Leslie McGraw, CEO of Les Go, gave a fun and interesting presentation
on Building an Online Community Using Twitter at LA2M. McGraw works as a journalist and marketer
with a variety of different groups.
“Social media allows me to communicate with all these different groups,”
she said.
Leslie McGraw |
To build a
community it’s valuable to think about the various communities you interact
with regularly McGraw suggested.
Keyword, name and hashtag searches can uncover people and organizations
in your wheel house.
Using the Discover
button and localizing Trends makes Twitter even more personal and can be a
source of tweet topics, following and follows.
McGraw
described Twitter as “right now in the world,” and added “If it’s awkward to explain
to your boss or your parents, it’s not for Twitter.” McGraw recommended “Bring life and action to
your tweets. Use things that are
happening now, things that people can do or discuss.”
She suggested
topics relating to people, places, movement, activity, dialogue, events or
holidays. Not all events have to be
immediate. Some can be ongoing, like a
challenge event. Choosing to engage one
of your Twitter followers can also add interest McGraw explained.
Foursquare
adds movement to Twitter. Other 3rd
party apps connect Twitter to Facebook so one automatically updates the
other. Some 3rd party apps
used by McGraw include Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Klout
and Quora.
It’s helpful to employ 3rd party apps but you want to use
them without looking like a machine said McGraw.
McGraw
recommended having separate business and personal Twitter and Facebook
accounts. “You have your business hat on when you are on your business page,”
said McGraw.
As a business
tool, McGraw suggested connecting business events to holidays through
Twitter. I
t can also be used as a
connection tool between staff, interns and volunteers. The more your group tweets together and uses
common hashtags, the larger your business will look said McGraw.
Tweets are
limited to 140 characters, but for tweets to be retweeted, characters need to
be limited to about 125 McGraw explained.
Because characters are at a premium abbreviations are important. McGraw listed several commonly used word and
expression short forms.
b/c =
because, b = be, b4 = before, chk = check, cld = could, abt = about, cre8 =
create, detweet = describe a tweet, f2f = face to face, fab = fabulous, fav =
favorite, nts = note to self, prt = please retweet, tff = thanks for the
follow, wtv = whatever, yoyo = you’re on your own, yolo = you only live once
For more
Twitter terminology and information McGraw suggested the Quick
Reference Twitter Dictionary. You’ll
find McGraw’s entire presentation in the LA2M archive. You can follow Leslie McGraw at @lesgo4it.