Papal Tweets

Only the Pope could start a Twitter account, not post a single tweet, and still have 116,859 followers (as of this posting). He's barely begun his social media journey, but could it be that he's already having trouble "feeding the beast"?

What suggestions do you have for the Pope, or anyone else who is considering starting a Twitter account? How should they keep it fresh, on message, interesting? I'd love to see your comments.

Best Times to Post to Social Media

I should be posting this to Facebook or Twitter right now instead of a blog. Why?

The Poynter Institute has just released this report showing the highest click-through days/times for Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.  Peak time for Facebook and Twitter are right now: 2:30 p.m. on a Wednesday.

This will change how we schedule our postings. Have you seen anything different in your campaigns? Click through for neato graphs.

Bitly data shows the best times to post links to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr

A Beginner's Twitter Guide to Domination in Five Steps

As the new Marketing & Promotions Chair for the Communicators Forum, I've been having fun diving into the depths of Communicators Forum social media, especially Twitter. Social media has become an unexpected passion of mine over the last year or so, with daily use of it for my day job at Northrop Concerts and Lectures, and my side project, the literary website Hazel & Wren.

I've learned mostly by trial and error, and by watching and learning from expert tweeps as they grow with their following and gain momentum for their business or organization. But perhaps the most helpful for me are simple guidelines from other users that pop up in blog posts, articles, and more all over the internet, such as this one, which I stumbled upon last week, and passed on through the UMCF Twitter channel. And, as a bonus, here's a quick look at some things I've learned over the last year or so in my own guide: A Beginner's Twitter Guide to Domination in Five Steps. (Brace yourselves for the power of this knowledge.)

A Beginner's Twitter Guide to Domination in Five Steps:

1.) Follow like-minded people. This is the number one step to exponentially increase your number of followers. Search hashtags and topics to see who is talking about them, and follow them. Or, even better yet, find another organization similar in cause to you, and start following who they follow. Not everyone will follow you back, but the surprising majority do. (This means your description and recent tweets better be stellar, so these people are intrigued at first glance.)

2.) Curate lists. This has been the most helpful for me to not only more easily find quality content, but also for organizing my approach and to make sure that I'm diversifying my tweets. If you're unfamiliar with lists, what this means is that you create segmented categories of Twitter accounts that you follow, based on their content and/or area of interest. For example, I have a list for the Communicators Forum called "University Departments." Another could be called "Communications Publications." That way, you can just view the feed from that list's sources specifically, to narrow down and focus the constant stream of information coming in. You can make these lists public or private, and can call them whatever makes the most sense to you. These take time to curate, but are so worth it.

3.) Be smart with your retweets. Don't get overly click-happy with that retweet button. Yes, it's just so easy, but doing that too often can make it seem like you don't have any original content or thought, or, that you're just plain lazy. If you're going to retweet something, switch it up more often than not. Copy and paste the tweet into your own post, tag the owner with RT, and preface it with some your own commentary. This could be something as simple as "Especially agree with rule #3 RT @umcf: The Official Rules of Twitter Domination http://LINK_HERE". You can also start over completely with your own original tweet, and just tag whoever originally posted the link by ending your post with: "(via @umcf)." Just remember: your followers want to know what YOU (whether you are an individual, or the voice of an organization) think, not how many posts you can retweet in a minute.

4.) Use short links for original content. Here at the University, we have a fantastic link shortener, z.umn.edu. Why use short links for original content (i.e. your organization's blog posts, events, etc) specifically? Stats, my friends, stats. Through z.umn.edu short links (and others) you can then track who is clicking that specific link, and where those paths to your original content are starting from (Twitter, Facebook, emails, etc). This can be incredibly helpful when figuring out where your audience is getting their information. There are other link shortening services outside of the University, but many of them you have to pay for, especially if you want to customize your short links.

5.) Tweet at least 3-5 times a day. From what I've heard, tweeting about five times a day  (and not all at once) yields the most effective results. At that rate, you're not pushing people off the edge with endless tweets about your oh-so-amazing breakfast sandwich, and you're also making following you worthwhile with daily updates and insights. For some organizations, it can be tough to get up to five tweets per day, but just work in that direction. This doesn't have to be (and shouldn't be) solely original content. The main purpose of Twitter is to embrace and engage with your community, whatever it is. Retweet insightful posts from fellow professionals, engage with your followers by asking questions and starting conversations, seek out articles and sources related to your field or area of interest, and share it all with your community.

That's all for now, folks. Happy tweeting, and may the force be with you.

Tweet late, email early, and don't forget about Saturday: Using data to develop a social media strategy

At this point in the social media game, there's a lot of pontification being pitched about and not whole lot of the Dragnet ethic. It's hard to say what's what about social media at this point, but this analysis gives a few great pointers. Try them out and see for yourself. A few I'm going to try to ride with:

• Tweet a lot to accumulate as many followers as possible, but if your goal is to drive more traffic to your site, you should show a little more restraint; accounts that share two or more links an hour show a dramatically lower clickthrough rate than those who share no more than one.

• Reach people when the noise of the crowd has died down. It turns out that time is often the afternoons, when blogs and news sites are slower, and the weekend, when they're all but asleep.

• Retweet activity is highest late in the work day, between 2 and 5 p.m., and the sweet spot (tweet spot?) is 4 p.m. Late in the week is most retweetable, too.

Use TweetWhen to analyze your Twitter account to see what time days and times yield the most retweets.

Read the full story at Nieman Journalism Lab.

Resources for getting started in social media, from Cari Hatcher

At last week's Web 2.0 presentation, Cari Hatcher offered lots of tips for getting started with social media. Here is her list of online resources.

• Brand Awareness: It's all a 'Twitter' (PDF)
  
• "Get on Twitter" is Not a Social Media Strategy (PDF)
  
• NSO to Try Beethoven's Tweet Suite
  
• Facebook Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations
  
• Online Communications that Don't Suck
  
• Using Facebook for Your Nonprofit
  

Thanks, Cari!