Everyone should download their tables doc linked in the final book chapters blog post. In addition, I will have a few “can you help, please” documents at the bottom of this post. (Some of those will be people who are unable to do this over the weekend, like Paul, who will be on an airplane flying to Seattle.)

There are a few pre-reqs.

• A copy of Word or a word processor that will open Word documents
• A screen capture utility. For Mac folks, I highly recommend Skitch; for PC folks, JingProject. Both are free. If you are using Aviary, be advised that the “full page” capture feature does not work reliably with TweetStats; you should simply take two screen shots.
• With Skitch, be sure to check the “export at original size” tick-box.
• Change the default capture/save file format to .png
• Set your computer monitor resolution to at least 1280×800 (higher resolutions acceptable)

Process

• Download your table document (it is a .docx file – shout if you need plain .doc) — there is one for each student. I’ve changed the table format a little bit, so please replace any prior downloads.
• Let your browser take your full screen real estate.
• Open five tabs on your browser: one each for TweetStats, TwitterGrader, Klout, FollowCost and TwitterCounter
• For each Twitter profile in your table, run the analysis on each analytic tool.
• Make a full screen capture of each tab. Please use this naming convention:
  • TweetStats: you will need to scroll and make two captures - TS_twitterhandle_1.png (1st screen), TS_twitterhandle_2.png (2nd screen) – example1, example2
  • TwitterGrader: TG_twitterhandle.png - example
  • Klout: please capture the number and the profile type – K_twitterhandle.png - example
  • FollowCost: FC_twitterhandle.png - example – FC gives you the average T/day for the last 100 tweets
  • TwitterCounter: select followers for the last 3 mos - TC_twitterhandle.png   – example
• Double check to make sure that you have indeed successfully made a screen grab (failure to do this step hobbled my intern fall quarter).
• Populate the three tables with data from the analytics:
  • TS – average daily, @replies, RTs, interface
  • TG – total followers, following, tweets, TG grade and TG ranking
  • K – score and profile type
  • FC – the average daily rate for last 100 tweets
• When you are finished, put all screen grabs and the revised Word doc in a folder, zip it, and either upload it to Catalyst or mail it to me (uw.edu address, please) via YouSendIt.com.

If you’re still feeling friendly towards the book, consider processing one of the “please help” tables below. If you choose to do this, PLEASE say so in a comment — which means first check the comments to see if help is still needed!

Thanks a million!

Addendum : Help Needed With

• Food Banks tables and screen captures (d0c)
• Food Service tables and screen captures (d0c)
• Class speakers – 01 (d0c)
• Class speakers – 02 (d0c)

This profile was written for the University of Washington Twitter Book according to a Case Study Template.

West Seattle Blog is a hyper local community Blog that has achieved national recognition and serves its readers updates from “the hood” 24/7/365. The community voice has found its way onto Twitter.

Out of 100 Tweets:

35 @reply

4 Hashtags

11 mentions, 6 RTs

16 links out of which 5 go back to the WestSeattleBlog itself (“self-promotional”)

Date data downloaded : Oct 21st – Oct 25th
Industry sector : News Media

Twitter ID : @westseattleblog
Followers : 5,106
Following : 1,950
Ratio followers/following : 2,61: 1

Number posts : 12,513
Account created : Nov 22nd, 2007

Bio:

West Seattle’s first & only 24/7/365 news, info, discussion service. News tip? 206-293-6302, 24/7.

URLS:
Twitter : http://twitter.com/westseattleblog
Bio link : http://westseattleblog.com/
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/people/WS-Blog/715950012
MySpace : http://www.myspace.com/westseattleblog
LinkedIn : none
Org Blog : http://westseattleblog.com/blog
Org website home : http://westseattleblog.com
Other :http://www.flickr.com/groups/889182@N25

http://twitter.com/westseattleblog/status/5070935783

http://twitter.com/westseattleblog/status/5072839837

http://twitter.com/westseattleblog/status/5078911451

http://twitter.com/westseattleblog/status/5081647903

About

West Seattle Blog has been immensely successful as a community Blog, starting with a storm in 2006 that caused power outages in the city and left people wondering about what was going on. Ever since, they have been providing West Seattle with news from the neighborhood, listening to the police scanner and going to town hall meetings and other events like other Journalists do. The bigger stories, you will find on the Blog, but WSB’s Twitter gives you an inside scoop of what’s happening – like a live broadcast. WSB is often knee-deep in their stories and having an active conversation with their followers or giving out updates on what is happening within the minute. The price: Only those who are part of the community will actually be able to follow all conversations. Those who only occasionally catch one of WSB’s Tweets might miss the gist of a story.

Analysis

A. General
(A.1) Background: The background is plain and blue. Not personalized at all! No branding or communication, transparency or anything. Clearly, they don’t think it is important!
(A.2) Avatar: A sunset at Alki Beach in Seattle. Those who visit the Blog MAY recognize the image, but it is hardly an eye catcher. However, it is as much of a “brand identity” as the WestSeattleBlog currently has.
(A.3) Bio: West Seattle’s first & only 24/7/365 news, info, discussion service. News tip? 206-293-6302, 24/7.
(A.4) Transparency: The WSB Twitter account is not transparent as to who is tweeting. There is no Information in the Bio or the background. On the about page of the Blog, Tracy Record and Patrick Sand are introduced. This is not the case on Twitter
(A.5) Bio Link: To the Blog, of course!

B. Tweets
(B.1) Replies: Over a third of the Tweets analyzed were personal replies and this does not include mentions! West Seattle Blog is a conversation, truly! This is how they develop community among their followers. Looking at the timeline, followers will feel invited to participate. However, some people consider this “chatty”.
(B.2) ReTweets: ReTweets are frequent often neither changed nor commented. The account thus becomes more of a channel than a moderating and value adding platform. However, the RTs themselves usually add value to an already ongoing conversation or start a new one.
(B.3) DM requests: I did not see requests for DMs – a lot of the communication obviously happens via the timeline.
(B.4) Hashtags: Used sparsely and almost exclusively for #followfriday
(B.5) favorite Tweets:

http://twitter.com/westseattleblog/status/5070898883

C. Questions/Suggestions
(C.1) Questions unearthed during analysis: Why do we not get to know Tracy and Patrick as people, even though they tweet in the first person?

(C.2) Suggestions for improvement:

D. Analytic Services

Twitter Grader: 99.95 (out of 100)

E. Conclusion

West Seattle Blog’s Twitter account seems like a lot of chit chat. However, it retains relevancy and invites people to participate in evolving stories. These can be quality Journalism stories that Record and Sand started on the Blog or “simple” news updates coming from the account managers or the contributing readers. The account is a platform or network on a hyper local level, dedicated to deliver news.

This concept seems to be what binds people closely to the account and the Blog in general and thus other shortcomings like the lack of transparency or the chaotic timeline are excusable. Those who are interested in the conversation already know who’s behind the scenes and what the conversation is about: West Seattle, of course!

This profile was written for the University of Washington Twitter Book.

Monica Guzman is a Journalist and Blogger in Seattle. She writes the BigBlog, a Blog of the Seattle PI, a paper that successfully exists online, after its print version collapsed and was discontinued in 2009. Monica doesn’t do the job, she is the job – so many of her updates seem very personal, yet highly relevant!

Out of 100 Tweets:

37 @reply

7 Hashtags

63 mentions, 14 RTs

30 links out of which 8 go back to the PI “self-promotional” + 3 other PI-promotional tweets.

Date data downloaded : Oct 5th – Oct 20th
Industry sector : News Media

Twitter ID : @moniguzman
Followers : 6207
Following : 3903
Ratio followers/following : 1,59 : 1

Number posts : 2793
Account created : Apr 04th, 2007

Bio:

A blogging journalist with a passion. For blog headlines, follow @bigblog

URLS:
Twitter : http://twitter.com/moniguzman
Bio link : http://seattlepi.com/bigblog
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/moniguzman
MySpace : none
LinkedIn : none
Org Blog : http://seattlepi.com/bigblog
Org website home : http://www.seattlepi.com
Other :

http://twitter.com/moniguzman/status/4895879678

About

Monica Guzman is the main drive for the awatd winning BigBlog of Seattle’s former print medium – The Seattle Post Intelligencer. She writes about technology, breaking news and stories with local relevance. Once a week she holds an open Big Blog meeting at a Seattle coffeeshop inviting not only her followers on Twitter, but also renouned speakers and especially social media professionals.

http://twitter.com/moniguzman/status/4715156419

Analysis

A. General
(A.1) Background: Monica has a sense for fashion. Her background image shows her speaking – in a turquoise (?) dress. The background color matches her dress – of course!
(A.2) Avatar: With a more lively picture, Monica adds a playful tone to her professional background picture
(A.3) Bio: A journalist with a passion – that really sums her up!
(A.4) Transparency: There is nothing that is NOT transparent about Monica. She lays it all out
(A.5) Bio Link: To the Blog, of course, she’s its main contributor!

B. Tweets
(B.1) Replies: Monica always has conversations on Twitter not only with her followers, but also her closer friends.
(B.2) ReTweets: The rule is: always add relevance and content! She does!
(B.3) DM requests: I didn’t find any, but I saw her giving out her Email adress instead
(B.4) Hashtags: Used sparsely and almost exclusively for #followfriday
(B.5) favorite Tweets:

http://twitter.com/moniguzman/status/4693253165

(B.6) Narrative summary:

Monica is an active sharer and she shares with us: her life! However, she manages to make every tweet interesting and relevant by setting them in a greater context. The tweets never lose the personal touch though, which gives an almost voyeuristic feeling when reading her stream.

C. Questions/Suggestions
(C.1) Questions unearthed during analysis: Where does she get all that motivation and power?

(C.2) Suggestions for improvement: If you are not on her radar already, it is a little hard to be noticed by Monica, because she follows over 3000 people. (Update: Monica respinded within an hour of me tweeting about the post, mentioning her. Seems she’s monitoring her messages more closely than expected.) She also doesn’t appear to be using the ressources her giant network is providing her. I have not seen any crowdsourcing efforts from her.

Creating a stream for the big blog meetups would be a fantastic gimmick!

D. Analytic Services

Twitter Grader: 99.8 (out of 100)

E. Conclusion

Monica is a great example of how Journalists can use Twitter both to brand their own personality and how they can use the platform to create a community. She has weekly BigBlog meetings to engage with her online community and allow anyone to join and contribute to the effort. She has managed to make herself a name in the business and whoever gets involved in web journalism in Seattle will not be able to pass her.

Her stream is a mixture of local news and services and her own life, which is presented in a very interesting way, connecting personal experiences with the every day of Seattlelites, which draws the attention of those who do not know the person Monica Guzman. Thus, she is a nice example for how Journalists can use Twitter not only to reconnect to their readers locally, but also connect to people she might not otherwise reach.

King5Seattle is an NBC affiliated broadcasting Station in Seattle. But instead of broadcasting a newsfeed, their stream is a flow of conversations – with relevance to their audience!

King5Seattle - has what national broadcasters don't have, yet - personality!

Out of 100 Tweets:

1 @reply

8 Hashtags

60 mentions (RT& “via”)

86 links out of which 61 led back to King5 or other NBC affiliates (passively “self-promotional”). Many others include stories from other (news) organizations or scenic pictures made by locals. 10 tweets actively promoting the station

Date data downloaded : Aug 13th – Aug 17th
Industry sector : News Media

Twitter ID : @king5Seattle
Followers : 5 988
Following : 1 934
Ratio followers/following : 3,1 : 1

Number posts : 5 207
Account created : Jan 23rd, 2009

Bio:

King5Seattle Bio - Very transparent!

News, weather, traffic and more for Seattle & all of Western Washington. NBC . We’re also @king5sports, @king5olympics and @GetJesse

URLS:
Twitter : http://twitter.com/king5seattle
Bio link : http://www.king5.com/
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=king5&init=quick#/KING5News?ref=search&sid=1498038121.1353242273..1
MySpace : none
LinkedIn : none
Org Blog : http://blogs.king5.com/
Org website home : http://www.king5.com/
Other : http://www.king5.com/interact/yournews.html

About

King5Seattle is an NBC affiliated broadcasting Station in Seattle. But instead of broadcasting a newsfeed, their stream is a flow of conversations – with relevance to their audience! Although their competitors Komo, Kiro7 and to some degree Q13Fox are making strong efforts to reach out to the Twitter community, King5 stands out as the most “human” and engaging station on Twitter. The station focuses on providing mainly regional or local news and adds national news if they have a high entertainment value, which makes their feed interesting.

King5Seattle deliberatley places hooks in headlines and tweets

Analysis

A. General
(A.1) Background: Customized and includes contact information for news tips. Way to take advantage of citizen journalism! Well done.
(A.2) Avatar: Since several people tweet here, the company logo identifies the brand.
(A.3) Bio: “News, weather, traffic” and reference to other accounts. A little stiff, but informative!
(A.4) Transparency: It is NOT clear who is tweeting from the profile. Several people are trying to tweet on the account “under one voice” (King5Seattle woman in class)
(A.5) Bio Link: Links back to the company homepage

B. Tweets
(B.1) Replies: King5Seattle hardly addresses individuals on Twitter other than mentioning Link providers. Specific questions are dealt with via DMs
(B.2) ReTweets: The station does a great job not only retweeting, but adding value or comment to tweets provided.
(B.3) DM requests: I didn’t find any, but I know they DM a lot.
(B.4) Hashtags: Used sparsely, but deliberately for topics that don’t come and go over night.
(B.5) favorite Tweets:

Biting, but catchy and interesting - King5Seattle tweets

(B.6) Narrative summary:

King5Seattle does a great job at providing relevant and interesting tweets to their regional community in a personal voice. They entertain, inform and help to form opinion through their tweets. The followers become part of the stream as King5Seattle uses reader suggestions. A high number of Retweets and mentions shows a strong level of engagement with the community and indicates that the station actively searches Twitter for certain topics and discussions. With a biting humour, the station spices up its tweets adding entertainment value to news value.

C. Questions/Suggestions
(C.1) Questions unearthed during analysis: Why does the profile not show who is tweeting? Is this part of the limbo between being personal and not getting attached to personas?

(C.2) Suggestions for improvement: Other than providing transparency about who is tweeting, it is hard to make suggestions. The network has gained 6000 followers in about 8 months, which is an indicator that their method is working, considering the station size.

One way to increase the quality of relations with other Tweeters would be to “institutionalize” input by others. Making it attractive for people to tweet suggestions regularly might save some time on searching topics and increase the identification with the station. A look behind the scenes of the station might also be interesting for the audience.

Other news organizations have meetups of their followers. Although those are self-organized, King5Seattle could encourage such meetups.

D. Analytic Services

Twitter Grader: 99.99 (out of 100)

E. Conclusion
King5Seattle is doing a really good job as a regional broadcaster on Twitter. They manage to provide useful and appealing information with a humorous and human voice and make their audience part of their program. At the same time that they are reaching out to participate in existing conversations, they slide in the one or other self-promotional tweet, without making it seem a blatant self-ad.

King5Seattle thus manages what journalists on a national level do not quite seem to be able to do: They create a sense of community among news consumers in which the station itself is on eyelevel with the other Tweeters. While journalists at big news organizations are too busy to participate in a conversation, this station goes out and dives into it without turning its own stream into a flow of noise.

This echoes a general development in Digital Journalism: Local and Hyperlocal reporting have gained importance over the web. While theoretically, the internet allows people all over the world to communicate with each other, the most productive and valuable relations grow within a limited geographic range. People feel strongly and care about what happens in their space, because it directly affects them. In times when local newspapers are dying, Twitter is a convenient tool to deliver those local news in collaboration with users as citizen journalists.

Lee Aase, Manager of Syndication and Social Media- Mayo Clinic

1. Situation Analysis – Background questions/motivations for using Twitter.

* How did you learn about Twitter?

My job is the manager of syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic.  I was already working with Facebook, blogs, YouTube and  a couple of years ago I started personally using Twitter.

* When did your organization set up its (first) Twitter account? How many accounts do you have?

A year and a half ago we started our account and we have  three accounts now. We have a main Mayo Clinic account a Mayo jobs account, and a health care policy account.

http://twitter.com/mayoclinic

http://twitter.com/MayoClinicHPC

http://twitter.com/mayoclinicjobs

* Why did your organization choose to engage with the Twitter community? How have your goals changed over time?

We wanted to claim our name to keep someone else from claiming it. You can have someone “brand jacking”, when they sign in as you but start broadcasting messages that are NOT from you. So that step was at a minimum to keep those things from happening and doing damage. For the next eight months after that, we were having automatic tweets coming from our RSS feeds. In February we said let’s get more interactive with it and it has really taken off since then.

* Describe any resistance you had to overcome to get that first account going?

There was a process that we worked thru. We really didn’t ask for any special permission to be on Twitter, we just did it. We were in the process of getting podcasts, blogs and other things going. I would not say it was not resistance it was more like well let’s makes the case for why we should do this. There was openness and here we are.

* What other social media networks do you engage with?

We engage in Facebook, YouTube, Blogs and Podcasts. We look at four basic food groups so to speak: One would be Twitter the micro messaging, the second would be Facebook in social networking, third YouTube and fourth would be blogs. So there are the four main categories.

*What is the history of Mayo Clinics blogs?

In 2007 we started a blog for an event. We have been more active with blogs since March of 2008.

* Why should people follow you? In your opinion, why might they unfollow you?

Besides being the coolest account there is.  If they are interested in medical news, medical information if they are interested in what Mayo is involved in. Health care reform or links to patient stories, it is a hub for our other social media platforms it is an easy way to subscribe and find out what is happening and then there is also opportunity for interaction too.

*Why might they unfollow you?

I guess if they were looking for some specific area and it is not focused enough. If they were just looking for cancer information. It is a general-purpose kind of feed and not a cancer only feed.

2. Planning – Strategy behind Twitter adoption.

* How did you pick the person who manages your Twitter account?

Yes, it was my decision to start the account.

* How do you integrate Twitter with your overall marketing/communications plan?

As we have new blog posts we may tweet a link. It is not every new blog posts that we are tweeting.

* How have you promoted products/services/events on Twitter?

Yes, events like the weekly Mayo radio program Medical Edge. We are using it to promote the topic for the show coming up on the following Saturday. So starting on a Monday we start tweeting the link to the blog post that has the topic, we invite people to submit their questions as tweets using the mayo radio  hashtag (#mayoradio) and then during the radio show as the discussion is going on we post updated tweets. And so it is a two-way thing last week we had questions from Phoenix, Utah and Philadelphia.

This is a one hour radio show that had just been in the local Rochester, Minnesota market until just a couple of months ago, and its really enabling use to reach a broader range of listeners and participants.

*Do you use the content from Medical Edge for podcasts?

Yes we do.

* How do you promote your Twitter account (such as email signatures, links from website, etc)?

Yes, links from the website and other social media site that we host.

* How do you manage, or not manage, the approval process by legal, pr & marketing?

For the sharing Mayo clinic blog we have an editorial team we have four editors, I am the executive editor and my assistant is the day-to-day person who is scheduling the posting and monitoring comments and triaging those out for the editors.

What was the design process for the use policy on the Sharing Mayo blog?

We looked at guidelines and polices that were used in other industries for corporate kind of blogs and just employee policies and guidelines that they had it is really pretty straight forward the foundation being that the policy exists applies to social media too. So we call these guidelines instead of policies because these were not new policies but interpretations of what these existing policies mean.

* What is your policy on following? Replies? Directs?

We are conversational and provide content of value in our tweets.

* What is your organization’s social media policy for employees?

The social media guidelines are found on the Sharing Mayo blog.

3. Implementation – How Twitter was implemented/applications used.

* Who tweets for your organization and how are they chosen? Is their identity made public on your Twitter profile? If not, why not.

Yes I tweet. There are about five of us that tweet for the Mayo account partially for Medical Edge weekend radio program.

And there are other employees who have their own accounts.

* How do you let your customers/constituents know who is tweeting for your organization (eg, web site directory)?

On the Mayo Clinic Twitter account has my name on the account and gives them my handle.

* How often do you tweet and what types of content do you tweet?

It will vary during a Saturday morning during our radio program we may have 15 or 20 tweets. In the week leading up to that two or three tweets a day about the radio program but them we will have a tweet about the a new blog post on Sharing Mayo Clinic or one of the other blogs.  So it is anywhere from 5-15 plus per day.

* How are you planning your Twitter content?

We are very opportunistic with it; another thing that we will tweet is an interesting article. If there is a story in the media or on the web that has to do with Mayo Twitter is much more  immediate so we don’t have an editorial calendar. Other than to say that we are regularly tweet about the radio program.

• How did you develop your Twitter voice?

Part of my job has been serving as official spokesmen for Mayo on various topics so I had that voice. I have my personal I use on my Twitter account to be like Mayo. Approachable but actual.

* How do you balance mission-focused tweets vs. a more casual ‘conversation’?

I guess we are not going to be just chatty on the Mayo account there is always going to be some good that we are going to accomplish with it. The good could be conversation and being responsive. We may tweet about one of our blog posts. If someone tweets a question we will say we will get that into the que for Saturday morning. It is all going to be related to something that we are trying to accomplish.

* How do you use hashtags?

We use the Mayo Radio hashtag #mayoradio as a way to gather the conversation about the radio program. We use the health care social media #hcsm, #hcmktg if there is something that we are doing that we think people who are doing social media in health care would be interested in. If we have an event such as our Transformation Symposium in September we will set up a separate hashtag for that too.

* About how much time each day is devoted to your Twitter account?

Its two minutes here and there I would not think it is an hour a day. It’s part of what we do with our other ways of communicating. I don’t know how much time I spend on the phone either.

* What tools do you use to Tweet? And do you tweet from computer/phone/both?

Tweetdeck, CoTweet, both computer and phone

* What auto-Tweet services do you use (eg, TweetLater, TwitterFeed) and why?

We use twitter feed for some of our blogs but have very few automated tweets. We are a lot more human with it now and the results speak for themselves we were at 1,200 followers in February and 7,000 something now.

* Which link shortener do you use and why?

Mainly bitly because it is build in to CoTweet and the default in TweetDeck. We use HootSuite and owly some too but mainly Bitley.

* What are your favorite tools (and why)?

I really like TweetDeck.  I like the fact that I can maintain both my personal and Mayo account on the same platform. CoTweet let’s you do that too. I like the multiple search aims I find TweetDeck helpful personally and CoTweet in that it enables multiple people to tweet for the Mayo account.

4. Goals and measurement – How was success defined and measured.

* What are your success measures?

I look at re -tweets how many times that we tweet something and it gets passed along. We are looking at engagements and conversations.

• How do you measure ROI?

We are evaluating services that would social media monitoring service set-up that would give us some built in measures aside from evaluating RT and followers.

* What demographics are you targeting on Twitter? Have you found a ‘generation gap’?

We are not targeting demographics we market target interests.  The demographic that you get is what is on Twitter, not teenagers but it’s going to be college and above mainly. It’s much more oriented to the subject than people are interested in. Last week we targeted people interested in Alzheimer’s, so probably people in their 30′s, 40′s and 50′s who have parents with Alzheimer’s or people in their 60′s who are concerned that they might get it people who are interested in that topic. So that’s what we were tweeting about because that was the radio program was about.

* How do you see Twitter fitting into your long-term communications strategy?

Wither Twitter itself is the platform for every long term is depends how stable Twitter and if it can build a business model that works the kind of micro messaging and networking that it represents is going to be really important.

5. Lessons learned – Reflections on Twitter/Best Practices/Role models.

* What is something you wish you had known before you started your Twitter account?

I guess I think that it’s really something that you have to experience it for yourself.   If I would have know the benefits of being more interactive instead of doing the feeds I would have done that more. I didn’t have a good desktop tool to manage multiple accounts and having TweetDeck has helped me be more productive with both on my personal and on my Mayo account.

* Who are your role models in the Twitter community?

We have community there a people like Ed Bennett, Tom Spit, Bill Ferris, and Meredith Gould. We all kind of learn from each other and you develop community norms.

Do you think the health care medical community is supportive?

Yes, there are lots of smaller hospitals or people thinking of getting into social media and take it to leadership and say there are allot of organizations our size that are doing it. From the my perspective being able to show what Mayo is doing is good for Mayo that the word gets around it makes our social platforms more successful but secondly I think more of this should happen. These are really powerful tools for collaboration and sharing information help others say well this is not crazy Mayo Clinic is doing it. We are not known as a fly by night operation that does not think things thru so. The fact that we are doing it can help others and that is why we post our employee guidelines so that we can help others get going with it. It was not difficult or hard or it took a little soaking time.

* Have you made a mistake on Twitter? If so, how did you address it?

I can’t say that we have had a super crisis. I had a example where I posted something that was more personal and thought I was posting it to my FaceBook and my Twitter account and it ended up that it was the Mayo and personal Twitter account, I discovered it within about five minutes and I pulled it down from the Mayo site. It was something that I would not want to put on Mayo and it wasn’t a big deal. But the one thing that made me learn make sure to double check on my TweetDeck ” powerful tool” it lets me do my personal Mayo and my Facebook profile status updates. It was good that it happened on a Saturday morning at about 7:00 a.m. when nobody is paying attention anyway.

*Is there anything else you think that people should know about using Twitter using guidelines and being successful?

To be useful to provide as you are passing along updates, if it is all self focused it is not going to be successful or helpful. But if you are passing along information, you need to think of your users and readers and consider what kind of information would they like to get.

Conversely it is just a tool, it is a blog that is 140 characters. You can use Twitter for different purposes and organizations have different twitter accounts to accomplish different purposes. You could have one that is a disaster alert for crisis communications.  These are just tools that have capabilities and you need to just look at how you want to use them to accomplish what you are trying to get done.

1. Situation Analysis – Background questions/motivations for using Twitter.
* When did your organization set up its (first) Twitter account? How many accounts do you have?

• One.  We gathered the others as we went along to ensure it was the AF actually speaking from AF-handles.

* Why did your organization choose to engage with the Twitter community?

• We wanted to participate in the conversation.

* What is the organization?s history and policy on blogging?

• We began with a blog on Blogger and then migrated it over to an official DoD server once that server was established. (See New Media Guide for references to blogging)

* Why should people follow you?

• So they can talk directly with an official AF resource.

* In your opinion, why might they unfollow you?

• We sometimes speak in an impersonal tone.  We’re working to change that.

2. Planning – Strategy behind Twitter adoption.
* How did you pick the person who manages your Twitter account?

• We currently only have three people in our social media office, so we manage them together.

* How do you integrate Twitter with your overall marketing/communications
plan?

• We’re just another outlet/tool in which to communicate & engage in conversations with our various audiences.

* How do you promote your Twitter account (such as email signatures, links from website, etc)?

• We’ve recently updated our homepage to include buttons to our social media efforts: http://www.af.mil/

* How do you manage, or not manage, the approval process by legal, pr &
marketing?

• We are PR for the AF.

* What is your policy on following? Replies? Directs?

• (See New Media Guide)

* What is your organization?s social media policy for employees?

• (See New Media Guide)

3. Implementation – How Twitter was implemented/applications used.
* Who tweets for your organization and how are they chosen? Is their identity made public on your Twitter profile? If not, why not.

• (Please see the first answer to Question 2)

• Since three of us update to the various accounts, we’re working to include quick bios about each of us & mark our tweets with initials so people will know which one of us is speaking at that time from that account.

*  How did you develop your Twitter voice?

• We try our best to be conversational in 140 characters.

* How do you use hashtags?

• We’ve used them sparingly and associated them with particular events.

* What tools do you use to Tweet? And do you tweet from computer/phone/both?

• Hootsuite, the web, Seesmic, TweetDeck.

* What auto-Tweet services do you use (eg, TweetLater, TwitterFeed) and why?

• Typically Hootsuite because it’s web-based and allows for updates to multiple accounts.

* Which link shortener do you use and why?

• Typically ow.ly or bit.ly–because they’re associated with the tools we use.

4. Goals and measurement – How was success defined and measured.
* What are your success measures?

• Typically we define it by reach/response.

*  What demographics are you targeting on Twitter? Have you found a generation gap?

• We haven’t targeted specific demographics.

* How do you see Twitter fitting into your long term communications strategy?

• As another tool by which to communicate and receive feedback.

Making The L.E.A.P. Into Twitter
How 99 Organizations Are Using Twitter

Brands, L.E.A.P on Twitter. ^MN

L.E.A.P. Don’t Run: How 101 Organizations Use Twitter ^PM & ^KEG

Taking the L.E.A.P of Twaith on Twitter ^PM

L.E.A.P. My Tweep: Take your brand on Twitter ^PM

Whales Fail, Organizations Float on Twitter ^PM