As I noted in yesterday’s post on a couple of social media workshops, Twitter data has confirmed that I am teaching best practices for journalists in using Twitter.
On the opening night of the Online News Association 2012 conference Thursday, Mark Luckie of Twitter released results of a study of journalists’ use of Twitter and engagement with those journalists’ tweets. I found one small surprise in the data, but mostly it confirmed specific points that I have made in several workshops and blog posts for journalists, including just the day before.
So I’m firing off another #twutorial post, straight from #TwitterHQ.
Let’s start with how the study defined engagement:
@shirleybrady @stevebuttry Engagement is interactions with your tweets (replies, retweets, clicks on links)
— Mark S. Luckie (@marksluckie) September 21, 2012
Embrace burstiness
Mark’s first piece of advice: Tweet your beat. When journalists “post a concentrated number of Tweets in a short time span,” their followers increase by 50 percent more than you would normally expect. In other words (and I’ve heard this first-hand from more journalists than I could count), when you livetweet events and breaking news, you gain followers.
The examples Mark used were outstanding, but extreme: Sara Ganim’s livetweeting of the Jerry Sandusky trial and the Tuscaloosa News’ livetweeting during last year’s tornado (part of their Pulitzer-winning coverage). I’d like to see data from an example of a reporter tweeting a routine trial of local interest or a less dramatic weather story, because I am sure that both of those practices also boost your followers and the examples would be more useful to reporters.
But the point from Twitter data matches my own experience and that of many other journalists: Bursts of tweets (what Twitter calls burstiness) bring you more followers. Speaking of which, Twitter has whitelisted me so that my burstiness at ONA will not bring a repeat of the rate-limit that cut me off while tweeting Woodward and Bernstein at ASNE. (Update: A suggestion for Twitter: If you’re going to encourage burstiness by journos, you should make it easy for bursty journos to exceed your limit of 100 tweets in an hour.)
Just last month, my advice to journalists seeking more followers included encouragement to tweet frequently and livetweet events and breaking news. Now Twitter research confirms that. So do it. Tweet your beat.
Use relevant hashtags
This piece of data matches the experience of even more journalists, I think: Tweets with hashtags increase engagement 100 percent for individual journalists and 50 percent for news brands.
Danny Willis responded to my tweet about hashtags with a good point.
@stevebuttry Just #warn #people not to #hashtag #everything like a #ransomnote. #annoying
— Danny Willis (@DannyJWillis) September 21, 2012
And I was pleased to respond that Mark had made the same point. Relevant hashtags that provide context are effective. That’s because the relevant hashtag puts your tweet in front of people who may not be following you, but who are interested in the topics you’re tweeting. Irrelevant or excessive hashtags, I’m sure dilute that effectiveness (though Mark didn’t cite specific data on that point).
Share what you’re reading
Effective tweets get twice as much engagement if they include URLs, the Twitter data show. “When individuals share URLs to non-company sources, they experience a bump in follows,” Luckie said in the best-practices blog post. Again, that makes sense, although the post didn’t cite data for a difference in tweets with links to what you wrote and with links to what you read. I also should note that since one of the forms of engagement measured was clicking on links (and you can’t click on a link without a URL), that’s inevitable. I’d like to see more data on this, but I agree with the point.
Don’t be a link firehose
While sharing links does increase engagement, just sharing links, talking about yourself and never mentioning anyone else is not only self-centered and rude (in conversation as on Twitter), it’s less effective. The Twitter research shows that news brands with 20 percent fewer URLs and 100 percent more @ mentions in their tweets grew followers 17 percent more than average.
So, as I’ve said before, news brands should converse with the community (replies and retweets both use @ mentions) and about the community, giving credit to others, and not simply spew links. (So should individual journalists.)
You also should cite your sources on Twitter, not just sharing a link, but using the username of the source. As Mark said:
“Don’t Woodward your tweets,” @marksluckie says. Cite your sources by @ username. #TwitterHQ
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) September 21, 2012
Use the retweet button
This was the surprise to me. I always consider myself lazy when I simply hit the retweet button, rather than doing a retweet that starts with “RT,” as retweets did before Twitter developed the easy retweet button. (Even on Twitter, you have old-school journos.)
Twitter’s research found that journalists with more follower growth than average used the retweet button three times as much as journalists with below average growth. However, Luckie added, adding comments or questions to an old-school RT is effective (because, that’s a mention and the point above shows how mentions boost engagement).
Update: Another point in favor of easy whitelisting: That retweet button heightens your chances of hitting the rate limit.
Thanks to Twitter for doing this research, which confirms the best practices many of us have been teaching.
About that API …
Now that I’ve praised Twitter for its best-practices research, I’ll dish a little criticism for not fielding questions about its efforts to take more control of the use of its API by third-party developers. As we were drinking Twitter’s beer before the presentation came up, this was the topic I heard people address. Tiffany Bridge tweeted a common sentiment to me:
@stevebuttry Tell them to stop fucking with third party clients!
— Tiffany Bridge (@tiffany) September 21, 2012
Erica Anderson had a tougher role than Mark in the Twitter presentations, addressing the API rules. The Twitter line used to convey the Twitter case on this issue came off as more controlling than clever:
“The tweet is only a tweet if it is a tweet,” says @ericaamerica of #TwitterHQ display requirements.
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) September 21, 2012
As I noted earlier in a blog post on Twitter’s new API rules, I don’t fully understand the API issue, so I have limited my comments on it. I respect Twitter’s need to build a successful revenue stream. But I worry that the company may be tampering with the magic that has fueled its success. I would have liked to hear a good discussion between Twitter and some developers. That would certainly fit the robust discussion model that has driven Twitter’s success.
(The Twitter people did welcome questions in the mingling after the presentation, so I presume some went on, but I would have enjoyed a public Q&A on that issue.)
About that magic …
But I’ll close with a personal story about the Twitter magic. For a while now, Steve Fehr and I have followed each other on Twitter. But I don’t think we’ve seen each other for more than 20 years. He was one of my Washington reporters when I was a young editor at the Kansas City Times. We had this Twitter exchange last night:
@stevebuttry Find me
— Stephen C. Fehr (@scfehr1) September 21, 2012
@stevebuttry 5th row, right end. Oldest guy here
— Stephen C. Fehr (@scfehr1) September 21, 2012
Surveying the seating, I counted back and realized I was in the fifth row. I looked to my right and there was Steve, just three chairs down. We had a great chat after the presentation that included a few more examples of Twitter magic — how Steve had caught up with me through Twitter and even helped my family.
More resources
For more on Twitter best practices for journalists, read Mark Luckie’s blog post or his slides or this piece on the study by Jeff Sonderman and Andrew Beaujon.
Oooh, I want to be “white-listed,” for the next time I decide to live-Tweet an ALA Editions seminar.
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