By James Mott

 

Could your business benefit from Twitter? This article looks at the social media phenomenon Twitter and uncovers the facts, misconceptions and opportunities for businesses working in the heritage sector.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a social network that connects you with millions of people & businesses worldwide. It is particularly popular in the UK, with London having more twitterers than any other city in the world.

The concept is simple: In 140-characters or less, you communicate ‘what you are doing’, which is instantly viewed by the people who ‘follow’ your updates or ‘tweets’. You can also ‘follow’ the tweets of other users you choose to follow.

Common Misconceptions

It is commonly thought that Twitter is largely used by teenagers or people following the famous, notably Barack Obama or Stephen Fry. But this is only one part of the story. As a medium, Twitter above all attracts a wide range of media, businesses, organisations and professionals.

“I’ll be on it all day and I haven’t got time for it”. The truth is, if you posted tweets on twitter all day people would get fed up of you very quickly!” You’ll find that there are easily identifiable times when twitter is busy – it is quite acceptable to post tweets say 3 times a day in 10min slots.

Who’s on Twitter?

The answer is surprising. Looking at the sector there are many heritage organisations like English heritage and the National Trust, professional bodies such as RICS, RIBA, along with a growing number of heritage and conservation professionals.

Things you can do with twitter

ü Ask questions and receive answers

ü Discover helpful links and information

ü As an expert, offer your solutions to others problems

ü Post content & weblinks to drive traffic to your website or blog

ü Connect with colleagues & share your own thoughts, views, news etc.

ü Connect and/or monitor actual or potential clients, customers & competitors

ü Monitor what people are saying about your business, organisation or product(s)

ü Keep up to date with the latest news, events and on developments in your profession and field.

Getting started.

Unless you are the one using twitter, it’s essential that you choose someone trustworthy who can regularly tweet and who will has the ability and integrity to represent your business. Sit down with them and discuss how much time will be spent, content of tweets and agree any no-go areas, before anything is posted live on the web!

a)    Sign up to Twitter.com

b)    Select a user friendly platform i.e Tweetdeck or Twirl(see below for links)

c)     Find people and follow 10 people per day for the 1^st week

d)    Set aside time to post regularly to start building a following & learn the protocol

10 Do's and don’ts

Engaging the twitter community is about being accepted as genuine, caring, authentic and interesting – it’s not about being overly controversial, negative, rude or blatantly selling, which is a sure fire way of alienating yourself. Here are 10 helpful do's and don’ts:

1.     Do be honest, courteous and reply to others posts

2.     Do decide how often you will tweet and be consistent

3.     Do take an interest in what others are talking about and comment on it

4.     Do show an avatar and bio – it builds trust when people can see who they're engaging with

5.     Do choose someone trustworthy to post tweets – they will be representing your business!

 

6.     Don’t blatantly try to sell

7.     Don’t advertise for followers

8.     Don’t follow more people than you have followers

9.     Don’t witter on – no-one’s interested in verbal diarrhoea

10. Don’t moan, attack, slander or bitch about people- it’s the easiest way to lose respect

Applications

Most people use a third party applications, the most popular being Tweetdeck and HootSuite which have the advantage of displaying tweets in a clear and manageable format. As an example let’s look at Tweetdeck which enables you to action a range of tasks at the touch of a button.

Tweet: Simply insert your 140(or less) characters including links and hit return

ReTweet: Sends a copy of one of your follower’s tweets for all of your followers to read

Reply: Respond to a particular tweet

Direct Message: Allows you to send a tweet to a user that others can’t view

Shortening URL’s

Twitter allows you 140 characters of text which can include links to anywhere on the web.

Often these URL’s are very long, so you will find the need to shorten them to allow you to post text to accompany them. There are numerous ways of doing this including tinyurl.com, is.gd, bit.ly or snurl.

To get started I suggest bit.ly as it is easy to use and enables you to track/get stats on your links. You can quickly compress URL’s on the site or simply allow tweetdeck to do it for you automatically (see above)

Finding Friends/Contacts to follow

In Conclusion

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