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Re: New Tricks: Break the Twitterfeed habit

JoeRuiz — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:54:27 -0000

Oh, no doubt that's still a problem with using it for promotional rather than conversational, but there's nothing too wrong with that. Sure, promo your good stuff. I wouldn't promo everything, but that's just me.

I would suggest using it to find stories/videos/etc. of interest to your student body and other readers and tweet that, too.

Working at a TV station, I see a few of our tweeters promoting their story on the next show. Well, that's all fine and good, but the only people following them so far are other station employees and few others. They already know what you're working on or are already set to tune in or read the accompanying story/video on the Website.

I guess my point is, don't just promote, but engage as well.

Re: New Tricks: Break the Twitterfeed habit

JoeRuiz — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:40:38 -0000

We've got about 15 different personal accounts for our staffers (anchor, reporters, photogs, editor, producers, Web staff), but it also depends on them using Twitter (again, my point earlier) for conversation.

I like Twitter for the conversation it can generate, others not so much. I don't care if it is my lead anchor tweeting. I just don't care what they had for dinner (all the time with no discussion).

Re: New Tricks: Break the Twitterfeed habit

JoeRuiz — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:37:30 -0000

I can honestly see both sides to this argument. I do especially like offering widgets with RSS feeds (even Twitter-based), and while it does provide a service, I believe Twitter is still inherently conversation-based.

I'm not going to say some people want the interaction or crowdsourcing, but I've found more people receptive to those ideas than not. Working at a local TV station Website in a town not so tech-savvy, I've found our discussions with our followers has been beneficial. I would say between the three media orgs using Twitter, there's probably about 400 uniques following all three [@mysa, @woaitv and @ksatnews (my site's)]. @woaitv is primarily a feed with little unique conversation built-in while the other two are solely users manning the tweets. On ours, our two tweeters are identified in the bio by our personal accounts (which is my names or an easy variance of my executive producer).

Sure, @CNN has its value and its 14,000 followers get a good use from it, but it's a worldwide media organization. I'm never going to have 14,000 followers @ksatnews, but the diehards that do follow us provide information when we need it. I can tweet about a fire on the other side of the county and get some feedback. I don't beg them to help, they choose to do so, and the personal relationship with our readers is why I'm using Twitter. I need, and will ultimately benefit, from connecting in another way than we do already.

I especially like Brandon's thought about offering the information for how the reader wishes to use it, but I believe using Twitter for conversation, and not solely offering a RSS Twitterfeed (especially for your smaller outfits) is more beneficial when it comes to keeping your audience tied to your product.

It's slowly starting to work for us, and I know it will reflect in my site's numbers even more once we start promoting our Twitter presence on our site (late this week or early next).

Good discussion, though. That benefits us all.