"Best Practices"

It is really important to build your following, reputation, and customer's trust! The top three practices I think are most important are the following:

1. Share photos and behind the scenes info about your business. 
2. Listen to your followers. Regulate comments about your company, brand, and products. 
3. Respond to your followers compliments and feedback.

 There are also things or "practices" that one should not do:

1. Make sure your twitter picture is not the egg. Make sure you upload a real graphic from your business. 
2. Just because you are using twitter to advertise your business doesn't mean every tweet has to be about advertising your company. Give away stuff or talk about current issues or things going on in your field. 
3. You should not just update twitter once a week. Twitter is a social media outlet that should be used everyday. 

Twitter ~ Quantity vs. Quality

What's more important: quantity or quality of twitter followers? I think Mike Ellsworth explains this answer right one the spot.

 According to Mike, "Twitter is a bit of a numbers game. More followers is often better if you want to get your message out. But in reality, you want your message to go to those ready to receive it. So quality is important. A large number of quality followers is the best possible outcome. You really don't even need more than a few hundred followers if they a) pay attention b) have large followings and c) will ReTweet you. In fact I have two followers who each have networks greater than 20,000 followers. And they'll retweet everything I send them”.

Tweet you later (@MikeEllsworth) 

I only choose brands and people I am interested in knowing their day to day activities and announcements.  My top five professional "tweeps" are the following: 

@ONELessMin

@EndSlaveryTN

@Lifept

@invisible

@smcorco

Most of these the organizations twitter accounts but I follow their leaders closely as well. These are the tweeps that I always want to know what they're saying because I'm invested in their organizations. 

Since learning more about twitter and how to use it effectively, I've gained about 50 followers. I would say out of those 50 I am actively engaging in conversations with 20 of them on a bi-weekly basis.

Twitter

Urban Dictionary has many definitions twitter. Here are two I thought to explain twitter in less and 140 characters:

-The facebook "status" bar...without the rest of facebook.
-A social networking site that's perfect for stalking people with ease.

Twitter is a way to see what people are doing and saying without going through your facbook wall. Most people use twitter to follow their close friends, favorite celebrities, and favorite brands or organizations. It's fun to always have something new to look at and read on twitter.

Social Media Academic Research

I recently found two published academic research articles relevant to social media and organizational communication and I wanted to share them with you all!
The first article I found is titled Serious social media: On the use of social media for improving students' adjustment to college. By: David C. DeAndrea, Nicole B. Ellison, Robert LaRose, Charles Steinfield, and Andrew Fiore.
This study reports on a "student-centered social media site designed to enhance students' perceptions of social support prior to their arrival on campus. Results indicated that site usage increased students' perceptions that they would have a diverse social support network during their first semester at college, even when controlling for other potent predictors". This article shows that social media networks do influence people and in this case the diversity in their community.


The second article I found was How sociable? An exploratory study of university brand visibility in social media. By: E. Botha, M. Farshid, and L. Pitt.
This study describes "a tool for collecting brand visibility information by looking at the visibility of various South African university brands and their relative positioning from a social media perspective". They found that the university and the brands "both have opportunities for those who manage these brands, and also threats to these institutions for taking a laissez fair attitude to social media in these times when social media are coming to dominate the Internet in particular and media in general". Social media is also used to see how much people are seeing certain brands. This study focused on one university but this study can be done across many universities.

Effective engagement and networking skills

Check out these resources to help obtain effective social media engagement skills:

 

Designing SM Engagement

Developing SM Engagement Strategy

Need help with your networking skills? Check out this link.

"Listen"

So, what does it mean to "listen" as a social media professional? 


The Search Engine People made up a acronym for LISTEN in reference to social media. 

Listen 

Identify 

Solve

Test

Engage

Nurture your Fan Base

All of these aspects are extremely important when listening to others as a social media professional.



We can improve our listening by engaging with others by listening to others and then engage in conversations with those people.

"Engagement"

What is "engagement" in social media?
In my opinion engagement in social media is when a person is actively involved in social media on a day-to-day basis. Social media is used so much in society to stay connected to friends and family as well as brands and world events. Engaging in social media is very different from the typical interpersonal communication. Social media forces us to get involved with others and businesses on a daily basis via the internet instead of face-to-face communication. In my opinion social media forces us to be more involved with the world around us.

Garin gives thirty ways to Spark Social Media Engagement.
He gives tips for Twitter, YouTube, Google +, and Facebook.

Some of the most important practices I think Garin suggest to engage in social media are the following:

1. Start a hashtag on twitter. If it goes viral this will help you get more followers.
2. Time your tweets. There are certain times of the day people get on twitter. Try to tweet when people are online the most. Do your research to see the most popular times of the day for twitter. 
3. On YouTube ask people to engage at the end of your video. Wrap up your video with a call to action. 
4. Upload pictures on Google+
5. Leave comments on Google+
6. Use Facebook question tools
7. Tag others in your updates on Facebook