Monday, September 24, 2012

Three Twitter tools to utilize

Hey there,

So here are three Twitter tools I recommend using for artists and arts organizations who strive to be mindful and intentional with engaging their community. Which is a perfect segue to the first tool I wanted to feature:

Commun.it

Their selling points:
  • Focus on Your Top Influencers
  • Actionable Insights
  • Stress-Free Social Productivity
One example of how they assist with your Twitter interactions is they'll highlight Tweeps who've engaged you and whether you've replied to them or not. This was of great use Sunday morning as it made sure I replied to someone who was my first RT, from the day before. Here's the tweet in question:
The two main categories in Commun.it's dashboard to be particularly mindful of are Relationships & Followers. Relationships help you monitor what Commun.it deems high value members, which are further segmented into Influencers, Supporters, and Engaged Members:
  • Influencers - "The top influencers of your community, as judged by followers/following ratio and your engagement history."
  • Supporters - "Supporters help you ’spread the word’ by retweeting your statuses and sharing links to your content."
  • Engaged Members - "These members engage with you more often than others. Engagement is measured across all activities, including mentions, retweets, dms and favorites."
In terms of followers, Communi.it makes recommendations on who to follow as well as who to unfollow, and also notifies you about new followers and unfollowers.

And for the most part, these other two tools will provide similar insight. So I'll bring to light some of the features I like. Which leads me to:

Crowdbooster

Their selling points:
  • Targeted Recommendations
  • At-a-glance insights about each message
  • Follower and Fan Growth
  • Deep audience insights
  • Manage multiple accounts
My FAVORITE features with Crowdbooster are the first two mentioned. One of the targeted recommendations suggest times for you to tweet. And in case you see the times and wonder why:
"Scores are based on when your followers are most active and how your previous tweets have performed"
So, this isn't a blanket, generalized suggestion, like you might see in some pieces or articles about Tweeting best practices, this is customized based on you and your community.

My other favorite feature is the graph you see to the right, which answers the question "How are my tweets doing?" The x-axis is the number of retweets, and the y-axis is the number of impressions. If you're wondering how Crowdbooster defines impressions:
"Total possible number of times someone could have seen this tweet. In other words, the sum of your followers + the followers of your retweeters."
Pretty simple right? And remember that tweet I mentioned which Commun.it gave me a heads-up someone retweeted and I hadn't replied to yet? It's the one data point you can see in the middle. All the others are almost at the origin. But with the RT, 9017 people were reached, as opposed to the 24.5 that has been the average, so far.

And this leads me to the final tool I recommend using:

SocialBro

Their selling points:

  • Manage your social contacts
  • Analyze your audience
  • Search and filter your community
  • See when your followers are online
That last point. That is social media gold, in my opinion. Knowing when your followers are online as active users, particularly if there are certain super fans of your organization and/or influencers in the Twittersphere, can only be a good thing, right? SocialBro also has similar insights as the other two tools mentioned, tracking followers, best time(s) to tweet, but one thing I'd like to highlight about being able to see when active users you're connected to are online? SocialBro lets you know how many total followers you could potentially reach, via those active users.

All that being said, this is ultimately not about quantity, but quality. Even in Social Media, and I am not the first one to say it, content is king.

Social media puts the public back in public relations, as well as conceivably every other aspects of the artistic process, on the creative side, but also on the management and government side. I'm interning at a Dance organization, and had a wonderful meeting with the Development team about how social media can be a part of their process and strategy.

Because when you handle social media, you are a steward of relationships. And the more you invest in caring for those interactions with your community, the more your community will be invested in supporting you,

- JR

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