Saturday, June 4, 2011

How do you build local engagement on Twitter?

A Journal Register Co. editor mentioned a common challenge in a newsroom trying to master social media. How do you build an engaged audience on Twitter? My answer to the editor (expanded some as I’ve thought more about it):
Engaging followers is largely a result of two factors: following people who care about your community and conversing with them.
How many people follow you (and how many you follow) are not as important as identifying the people who share your interests and engaging meaningfully with them. So don’t get hung up on numbers, though you do want your engaged community to grow steadily.
I know of three tools that would be useful for building an engaged Twitter following. Enter your community(ies) in Twellow or Nearby Tweets and they will show you Twitter users in the community. Twellow shows you users (largely businesses) who have registered with Twellow, using that location. NearbyTweets shows people who are tweeting right now near you.
You can also use Advanced Twitter search to look for tweets by location (here’s the tweets within 15 miles of Yardley, Pa., where JRC is headquartered).
I would not make these sites a one-time visit either. Advanced Twitter Search and Nearby Tweets especially are places to visit occasionally, because different people will be tweeting each time. When a breaking news story or community event might be generating Twitter discussion, those are excellent places to connect with that discussion.
...
And you shouldn’t forget simple things: prominent display of social media buttons on your home page and sharing buttons on your story pages and blog posts. Curate social media content in your news coverage, and people will tweet links to your stories and their followers will start following you.

http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/how-do-you-build-local-engagement-on-twitter/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog

No comments:

Post a Comment