Chatterbox : twitter

An Intro to Social Media

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:52:00 GMT

We talk about social media, just a little bit , on our Blackbaud blogs. But maybe you're wondering why you should care or you know what it is but need to know more. Where do you go to find more information? I had a friend/professional peer ask me that very question this morning. Where do you begin? Specifically she wanted to know..."if I'm looking for basic, very basic information on social media do you know of any good sites to start with?"

Here's how I responded:

Hmmm... I'm not really sure. Most of social media education is just immersing yourself in the different types of social media/networking websites. I would recommend dabbling on different websites like - Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, StumbeUpon, feed aggregators like Google Reader, Plaxo, a wiki site like one from Wetpaint, Hulu, Flixster, Last.fm, LinkedIn, and Digg. To learn social media is to observe how different mediums online encourage community participation. How does bringing the community into the content development process change websites, media, etc? And honestly, the best sites for reading about emerging social media right now are blogs.
Here's a couple good ones to get started with -
Chris Brogan http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ (you can spend a long time on his site, he's a prolific blogger)
Beth Kanter (she does social media for nonprofits) http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/

And like I told my friend, I hope this helps! Good luck getting started and like my friend, feel free to ask questions (of me) and of those you find to observe on social media websites. I find immersion in the practice of social media the best way to learn!

Geek Speak: Twitter Tools to Twind Tweeps to Twollow

Steve Pham — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:57:00 GMT

Try to say that title one time fast (yeah, don't even bother with three times fast)! Phew!

Why the alliteration? Well I recently signed up for Twitter a few months ago to see what it was all about, and it wasn’t until I understood the power of it that I began to really dive in. After a month or so, I began to get frustrated because I wanted to find people to follow, but not just anyone. I wanted to follow those who had something to say or those who I could potentially build a professional relationship. So naturally I turned to Google to solve my conundrum. My results? Well, that's what I'm hoping to share here in this blog post. Here's a list of tools that helped me.

Twitter Search – I used Twitter Search to see if anyone I knew was on Twitter. You can also use it to find a conversation about a particular topic. Great to use when you're just getting started.
Twellow – Twellow is definitely not the prettiest tool to use, but it contains a massive database of users that you can search by location or category. Great tool, just a bit clunky.
LocalTweeps – Local Tweeps is fairly new. However, the database is growing and the main focus of this is to find Tweeps (Twitter people) that are in the same locale as you. I found quite a few people to follow using this tool.
WhoShouldIFollow – Who Should Follow is an interesting site, you enter your Twitter name and it finds users that match what you have tweeted, your bio, and who you are already following. This tool didn't help me as much because lately my focus has been finding people in my locale because I just moved to the area.
TwitterLocal – Twitter Local is an Adobe Air application that is great. Basically you follow conversations that happen in specific areas - based on city, zip code, state, etc. It's great to see what is going on locally and to see who the big players are in the area.

Each of these tools helped me find more people to follow.

Other Helpful Hints -
It's also a good idea to see who the people you are following, who they themselves are following. Typically they are interested in the same people, so it's always good to check that out. Also, one of my favorite things to do is to check out the twitter user's ration. What's the ratio of who they follow to how many people follow them. I like to make sure its kind of close, however, if you are following a celebrity or a group or company, you cannot expect the ratio to be close. In addition, I also tend not to follow people without avatars, or a few quality updates. I do a quick twitter history check to verify quality and not just quantity. Sometimes those with quantity lack conciseness and worthwhile tweets.

These are just a few things to look out for when you are looking for more people to follow. Hope this helps and happy tweeting.

Feel Free to follow me @Phamtastik and Lindsey @lindseyrobbins

What are people saying about you?

Steve Pham — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:31:00 GMT

Your brand reputation (either personal or professional) is an important aspect of your business. Being "in the know" about what people are saying about your brand is important. Unfortunately, branding is not like the world of glitz and glamour where any publicity is good publicity.

For instance, you may be one of the top players in professional baseball, a role model for kids, and yet admit to taking steroids to gain a professional advantage. While when Alex Rodriguez took the drugs, they were not banned by Major League Baseball, he still tarnished his reputation and that of the sport. It's the same for organizations. If you are a financial institution and you require assistance to maintain your ability to do business, it does not project stability. You may scare your current and potential customers away. General Motors is the same. People are concerned about buying cars from a brand that may no longer exist in a few years. Branding is sensitive to public opinion. These examples show how your brand can be severely damaged or even ruined.

In the always competitive market of business, you may want to know what your competitors are doing. You may want to know what people have to say about your products and services. You may want to find out how you can improve. Or, you may just want the opportunity to reach out to your customers.

Enter Google Alerts! Google Alerts is a great tool that will send you an alert (you set up) whenever any of your search criteria is mentioned on the Internet. Pretty simple right? By being constantly vigilant about what is being said, you can stay current with damage control, be aware of what people like and dislike, improve your products, or maintain a close watch on your competitors. You can set up alerts for anything your heart desires including watching the news for when the iPhone goes open source (I can dream!).

Twitter is another great resource for monitoring your brand. With nearly six million unique visitors a month (according to compete.com), you can assume the number of active users is massive. Those active users represent current customers or potential customers. They also represent a powerful social network who can spread information instantly to a domino network. Reach out to them and be aware. Practice listening and responding to feedback even when it's bad. Acknowledge potential for improvement if needed. You don't have to be perfect, just transparent, honest, and willing to improve. Besides developing a network of followers, you can search Twitter for key information. As well, Monitter is a great site for seeing real time tweets of your key words. Enter in up to three key words on the page and see a live stream of what people are saying. A great resource if you want live feedback.

With Google Alerts and Twitter, why waste time crawling the web to see what people have to say. Instead, spend the time wisely listening and then use it to improve your brand, your products, and your services. Afterwards, you can reap in the praise and rewards. When that happens, you can come back and thank me.

Co-Authored By: Lindsey Robbins

Paring Down the Tweets

Lindsey Robbins — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:25:00 GMT

A week later and my experiment with paring down the number of people I follow has worked wonders (so far). I’m back to following people without as much anxiety and I can keep up without dedicating my every working moment to watching the stream of collective thought dumps.

Talk much?

My excessive tweeters somewhat followed the same people Joe Meehan mentioned in his comment:

"But as I've discovered, the excessive tweets I've experienced fall into two categories: One - from news orgs I follow (USA Today, LA Times Busines section, CNN Breaking News). A bit much at times - but it's news (at least to someone).
The other category is people who tweet their every action/thought/response to others. If I have to scroll though a full web page of tweets by the same person, it's the virtual equal to the guy at the party who doesn't know when to end a conversation.”

My addition to his two is a third category of people I felt I should follow but wasn’t learning anything particularly valuable from. Don’t we all have these people we keep around because someone else thought they were important yet you’re not really sure what to do with them once you start listening?

I still find tweets from people (I value and want to listen to) with links to relevant information particularly useful. In fact, now that I can find and read them much more quickly I’m able to follow their thoughts and links much more easily.

Who went and who stayed?

I don’t want to divulge too many specifics but here’s in general who I dropped.

Technical communication people in my field who weren’t contributing valuable information, tweeted too much, or weren’t tweeting at all.
People I find vaguely interesting because they have a huge following on Twitter but in general I don’t really care what they have to say on a day-to-day basis.
Large organizations I have no personal ties to and the government feeds I initially liked but had no use for after the general intrigue wore off.

I kept many people. In fact, I’m still following 82 people/orgs. Who and why?

I’m still following people I work with. I find it important to know what’s going on at work and we can feed each other great content (and sometimes funny fluff too).
I follow select technical communication people who I respect and can continue to develop a networking relationship.
Friends. You can’t drop your friends! Even if I use twitter mainly for work related items, I still find it comforting to see funny or meaningful things from non-work people.
Local organizations and organizations I have ties to. I kept the local news, local nonprofits, and even Clemson football feed (although the way they are playing, I might have to drop them than think about the season).

Going Forward

I still find it difficult on busy days to follow the thread of information thoughts floating on twitter. However, following only the people that can meaningfully contribute to my day makes it much easier. And I plan to hope, as Chad commented in my last post, that Twitter figures out the social filtering. I would have liked to follow many of the people and organizations I dropped, just not on a daily basis.

So my recommendation to those out there considering to tweet and considering who to follow, sometimes it’s okay to join the fray and make some mistakes. But, as you go along, watch the trends of what you like to see and what you don’t. And most importantly, don’t twitter everything!

Tweet Overload

Lindsey Robbins — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:02:00 GMT

It’s no secret I love twitter. It’s short, to the point, and often provides more valuable information than I can find anywhere else. But lately, my heart hasn’t been into it. In search of an answer to my recent woes, I stumbled onto the cause. The problem?

Too many twitter friends...

I know, you’re thinking how can that be possible? You can never have enough? Well it’s true, you can reach a limit where too many tweets causes you to lose interest. My twitter overload number was only a mere 144 people. I wish twitter had categories so I could separate my friends, co-workers, colleagues, and “other cool" people. Then I could check the twitter stream for each category. Until that happens I think I’m going to have to do the dreaded thing.

I’m going to have to drop the number of people I follow. There really is no other option because I don’t want to completely stop following people but as it is I don’t have the time to keep up. Even if I use twhirl I can’t keep up because it always interrupts my train of thought when I’m working.

So lesson learned, don’t expect social media use to be easy or always work the way you want. Moderation is essential. I suppose we always knew that all along but you want to believe you can be different.

***sigh*** I guess it’s time for me to make the tough choices.

Your Government in Action

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:42:00 GMT

Did you know your government – federal, state, and local – is in the grassroots information network? If you thought twitter was just micro blogging the latest celebrity or personal news gossip then you’re missing out on the information underground. I keep finding cool people/organizations to follow. Recently, I found a bunch of interesting government related ones I’m excited about. I can’t wait to see how they tweet.

Thought, I’d share of a few notable ones but remember to check on the person you are following to make sure they are the real deal.

Dipnote	http://twitter.com/dipnote	Department of State
Greenversations	http://twitter.com/Greenversations	U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
CSIState	http://twitter.com/CSIState	State Dept travel warnings
HomelandSecurit	http://twitter.com/HomelandSecurit	US Homeland Security
NIHforHealth	http://twitter.com/NIHforHealth	NIH Communications — the voice of the nation's medical research agency.
TSABlogTeam	http://twitter.com/TSABlogTeam	TSA quick notes about their blog. (did you know TSA had their own blog?)
NASA	http://twitter.com/NASA	NASA news feed. (they have separate twitter feeds for specific nasa missions)
SenateFloor	http://twitter.com/SenateFloor	United States Senate floor vote links
HouseFloor	http://twitter.com/HouseFloor	United States House floor
USAgov	http://twitter.com/USAgov	Official web portal of the U.S. federal government
SCGOV	http://twitter.com/SCGOV	The Official Web Site of the State of South Carolina
5541111 / Crime Stoppers - CHS	http://twitter.com/5541111	Latest News from Crime Stoppers of the Lowcountry; a citizen, media and police co-operative program designed to involve the public in the fight against crime.

My favorites to watch so far are the State and House floor. No one really wants to watch CSPAN but don't you kinda want to know what your government is doing during the day? Also, I see a lot of potential in twitter for feeds like the crimestoppers. They could do amber alerts and breaking news alerts right to your feed. News in the twitter world can faster than the real news. This has all be fun for me to watch. It's your government, by the people, for the people - in action!

Work / Life Balance in Social Networking

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

How do you decide which social media to use for personal use and which to use for business use?

All the fun ways to connect with people means it can often make it difficult to separate our business lives from our personal lives. For example, I have several different blogs I write and even one personal one. However, I don’t like to mingle them. I rarely if ever talk about work in my personal blog because my family (who I write it for) would be bored to tears. They don’t quite get why I love technology and geeky stuff so much.

Then, I have the three corporate blogs I contribute to:

Chatterbox (this one) – my personal work blog
From the Doc Side – Documentation Team blog
The Book Bag – Education Edge blog.

Aside from blogs, I use Twitter for professional things and mostly because I don’t think people would ever care about the mundane things of my every day life. Once and a while I slip but I earnestly try to use it for professional networking, learning, and sharing what my team is doing.

Social networks. I am on a lot of them. I usually sign up and then see if I want to use it. I do have the obligatory Facebook and MySpace accounts but I don’t use them for professional reasons. I just like to stay connected with people.

However, if I was running an organization I would consider using Facebook to connect with my target market. Whether you’re selling a product people love (like Apple’s iPhone, Starbucks Coffee, Zoot Sports triathlon gear) or you’re promoting your school, cause, or political candidate, Facebook is an excellent opportunity to bring people in and keep them up to date. In this sense, I do become the follower in this social network and not a leader like the blog forces me to be. I’ll try to do a follow-up post soon on some ways I recommend people to use facebook since the ways to connect are becoming more creative every day.

Other social networks I use regularly (more professionally) are Plaxo and LinkedIn. Okay, so I don’t update my profile as often as I should and I’m not sure what benefits there are…yet. It is something I’m on and trying to learn more about. Sometimes social networks take time to figure out the real benefit. Don’t dismiss a way to connect too quickly; you never know how it might benefit you in the long run.

Now here is where it gets tricky when it comes to social mediums, how do you decide which medium you get more benefit out of personally or professionally -

Delicious
Digg
Google Docs and Spreadsheets
Jumpcut, YouTube, Viddler, etc.
Slideshare
Aggregators like FriendFeed and Google Reader
Wikis
and the gazillion new sites that appear every minute of every day...

I guess the other option is to create two separate accounts to keep your work work and personal interests private. If you can do that, please let me know how because I wonder where you’d find the time and the ability to keep all your social media straight.

The more I’m thinking about it the more I think I might need a neatly organized chart to keep track of everything. Otherwise, I think the time suck of web 2.0 is going to grab a hold of me and never let go. There goes work productivity and possibly my job if I don’t watch out! Lol

How do you manage the balance between work and personal on the ever intertwining social media?

The Business Case for Twitter

Lindsey Robbins — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

(Originally appeared on From the Doc Side)

Lately, much has been said about Twitter. Chad wrote a great post (Twitter Makes Relationships Work - Right Now) with an explanation of what Twitter is so I'll skip the overview and get to the business case.

Let's start with a little confession I should make… For a while, I had a twitter account but didn't use it much. I wasn't quite ready to be a twitter evangelist. Everything changed for me when I chose a focus for how I was going to use twitter. What I realized was while I didn't always like the concept of letting people know all the mundane things I was doing in my average day, I did like how it could improve my professional and business connections. Here are some ways to use twitter in the business/professional sense.

1. Follow your colleagues. Not only do you create connections across teams but you can stay informed of the latest news in their world. I am following a few leaders in my company with specialties in technology, webby things, marketing, customer support, etc.
2. Follow fellow professionals. This is perhaps my favorite way to connect. I love learning about what other people in my field are learning, doing, finding. I could never keep up with all the changes in technical communication and I don't have to. Instead I can look to peers and mentors for what they find interesting. I share the things I find interesting and our worlds really do expand.
3. Promotion! Share your work content. I am posting a link to our From the Docs Side... blog every time I write one. If we do something else cool, I'll share that too.
4. Tweme the possibilities. If you don't know what a tweme is, it's adding a hash mark to posts so they can easily be found in public streams. I had such a good time at my recent technical communication conference by tweming with other conference goers. Here's our example. Just by putting in a hash mark we could follow each other's post on the same topic. There are so many possibilities with twemes. You could create one for your local professional chapter, a conference, topics in your organization you want to separate, etc.
5. Tweetscan. Tweetscanning is searching all twitter streams for specific keywords. You want to know about technical communication, type that into tweetscan.com and you can find what other people are saying about tech comm and perhaps you'll find some cool new people in your field to follow.
6. Want to know who's the most popular in twitter, go to a site like tweeterboard.com. This site ranks people on popularity. This is again, another way to find noteworthy people tweeting.
7. Support social causes. Movements are happening on Twitter. Just google Frozen Pea Fridays or read here and you can learn how they started a movement to support a woman with breast cancer and ultimately raised money for research.

Either way, definitely re-consider your use of Twitter. You get to control who's in your network and who you want to follow. Also, if you type twitter apps into google, you'll discover new apps are being created daily as people are learning to harness the power of micro-blogging. After all, not everyone has the patience or time to read long blogs like this one. Instead, we want quick updates under 140 characters in length.

Even these guys are tweeting and they're no slouches -

Guy Kawasaki - http://twitter.com/guykawasaki
Robert Scoble - http://twitter.com/Scobleizer
Kevin Rose - http://twitter.com/kevinrose

So, are you ready for the twitter movement?