personal note bucket – send yourself random thoughts that you don’t want to lose. They’re stored in your account’s history!
  10. Current awareness search tool. For this to work, Twitter would need a search engine (which I don’t think it has) or something like Google would need to be used. SO a bit of a dream here… BUT stay with me here for a sec. With Flickr, you can troll the popular tags feature and see what’s going on in the world. I’m assuming that with Twitter, if something BIG happens, people using Twitter would be texting about it. That could be an amazing resource to get the “feel of the streets” during a major event (cool, another library use).

good bookSo there you go. Right now, I think Twitter is simply fun – and sorta funny, too (I found out that Steve Lawson just made pancakes!). But I also think it’s an interesting emerging social tool to watch – if nothing else, it’s helping me stay current with emerging social trends.

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