Power Hour Notes: Twitter 101 With Karen Maner (Culture Works)

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1 February 6, 2015 For the Cliff s Notes of this presentation, check out the Twitter 101 Handout. Why Twitter? It s all about sharing info with the public. Helps you o Gain visibility Like Facebook, it makes you more accessible and personable to potential supporters o Stay informed Facebook = What s happening in my friends hearts & minds? Twitter = What s happening in my community? National news? o Reach a new kind of audience = Twitter users are active in their communities (geographic communities and communities surrounding particular interests e.g. people who love nature, literature, etc.). They love fast conversations about topics they care about. They love being able to have conversations on a global scale. o Have conversations with people far outside of your usual social sphere Whereas Facebook lets you keep in touch with people you (presumably) already know in real life, Twitter allows you to (potentially) strike up conversations with anyone who s interested in what you re saying and wants to respond, even Kanye West or Tom Hanks. Remember, Twitter isn t necessarily a direct means of making money, but as a nonprofit it s a tool in your toolbox that helps make you more familiar to potential supporters. It s a way of telling your organization s story and keeping your message out there all day every day. The best way to fundraise is to tell a story people can relate to, make it human. How it works: Users create profiles o Profile: It s a page all about you. A photo, a header photo, a brief bio. Pretty similar to a Facebook profile. Twitter s 284 million users send 500 million tweets (140-character messages) per day That s way too many tweets to go through, so you pick whose tweets you want to see by following people, and those users tweets show up in your timeline in real time o Timeline: A list of tweets that updates in real time Clicking the Home icon takes you to the timeline of everyone you follow How do users find each other? Using the search bar o Find users by name (if you re an organization/person they already know) o Find users by key words You can narrow down the search results to show people, tweets, photos, etc. that relate to that word, everywhere or nearby

2 Example: If I search art, I can tell Twitter to show me people nearby related to that search word, and it will give me a list of all of the organizations and people in the Dayton area who show an interest in/have a mission statement involving art Twitter s recommendations o Twitter suggests users to follow based on common interests, who you re already following o These recommendations can be found in the Who to Follow box in the right sidebar Notifications o When you follow a user, they get a notification (in the menu at the top of the screen) Example: CultureWorksDYT followed you This might prompt them to click on your username and check out your profile to see who you are They might follow you back if they re a.) flattered or b.) intrigued by your profile Note that following is NOT mutual (big difference between Facebook) o You are following the people who interest you o People who are interested in you are your followers o If someone follows you, you don t have to follow them back! (though it s a good way to make friends) The feelings don t have to be mutual for the relationship to work. But the most important way that people will find you is your content. Tweets and retweets and RT s and MT s and hashtags and When tweeting, you have three goals: Inform Engage Entertain A truly superb tweet will achieve all three. Tweet: 140 characters those characters can be a short message, a link, a photo, a video, a tag (Twitter automatically shortens links) o The author of the tweet is displayed in the top left o Anyone who sees the tweet can reply to, retweet, or favorite it by clicking the buttons at the bottom (more on this momentarily) o A tweet will show up in the timelines of all of your followers in real time o A tweet can be all about you, but to be social, you have to talk about other people, which is why you might use a Mention: A kind of tweet that talks about another Twitter user. o Why it s good to do: It draws attention to another Twitter user. Your followers can click on the mentioned user s name in your tweet and it will take them to that person s profile. Helps other people get new followers. Helps you make new friends in the Twitter community. To mention someone, just and then their Twitter username

3 o NOTE: their username might be different from their real name. Example: Culture Works username is CultureWorksDYT o Twitter does this to ensure that each username is completely unique. Lots of orgs might be named Culture Works, but only one uses the handle CultureWorksDYT. o IMPORTANT: When you want to mention someone, has to go somewhere AFTER the first part of the tweet, because Reply: A reply is a tweet you send in direct response to another person s tweet, and it begins and the username of the person you re replying to, like Cool puppets! o Done by clicking the arrow icon at the bottom of a tweet o Replies only show up in the timeline of the person you are replying to and on your profile under Tweets and Replies. It doesn t show up in your followers timelines unless they are following you AND the person you replied to. o So it s a little more personal than your usual tweets. It s a way of having a semi-public but more direct conversation. Good for when you intend to go back and forth with someone for a while and don t want to bore your followers with it. OR to avoid bragging. If someone says something nice about you, instead of retweeting them, etc. you can send a reply. It acknowledges the compliment without saying, Look over here, guys! People are talking about me! o NOTE: If you ever want to mention someone, not reply to them, but you want their username at the beginning of the message (for example:.@zoottheatre has a new show coming!) put a period before Retweet: The dozen red roses of Twitter. This is when you copy someone s exact tweet and share it with your followers. o Done by clicking the icon that looks like a square recycling logo at the bottom of the tweet o The number (if there is one) next to this icon shows how many times a tweet has been retweeted RT: What if you want to retweet it but you also want to add some text of your own? o You manually copy and paste someone s original tweet and add some commentary of your own. Just put RT at the beginning of the original tweet. Example: Great review of Dayton Arts! Monday post My commentary is Great review of Dayton Arts! The original tweet was from The Arts Blog and just said, Monday post with a link. o Good for giving context to your followers o Downside = RT doesn t count as a retweet (according to Twitter), so it won t make their counter go up Another downside of the RT is that it often ends up being too long! In that case, you can use MT: Modified Tweet. If you have to cut out part of the original message to save characters, or if you altered it for clarity, etc. o Not everyone uses this, but it s there if you need it. Think of a Retweet or RT like a direct quote and an MT like a paraphrase. They re both just ways to give credit to the original author without misrepresenting what they said.

4 Favorite: Done by clicking the star icon at the bottom of a tweet. o Acts like a bookmark for you. From your profile, you can see all of the tweets you ve ever favorited (which, remember, means other people can see them too) o Acts as a way of showing enjoyment of something without broadcasting it to your followers (e.g. If it s something they wouldn t be interested in, if it contains bad language, etc.) Won t show up in people s timelines (or probably won t Twitter is experimenting with showing certain favorites in people s timelines, but it hasn t been very popular). Hashtag: A word or phrase, beginning with #, with no spaces, that summarizes what a tweet is about. Good for: o Helping you join conversations surrounding that topic that are happening RIGHT NOW Searching for a # gives you the 100 most recent results o Creating conversations about an event you re hosting Example: The Dayton Development Coalition recently had their annual meeting and passed out fliers telling attendees to use the hashtag #DDCInnovation when tweeting about the event. This made it easy for attendees to find each other on Twitter and tweet to each other. NOTE: Events are an appropriate time to create a hashtag of your own, but most of the time you ll want to use existing hashtags. The idea is to put yourself in a bigger bucket. Example: Culture Works frequently uses #PassporttotheArts, which we created to share updates about our Passport program, but we also frequently use the hashtags #arts and #Dayton etc. to participate in larger, existing discussions about those topics. Trending: When a hashtag or phrase is being used by a huge number of Twitter users, it s called a Trending Topic. A topic might be trending for an hour, a day, etc. You can see what s trending in the Trends box in the sidebar of Twitter (if you re viewing it on a desktop). o Using a trending hashtag is a great way to jump into conversations with other Twitter users who you don t already follow o You can set Twitter to show you what s trending in your city or you can set it to Tailored Trends, which shows trends you might be interested in based on who you follow, your location, and other mysterious Twitter calculations How to avoid Twitter overload: Choose people to follow strategically Who will be most likely to tweet things you can retweet? Who s most likely to retweet you? o Follow organizations similar to your own, then see who they follow (on their profile pages, click on Following ) o Check out Twitter s suggestions o Using the search bar, search key words that relate to your organization ( arts, rehabilitation, etc.) then narrow down the results to nearby to find other orgs/individuals in your area with similar mission statements and interests

5 Create lists: If you re a social media marketer especially, eventually you ll be following a lot of users, and what shows up in your timeline might not always be that useful. (E.g. Culture Works follows a lot of people in the business community who support us, but our followers don t necessarily want to know what they re up to so we don t often retweet them.) o Think about your org s mission. What do you want to be tweeting about? Then make a list focused on that topic/region (e.g. Dayton Arts, Ohio Social Services ) o To make/manage a list: Click on your profile picture icon in the upper right corner of Twitter Choose Lists from the dropdown menu Select Create a New List and give the list a title and description Set it to Public or Private depending on whether you want other users to be able to see it If the list is Public, anyone you add to it will receive a notification that they ve been added to that list. This can be a nice compliment if the list is something like Awesome Daytonians but not so good if it s Weird People on Twitter. Go to the profile of a user you want to add to that list. Click the gear icon next to the Following button Click Add or Remove from Lists Choose which list you want to add them to Go back to your Lists page (click on the profile picture icon in the upper right, etc.) Choose the list you just created, then click on the items in the menu on the left to view all of the members of that list and tweets by people on that list Doing this saves a lot of time. Instead of searching through your timeline every day for content to retweet, you can see everything that s happening in Dayton Arts or Ohio Social Services quickly and easily You can also unfollow accounts that turn out to not be very useful o On the user s profile page, click the blue Following button and it will unfollow them o They will not receive a notification that you ve unfollowed them, but they will no longer see Follows You on your organization s profile page etc. If you don t want to risk offending a user by unfollowing them, you can mute them instead. This means that you won t see any of their tweets in your timeline, but you ll still get a notification any time they mention you, retweet you, etc. o On the user s profile page, click the gear icon, then choose Mute o They will not receive a notification that you ve muted them If someone s abusive, block them. They will not receive a notification, but your account will become invisible to them. Contact Culture Works: Karen Maner Communications & Project Coordinator , ext. 204

How to Set-Up a Basic Twitter Page

How to Set-Up a Basic Twitter Page 1. Go to http://twitter.com and find the sign up box, or go directly to https://twitter.com/signup 1 2. Enter your full name, email address, and a password 3. Click Sign