The Book

Updated 3 August 2009

1. Preface – (who to invite to open book?)
2. Introduction (Kathy)
   • What is Twitter
   • What are “social media”
   • Getting started
   • How Twitter has evolved as a platform; the value brands are deriving from leveraging it; and our approach & metrics we are employing for the case study analyses (from Margery)

SECTION 1: Best Practices

• What do we think are the best-practices that transcend vertical, communication type? Why?
• 4-6 chapters (collaboratively – Kathy leading, examples from students)
• Each Best Practice should have profiles from more than one vertical; some organizations may only appear in a best practice chapter
• Proposed best practice buckets:
  1. Listen
     a) Learn from others
     b) Crawl before walking
  2. Understand
     a) Learn Twitter etiquette (@, RT, #)
     b) Develop policies on following, types of tweets
     c) Figure out who should be tweeting
  3. Act
     a) Be conversational
     b) Be transparent
     c) Respond quickly and appropriately
     d) Make it easy to find your tweets
  4. Evolve
     a) Assess
     b) Experiment

SECTION 2: Case Studies
aka Verticals [travel, wine, nonprofit, etc]

• (a) why this sector, (b) how the sector has historically used communication technologies, (c) good and not-so-good examples of Twitter use, weaving the best practices into the narrative.
• Each chapter will have at least one (maybe two) in-depth interviews. Chapters may be broken into communication types (media, marketing, crisis, organizational). See chapter template.
• 10-12 chapters from students (solo efforts w/class help)
  1. Anita: Health Care (methodology, outline, first draft)
  2. Corey:  twitter.mil (methodology, outline, first draft)
  3. Filiz: visual communication (designing logo/jacket) + (methodology, outline, first draft)
  4. Jessica:  food banks (methodology, outline, first draft)
  5. Jon: elected officials  (methodology, outline, first draft)
  6. Margery: airlines (methodology, outline, first draft)
  7. Paolo: wine (methodology, outline, first draft)
  8. Priti: food service (methodology, outline, first draft)
  9. Rubi: Latin America (methodology, outline, first draft)
  10. Sophia: video + higher ed  (methodology, outline, first draft)
  11. Amy (maybe) : museums
  12. Paul: News Media (methodology, outline, first draft)
  13. Randa (maybe) : government (methodology, outline, first draft)

Each vertical should have call-outs from other students

1. Call outs per Margery/Priti/Paolo brainstorm (tweet-like, illustrated with avatars)
2. How many per chapter?

Each Vertical should have case studies:

1. Open with a screenshot of the Brand/Organization’s Twitter page
2. Frame the problem facing the organization
3. Give background on previous use of social media both within in the company and within the industry
4. Outline their Twitter strategy
5. Explore the execution of the strategy
6. Look at the results
7. Conclude with interviews and lessons learned.

What’s Next (Kathy)

Credits

References

Annotated bibliography

Appendices: glossary, selected tools, resources, list of organizations mentioned w/twitter account(s)

Index

Audience: organizational communicators (government, business, non-profit), small business owners, entrepreneurs, media professionals