Building an Online Community with Twitter

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 3^rd party apps connect Twitter to Facebook so one automatically updates the other.  Some 3^rd party apps used by McGraw include Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Klout and Quora.  It’s helpful to employ 3^rd 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.