Thursday 17th December 2009 by Elena Goodrum

This is a 4-part guide to using Facebook and Twitter for those already running their own online communities on their own sites.

In Part 1 of this guide to using Facebook and Twitter I explained that you should get into the social media scene and have a look around to find out where you need to be, and how information you share can shape your audience's perception of you.  

In Part 2 we discussed your online presence, information overload, and the types of information that I share on Facebook and Twitter. 

Part 3 of this guide took a day in the life of a part-time community manager and gave an overview of the types of Facebook activities I engage in. 

And now Twitter!

Part 4: Twitter and a month in the life of a part-time community manager

Once again, I use Twitter because that’s where my audience is. But they’re a slightly different section of my audience. They’re slightly more technically savvy, they’re more likely to have their own blogs or websites, and they’re more likely to be receptive to large amounts of information. Equally, they’re more likely to be putting out large amounts of information and to be ready to discuss articles, controversies and government developments, etc.  I don’t have as many contacts on Twitter as I do on Facebook, but I have enough to keep me on Twitter and ensure that I’m in the right place.  Twitter is a location where my worldwide audience is congregating and joining together to form bonds of support and communication, and to help promote each other.

Here’s a general breakdown about where I’m at right now with Twitter and how I use the features to balance my routine as a community manager working 2 days a week on one community. I’m operating from a basic level, not moving into running multiple Twitter accounts or using the medium for hardcore marketing, fundraising or the many other clever uses which Twitter can be great for:

• When starting off with Twitter you may be confused by all the terminology people are using. A simple Google search for a “Twitter glossary” will help with this. Twitter also has a great “Help” section which you can consult.
• My Twitter profile page is branded up in the colours of my client’s community branding. I didn’t pay a designer to create me a background or anything special. I just used the design feature within Twitter which allowed me to select the colours I needed. It took me a little while to get it just right (and I did end up letting a designer cast a wise eye over the final result), but it’s better than having a page which is set to the default Twitter colours because you’ll end up looking uninterested.
• I use the “One Line Bio” as effectively as possible. I succinctly state my purpose, and revisit this often to ensure I’m wording it the best way (time changes your perspective and brings new insight).
• As with Facebook I only log into Twitter during the week. As I explained in more detail back in Part 3, I think it’s important to give people space.
• I post the same information on my Twitter page that I do on my Facebook page. I’m very consistent about putting the same message out to my various social media outlets. Often I’ll start with Twitter because the short character limit encourages me to be concise in my wording. There are times when I do not post my Twitter updates to Facebook, all of which will be described below.
• As for what types of information I post, please visit the section called “What kind of information I post on both Facebook and Twitter” in Part 2 for a breakdown of how I want to be seen by my contacts and what information I share .
• I shorten all of my URL’s using a free site such as Tiny URL as an effort to keep my page clean and clear – but mainly because most URL’s are too long to fit into Twitter’s character limit. Sometimes I don’t shorten URL’s – particularly where I am promoting a website with a short address.
• When I log into Twitter I spend about 30 minutes going through the Tweets of people I’m following. I ReTweet useful information that my followers might like to hear about. Just like Facebook, reading for 30 minutes takes me back in time by about an hour or an hour and a half, which means I’ll never be able to see everything that people have written. I simply do as much as I can within the time I’ve got. I skip over all the “noise” (and on Twitter, there is a lot!) and I focus only on the meaningful information that people are Tweeting.
• I respond to @ Replies and Direct Messages every day. Unless the messages sent to me are suspect or sent by bots! I ignore all bots and canned responses in favour of interacting personally with people who interact personally with me.
• I do not have an arsenal of responses ready to copy and paste in order to give the appearance of fresh, personalised responses.
• Two days a week I spend as much time as I can beyond 30 minutes. I hang out on Twitter and I use @ Replies to communicate with my contacts. I read people’s blogs and message them to ask questions. I post links to blogs once I’ve read them. This quality interaction is the most important piece of work that I do. When I have a busy week and can’t do this, I think it’s detrimental to the relationships I’m building.
• I review my new Followers very, very carefully. As a community manager I am concerned with my stats (in this case, number of followers). If I have marketing bots or porn spammers following me and I don’t block them, then my stats aren’t reflecting my true number of Followers – and by “Followers” I am referring to real people who are seeing my messages and possibly interacting with me. Twitter has some very sophisticated spammers and I often can’t tell the difference between real people and bots, so I just do the best I can! 
• I don’t use Twitter terminology or mechanisms on Facebook. So for example I ReTweet within Twitter like so: “RT @Bob Come check out this new blog, it’s a really good one…”.  But if I carry that information over to Facebook I remove the “RT” and the “@Bob” because it’s out of context and can be confusing to people who don’t use Twitter. (This is one of those things I learned by watching how other people use Facebook and Twitter – see Part 1 of this guide for more information.)  I also don’t share “Follow Fridays” on Facebook because once again – it’s a Twitter-specific activity.
• I participate in Twitter activities which establish me as an enthusiastic member of the Twitter community. There are tons of activities to participate in, and the more you use Twitter the more you’ll see them. I pretty much only participate in the Follow Friday activity, due to time constraints. In case you aren’t yet aware, Follow Friday is a way of suggesting interesting people for other people to follow. Some community managers think this is a waste of time, but within my own community this is the main group activity that I see people doing, so it makes sense that this is my choice of activity to participate in. Every Friday I review my @ Reply page to find the names of all the people who have ReTweeted me during the week. I give my Follow Friday suggestions for these people, as well as the people who suggested me the previous week in their own Follow Friday. When people suggest me in their own Follow Friday, I thank them for mentioning me by way of a public @ Reply.
• Unlike Facebook, I don’t say hello to all of my new friends. Sometimes I do, depending on the situation. Many people have auto-responders set up on Twitter and it’s hard to tell the difference between a personal reply and an auto-reply so I figure that most people largely ignore these welcome messages, just like I do. I’d rather ReTweet something they say or ask them a question. It’s a matter of personal preference.
• I don’t use any software to prepare auto-responders or to automatically follow people who follow me. Perhaps if my Twitter page had 10,000 Followers I would put some mechanisms in place to help me manage my time, but even then I would try to use it in the most effective ways possible, and positively avoid anything which would make me look impersonal. 
• Just like with Facebook, if someone asks me to promote something on their behalf I thoroughly review their service/website/offering and if I think it’s relevant, I’ll post it – always being sure to ask the same in exchange from them.
• I spend a lot of time trying to find new contacts to follow (and hopefully gain new Followers in the process). One of the best and most simple ways to do this is to use the Search feature for keywords which pertain to your topic or area of interest. Once you’ve searched for something, the results page will give you the option to “Save this search”. Saving the search means that you won’t have to type in that keyword again in the future – you simply look at your list of saved searches and click one of the keywords in the list, and you’ll be taken directly to a page showing you all the Tweets mentioning that keyword right then and there. From there I review the Tweets that I see and look for interesting new people to follow. The tough part is getting them to follow you back - this doesn't happen automatically and following you back is a choice each person makes. There are many schemes 'out there' which will help you "get thousands of followers - fast!" but I urge you to avoid these. It's not a game of numbers - it would be better to have 200 people following you who are actually your audience as opposed to 2,000 people who aren't remotely interested in your cause, your service or your work.
• By the way it’s a good idea to set up a saved search for the name of your own website or community so that with the click of a button you can see what Tweets mention you!
• Recently, Twitter introduced a new feature – Lists. Lists allow you to filter your main timeline. So I could create a list of news sources which pertain to my topic of interest, or a list of bloggers that I’m following, a list of people with communities much like my own, etc. Then I can visit that list to see only the Tweets which come from those people. I haven’t used it yet but it’s quite a nice idea and will help those who are running Twitter pages with a limited amount of time! I plan to set up a “bloggers” list as soon as possible so that I can find my bloggers at a glance and know what they’ve been up to. This will save me time digging through the noise of my main timeline in order to find them.

  Don’t forget that if you set up Lists, as you go along you’ll need to regularly add any new contacts into the relevant list so that you don’t lose sight of them.

So once again, I’ve given you quite a lot of information and yet there is so much more I haven't covered... Perhaps the most important thing I can leave you with is to remember that things are always changing - just as soon as you've figured something out, it will change again. But so long as you remain flexible and approach each new feature with your audience in mind, you should be fine.

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Happy Facebooking and Twittering!