5 Best Practices to Maximize Your Participation in a Twitter Chat

 

 

It seems that there is a Twitter chat for everything these days. The problem, of course, is that the Twitter platform is terrible for having a coherent exchange of ideas. However, once you get used to it, you often get a lot out of the chats. If nothing else you meet some great new contacts on Twitter. But you still may be wondering how to participate in a Twitter chat. (If you are a pro skip to the 5 Best Practices).

 

In order to participate you need a Twitter account and some kind of search program to keep up with the action. I usually add a search column in my TweetDeck program with the hashtag to keep up. You can also use the Twitter Search function - just enter the hashtag as a search term.

What is a hashtag you ask? A hashtag is some text that is preceded by the pound sigh (#hashtag) appended onto the end of the Twitter message that allows a group of people, who aren’t necessarily following each other, to engage in a conversation.

 

A nifty service called “What the Hashtag” has definitions of many of the hashtags that are in common use. You can also check out a recap and transcript of the most recent chat about SEO and blogs as an example of what goes on in these things.

 

Here are some of my favorite chats:

 

BLOGCHAT: On Sunday nights at 8-9 CT there is #blogchat with @MackCollier, author of the Viral Garden blog

 

HEALTHCARE COMMUNICATION: or if you are into health care you can chat with #hcsm with @danamlewis also on Sunday nights from 8-9 CT

 

JOURNCHAT: Monday nights is #journchat from 8-10CT with @PRsarahevans, author of a blog by the same name, PRSarahEvans

 

PR 2.0 CHAT: On Wednesday nights is #pr20chat with @BethHarte from 7-8 CT, she is author of the Harte of Marketing blog

5 Twitter Chat Best Practices

1. Relevance: Only use the hashtag on posts that directly pertain to the topic set out by the moderator. If you start a side conversation with someone in the chat drop the hashtag
2. Spam Free: Do not flog thy wares or ask people to support you in a competition during the chat, this is bad form
3. Links: Feel free to share links to your own posts if they directly pertain to the topic at hand, but be judicious in how many you give
4. More Links: Link to other’s work and make recommendations to others in the chat to follow people that have expertise in the area being discussed, they might even show up to participate if you call them out
5. Retweet Sparingly: Only Retweet, or resend posts that would be of broad interest to your followers. Be sure to add enough context to these Retweets so as not to be confusing to those not participating in the chat

Share Your Best Practices and Tools

 

Now it is your turn, share your tips for participating in a chat. Here are some questions to get started.

 

· What tools and techniques do you use when you participate in a chat?

· What are your favorite chats?

· What would you add or change about the Twitter Best Practices?

 

Image provided by Shutterstock.com

Remembrance: Memorial Day 2009

Attitude Adjustment

 

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you deal with it.

-Charles Swindoll

 

Credits:

Image provided by Shutterstock, a royalty-free stock photo service

Quote via via @EstherSteinfeld

CDC Shares Its Web Analytics: Shows Effectiveness of Social Media Projects

 

Through an article on the Huffington Post by Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig's List (whom I interviewed late last year), I found out that the CDC has opened up the analytics for the CDC Website to the public.

 

This is interesting from a number of perspectives:

1. Political: Open government is not just talk
2. Content: There is really useful data about what people are looking for that can be harnessed by the health care industry
3. Measurement: It opens up some great ideas for people looking for ways to measure their online communication
4. Best Practice: It gives a comprehensive look at their online and social media campaign as well as actionable data on how well each tactic is working.

 

There are many ideas to mine out of what the CDC is doing. Take a look at the most popular pages on the CDC Website. Not surprisingly a lot them center around healthy weight, traveler's health and sexually transmitted diseases:

 

 

With data like these the CDC can make course corrections and provide more relevant content. Additionally, we all can learn from the data and get an idea of how other organizations are approaching online communication.

 

What do you think about the CDC doing this? Is it a good idea? What can we all learn from it?

Media Profile: Journalists and Social Media Robert Quigley, Statesman.com

Robert Quigley is the Internet editor for statesman.com and Austin360.com.  His job is to make sure news is getting onto the sites quickly and as completely as possible. He works with various newsroom departments to push for content.  The other part of his job is to coordinate the Austin American-Statesman's participation in social media.

 

Robert is very active in the Austin social media community

Robert was behind a set of awards that honored people who were notable in their use of social media.

 

He co-writes a blog, Old Media New Tricks, that focuses on how journalism is changing.

 

Robert is indicative of a new kind of media professional that lives online and serves news in byte sized pieces.

 

1. What is your job at the Statesman, and how do you see social media changing that job? Obviously, the Web changed the way the newspaper does business. We switched from having a midnight deadline for having all our material ready to needing news updated around the clock. My job is to make sure we stay on top of that. My other main responsibility is to be our social media coordinator. When I started in this position in January 2007, that mainly meant working with our community of reader bloggers that we host on our site. As time has gone on, that has obviously changed greatly with the rise of mainstream acceptance of social media.
   
2. You once participated in squashing some rumors about an alleged "shooter" on a roof of a bar in Austin, this didn’t turn out to be the case. Can you us what happened? Social media is fantastic tool, and it does give a lot of people a chance to be reporters. Anyone who witnesses an event can potentially get his or her observations out to the masses quickly. We had an incident in Austin in April in which police initially said that there was a man, possibly with a gun, on top of a downtown bar. I was monitoring Twitter that night through Twitter Search and saw some of the eyewitness reports - and a lot of speculation. We had a reporter head to the scene pretty quickly who had access to police. It turns out the guy was not a threat at all. We were able to kill the rumors (including that the guy had hostages) that were floating around Twitter through verification and access. I wrote a column about that for Media Bullseye.
   
3. Which social networks do you use professionally, if any? I spend most of my time on Twitter for work. I am the voice behind the @statesman account, and I am also in charge of a few automated accounts (weather, traffic, etc). I'm the "Twitter guy" here at work, so I also help set up, train and coach our staff. I also help manage @mediatricks with Daniel Honigman, my blog's co-author and the guy behind @ColonelTribune. Outside of Twitter, I am the community manager for an old-school form of social networking - a bulletin board. I am the top community manager for Hookem, our Longhorns bulletin board.
   
4. Do you use social networks personally, and do you keep these accounts separate or combined? I use Twitter (as @robquig). I know a lot of people use one account for business and personal, but since the @statesman is a corporate account, I don't think that would work. I also use Facebook and LinkedIn and have dabbled with StumbleUpon and Digg.
5. Which social network do you find most useful and why? You've probably guessed it by now, but I'm a believer in Twitter as a great tool for journalists. It allows us to interact with our community in ways never before possible, all while sharing news and building our brand. It also does bring in decent page views to our sites. The interaction is what I like best. People ask me questions all the time, like, "Why are there fire trucks surrounding a building?" or "What is there to do this weekend?" and I try to answer them all. People really appreciate that. In return, I get 3 to 5 usable news tips a week through Twitter, a community of loyal users who really appreciate our efforts to reach out -- and new unique users checking out our sites.
   
6. What are some of the ways that you use social networks? I'm not really a reporter, but we have more than 40 staffers on Twitter, and they use it to gain tips, garner feedback do source work, etc. Personally, I have used it during big news events to gather user-generated content and to gain tips (which I generally pass along to assigning editors and reporters). A good example of how I use it: When we had a freak snow shower this past winter, I asked people on Twitter to share their pics and videos. I received dozens of photos, mainly through Twitpic, that we used in a weather gallery. We also led our home page (statesman.com) with some of those pictures from Twitter. We've done that many times with various events. I ask for permission to run the pics and then credit them (like "Photo by @kamichat, via Twitter).
   
7. What is the most interesting story you have found due to connections or pitches you received through a social network? I have passed along some great tips I have received from Twitter that turned out to be good stories. Most have been small, local-impact stories. That's good, though, because to be a comprehensive local news site, having those extra tips really helps.
   
8. What is the biggest faux pas that you have experienced on a social network by someone looking to get you to cover a story? I get pitched by PR folks about five times a week on the @statesman account. I do get annoyed when people DM me demanding that I tweet about their company's new product or tell us that we have to cover something. It's awkward, and I often have a hard time explaining why I can't send out a tweet to our 8,500 followers about their products or services. Even a retweet by me looks like the Statesman endorses something, which may not be desired.
   
   Although I'm very personable on @statesman, I'm also very careful about what I post. Being a corporate media account on a social network only works when we play within the rules of social networks: give relevant information, don't spam, listen and interact with your followers, etc. Considering I'm trying my best to keep things relevant and interesting, posting randomly about your new product that the vast majority of our followers don't care about would be a faux pas. It's worse when I actually know and like the person doing the pitching because it is even more awkward to say no. Please, if you must pitch, know ahead of time what I normally post -- and ask nicely.
   
9. What is the ideal way to get your attention in a social network? I watch all @replies and DMs on Twitter pretty carefully. I'm also a Twitter Search addict, so just mentioning the word "Statesman" will likely also get my attention ;) If you have what you think would be a good pitch, you can DM or @reply or e-mail me. Since I don't report and I'm not really even an assignments editor, I'll relay your information to the right place within the newsroom.
   
10. What other reporters or media folk do you think are doing this well. Daniel Honigman, @ColonelTribune is my blog's co-author and a really smart guy who has a mind for PR as well. Also, I think Omar Gallaga @omarg is one of the best.

 

Contact Robert Quigley:

Follow him on Twitter @Stateman for news updates (great for getting news on your mobile)

 

Check out the other profiles in the series on the Media Profile page.

BlogMonday: The Blog Roll is Dead? Au contraire, Long Live the Blogroll

 

A few years ago there was a trend afoot to kill the blogroll. Deep links in context were better, or so the argument went.

 

I could see their point.

However, I never killed off my blogroll because it is valuable for my readers. In fact, my stats show that people DO look at the blogs in my sidebar. In my new design, the blogs also have a clip from their last post and the date when they last published.

 

I do take it to heart that it is better to explain WHY someone appears in that esteemed list. Not only that, I think that the popularity of Twitter has really hampered the development of new ideas in favor of quick thoughts.  It has quite simply sucked up all of our thinking time.

 

Last week I was challenged by Mark Story to join in on what he is calling Blog Monday. He was kind enough to feature this blog last week and challenged each of us to do the same for blogs we love. I am going to take my blogroll four at a time for the next few weeks and tell you why they are my favorites:

 

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

Beth Kanter is well known for her energy and her dedication to people who are using social media for non-profit causes. I first "met" Beth in 2007 when she started to activity comment and link to this blog, I soon found that her content was consistently interesting and enlightening. She is also very creative. Her posts often have a new way of looking at old problems.

 

The Buzz Bin

Geoff Livingston is a good friend, but that is not why I love his blog. Geoff is one of the most consistent bloggers I know, and everything on his blog has an eye toward service. He has an editorial plan and it shows. Sometimes he is even a little edgy. If you want to know what is important in the marketing and public relations social media sphere, you need to be reading Geoff's blog.

 

a shel of my former self

Shel Holtz is the popular co-host of the podcast For Immediate Release, which is an easy way to stay up-to-date with new media/social media in just two hours a week. He is also a prolific author of several books on social media and podcasting. His blog is an in-depth look at social media from a communications perspective. You can count on it to be insightful and rich in observation. He was already a legend when I started blogging in 2005, and he still always takes time out to help me out whenever I ask.

 

Global Neighbourhoods

Shel Israel (different from Shel Holtz above) is the well known blogger that authored Naked Conversations with Robert Scoble and who is currently authoring a second book called Twitterville, which is on preorder at Amazon.com. I like Shel because he looks for the diamonds and writes about them. He is an unabashed social media evangelist, but he is looking for the real-world examples. His site has is the richest in case studies on the web.

Government 2.0: Social Media and Networking Enter a Golden Age

I am speaking to several government clients this week and have been doing a deep dive into the use of social media in government.  I have been pleasantly surprised by the growing number of government agencies that are using social media, and using it well.

 

One of my favorite blogs I found during the search is the Transportation Safety Administration's Evolution of Security blog. It's funny and engaging, though there are plenty of determined detractors in the comment stream - which often tops 100 per post.

 

Over the past few months government agencies have been launching social networking profiles with varying degrees of success. For instance, the CDC used its CDCEmergency profile on Twitter to keep people up-to-date on the swine flu (H1N1) as it unfolded earlier this month. The profile quickly gained followers and now has nearly 140,000 followers. As many "emergency" channels are want to do, the profile merely sends out information with no meaningful "conversation" taking place. It's one of teh biggest gripes I have with government social media channels.

 

Part of the reason for the more recent social media land grab is that the commander in chief has made it a priority.

 

On May 6, 2009, a Time article about the White House social networking reported that on U.S. President Barack Obama's first full day in office on Jan. 21, he signed an Executive Order calling for all departments and agencies to "establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration."

 

Despite your political leanings, this new administration will be studied in future generations as being the first that made good use of new two-way channels of digital communication.

 

One example of this is the way in which the administration is soliciting input. The White House announced on its blog that its Office of the Public Liaison would be renamed to the Office of Public Engagement and would be tasked with an "updated" mission.

 

I assume that this new office will be tasked with more projects like the Citizen's Briefing Book (pdf), which emanated from Change.gov. This website operated during the transition to solicit ideas and allow people to vote on them in a Digg-like format. In the end 125,000 users submitted over 44,000 ideas and cast over 1.4 million votes.

 

Government 2.0: Strategies and Tactics

View more presentations from Kami Huyse.

Mosaic by Picture Mosaics

When the Cost of Blogging Goes Beyond a Mere Business Model

 

While here in the US the discussion around journalism centers on its broken business model and how it will adapt to new media, around the world some are paying a much higher cost.

 

The Committee to Protect Journalists says that as of December there were 125 journalists in jail around the globe, with 56 of those online journalists. The number continues to grow. For instance, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi is now serving a trumped up sentence in Iran,

 

In many of the more repressive governments, like China, the only way to disseminate unbiased journalism is online, through blogs and other means.

 

When reading an Op-Ed this morning about this growing problem, I was introduced to the Global Network Initiative. Google, Yahoo and Mocrosoft are all members of this group:

 

[GNI is] a multi-stakeholder group of companies, civil society organizations (including human rights and press freedom groups), investors and academics spent two years negotiating and creating a collaborative approach to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in the ICT sector, and have formed an Initiative to take this work forward

As part of this group these companies promise to not be complicit in the oppression of bloggers.

 

It gave me pause to keep perspective. In some places of the world, the cost to be a blogger is freedom.

 

What are your thoughts?

Media Profile: Journalists and Social Media Laura Lorek, San Antonio Express News

 

Laura Lorek is a senior writer for the San Antonio Express-News. She covers business and technology and authors the Tech Clicks blog. She is also a power user of Twitter and uses it in her reporting.

 

I think that the ability to effectively use social media and networking are critical for today’s journalist. Laura shares some insightful thoughts about how the gathering and reporting of news is changing. She also outlines how she uses different social networking tools for different tasks. She also talks about some of the ways she looks for stories online.

1. Which social networks do you use professionally? Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, MySpace (very little), Friend Feed (seldom) and Second Life
   
2. Do you also use social networks personally, and do you keep these accounts separate or combined? Both – personal and business. Trained journalists act as observers of the news and remain neutral and unbiased and they do not to participate in it. But social networks and the Internet have changed the way news gets disseminated through bloggers and citizen journalists. It's also changing the way newsrooms and traditional journalists operate.  We need to be more accessible to the people we cover and social networks make that possible.
   
3. Which social network do you find most useful and why? Twitter because it’s in real-time and allows for a lot of interactivity. Twitter adds value to my reporting because it enables me to reach more readers and potential sources and I'm exposed to new ideas constantly. I often ask questions on Twitter to find sources for stories I’m working on with immediate deadlines. Twitter is also a place to generate fresh ideas. It's like a massive college coffeehouse filled with some geniuses along side stoners, jocks, losers, lurkers, comedians, entertainers, musicians, artists, business executives, employees, entrepreneurs, students and innovators. It's the best place to hang out. It takes me back to my college days when people actually discussed important issues along with mundane everyday stuff. Twitter is a powerful, empowering place.
   
   I also like Facebook because it keeps me in touch with colleagues around the country. LinkedIn is great for networking , career building and job searching. I also like the question and answer section and I like to read the updates from people in my network. Tools like RSS feeds, Technorati, Facebook and Twitter help us find specialized topics in the avalanche of information produced daily.
   
4. What are some of the ways that you use social networks in your reporting? When a reporter needed to find people buying the new iPhone, I sent out a Tweet and immediately found a guy standing in line at the Northstar Mall Apple store waiting in line. He had his old phone with him and he sent me his phone number and we interviewed him for the story. Another time I needed to find people shopping online for Cyber Monday, I sent out a tweet and found a guy whose wife planned to do all their Christmas shopping online. They were skiing on Black Friday – one of the busiest shopping days of the year – in New Mexico, far from the crowded shopping malls. They actually called me on their cell phone from the ski slopes. Another time, the health reporter who sits next to me wanted to find someone who had lost more than 100 pounds for a New Year’s feature on weight loss. I sent out a Tweet and found a guy in San Antonio who lost more than 100 pounds while training for a marathon. Recently I did a story on stress affecting people who are in jobs and laid off recently and I found five of the sources quoted in the story from Twitter.
   
   One of the main things I’ve noticed is these are people who have not been in the paper before. These are fresh sources and not the tried and true sources reporters often call after developing relationships with them over the years. Lately, when I don’t know something, I find myself turning to Twitter to ask my network of experts to help me. It’s a wonderful resource and I’m grateful for it. I’m also finding myself relying on Twitter’s built in search engine (which I’m testing) to track various topics including San Antonio, technology, journalism, social media and more. Aside from Twitter, I’ve used LinkedIn to send messages to sources and to reach people. I also keep track of local events taking place through notices on various technology groups I belong to on Facebook.
   
5. Do your editors encourage your use of social media in your reporting? My editors encourage the use of new technology in the newsroom and we're constantly experimenting with new tools. I also blog, do video stories, dabble in Second Life and I've tried out podcasting. I used to regularly appear on TV to do a five minute business report on Sundays with KENS until our partnership expired in January and I often do radio interviews. So reporting in different mediums is not new.
   
6. What is the most interesting story you have ever covered due to connections or pitches you received through a social network? It’s hard to pick just one. I’ve made so many contacts through social networks. Those contacts have led to dozens of stories. One of my favorite, though, is on co-working or groups of freelance workers who gather together in San Antonio to work at various locations. Another story I did was on unconferences in San Antonio including Startup Weekend San Antonio, Barcamp San Antonio, Podcamp San Antonio and more. I’m currently working on a half dozen stories on the economy and I’m communicating with sources and finding new people to interview through Twitter.
   
7. What is the biggest faux pas that you have experienced on a social network by someone looking to get you to cover a story? A PR woman who sent me several direct messages, e-mails and called me to cover a blog post item on a new contract her company had landed. And sometimes people post things that I wish I never read about them. One guy retweeted something I posted on Twitter with a snarky and mean remark. I may have misinterpreted it and that’s one of the problems with social networks they can breed too much familiarity. Another guy I respected posted something on his personal blog that gave me a whole different view of him and I no longer enjoy chatting with him because I keep thinking about that post. It was really creepy.
   
8. What is the ideal way to get your attention in a social network?
   Be smart, interesting and funny.

Here is a recent article that Laura wrote about how she uses Twitter for her reporting.

Monday Skills: Develop a Language of Symbols to Unleash Creativity

 

Lately I haven't felt all that creative. In fact, with the crushing responsibilities brought on by returning to work after the birth of a new baby (#3) I have felt as pressed as a flower in a dictionary.

 

One way to break out of a creative slump is to visualize a project or a plan. I like to map out my speeches, and sometimes even my blog posts, in my notebook. Recently, I also downloaded FreeMind, a (free) tool that allows you to make and share mindmaps.

 

This weekend I was unexpectedly confronted with my own slump when I attended a class for my son's upcoming baptism. I was handed a drawing book and told that I would have to illustrate the ceremony in the book. I realized it was a long time since I had participated in an art project, though I do help my 5-year-old from time to time.

 

It got me to thinking about how I could bring some life and creativity back to my work and break out of my linear "to do" list. It also made me think of the role this blog could play in helping to do that.

 

With those thoughts swirling, I ran across the following presentation by Kelsey Ruger of the Moleskin (and also a fellow Houstonian). What was new to me in this presentation was the idea of developing a language of creative symbols (see pp. 35, 36, 41), and use them in your mindmapping exercises.

 

How do you get your creative mind working? Let's share and make the world a more creative place. I am off to pick up some watercolors for my project.

Visual and Creative Thinking:What We Learned From Peter Pan and Willy Wonka

View more presentations from Kelsey Ruger.

Crushed Paper Photo by Marcus Lim