How are you using Twitter?

1. TWITTER
Tips, Tricks and
Powerful Tools
Jessica Woolman, UBC Library Development Office
@ubclibraryvault
June 10, 2010

2. About Me
 Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations
and German
 M.L.I.S. degree in May 2009 from SLAIS, UBC.
 Ten years of experience in web design,
development and implementation
 Seven years of experience in promoting library
services (small to medium
university libraries and
public libraries as well)

3. Overview
 An Introduction to the Twittersphere
 Developing and implementing a strategy for your
Twitter profile
 Tools you can use
 Tracking and Metrics
 Hands-on demonstration

4. Twitter Survey
Do any of you use it? (personally or professionally)
If you are using it, do you tweet?
How often do you tweet?
Once a week? Once per month? Once a day? Once an hour?
Do you use it for news, trends, or research?
Do you look at what is being said about UBC Library?

6. The Twitter Concept

7. Twitter Speak
 Tweets are 140 characters
 You can tweet information, links,
pictures, videos, OR
 Retweet (RT) something someone else
said
 You can follow other people to listen
to what they are saying
 People can follow you to listen to what
you say
 You can message someone directly
(DM – direct message)
 People can respond to you directly
using your username (@yourname)

8. Twitter Speak
 It is becoming popular to
mingle any two words
together to create twords
 You can look at popular
topics (trending topics)
 You can search for all
tweets about a particular
subject if the tweets have
hashtags (#)
 You can put an RSS feed of
everything you are saying
on Twitter on your website,
Facebook, etc.

9. Some of @ubclibraryvault’s followers

10. Look before you leap
• Evaluate: Are you ready to commit the time and
energy?
• Create a plan: How often are you going to tweet?
What are you tweeting about?
• Implement it: Start posting
• Keep up with it: Look at what people are saying, how
they are responding, and if your plan is working!

11.  @ubclibraryvault
 Goal: To promote UBC
Library collections and
Evaluate services, and spread
knowledge of issues
• Do your research effecting libraries, archives,
digital libraries, and the
• What do you want to say? people using these
services.
• Is there something you want to
know from your followers?  Plan: Use already written
text from UBC Library
• Do you want to plan your tweets Vault, UBC Library site
pages and blogs, and
in advance or go on the fly? supplement with
interesting facts, tips, and
news stories from
magazines (American
Libraries, C&RL News,
etc.), websites and blogs
(LibraryJuice, etc.)

12. @ubclibraryvault
Goals May 2009
Create a Plan  Tweet twice weekly
Realistic goals  Gain two followers per
week
Realistic timeframe
Goals August 2009
Clear, measurable objectives
 Tweet twice per day
Set responsibilities of who
tweets, how long, and  Gaining five followers on
who follows up average per week
Evaluation May 2010
 Over 380 followers, avg. 2
tweets per day, avg. 7
followers per week (3 times
as much as anticipated)

13. Recommendations
50:25:25 Rule
Implement
 50% informational, 25%
• Username and profile details
conversations, 25%
• Choose some people to follow about things you want to
converse about
• Start tweeting!
Different Types of accounts
• Continually monitor if you are
progressing the way you planned
 News updates,
conversational, informal,
no links, and very
conversational

17. What do you want to say?
 did you know? The mobile  Congrats! UBC Librarians and
phone will be the world's SLAIS students team up for
primary connection to the article on student librarians in
internet in 2020. science and engineering library:
http://ht.ly/1QScz
 To add a library to a house is to
give that house a soul. – Cicero  Speaking with Doug Coupland
about receiving his honourary
 @ChanCentre Thanks for degree today. UBC Library is
spreading the word on our glad to have his archives:
website! http://bit.ly/bpCln2
 Our website is currently down.  Picturing Canada Exhibit:
Stay tuned for updates Canadian Children’s Illustrated
Books, highlights picturebooks
 Do you have a favourite space in from the last 200 years.
the Library? http://twitpic.com/1onu88

18.  @ubclibraryvault
 Schedule tweets in
Keep up with it! advance
Check in on your followers
 Check in every other day
Check to see if people DM you or once a week for RT,
DM, etc.
Thank people for RT
 Student worker types up
RT when you can
bits from print magazine
Add more followers
 Google reader searches
for news from other
sources

19. How are people using Twitter?
• @DellOutlet uses Twitter for product promotions
• @ComcastCares uses it for customer support issues
• Students are using it to talk to their friends
• How are libraries using it?

20. Metrics, Tracking,
Reporting, and More…
 It can be as complicated as you want it to be!

21. Anatomy of a message
News story tweeted by
27 individuals on
Twitter, Facebook, and
blog links

22. Bit.ly
 URL shortener FREE
 Can post directly to Twitter
 Offers link tracking reports
 Shows how many people have used the same link,
so you know when your link is “popular”

24. Hootsuite

25. Advanced Metrics
 Klout
 measures the impact of opinions, links and
recommendations across an individual's social
graph. For example, a person with 15,000 followers
may have a higher Klout score than a person with
2.

27. Advanced Metrics
 Twitalyzer
 Influencer Types:
 Sources are individuals with smaller networks who
are often originating ideas
 Spiders are individuals with mid-sized networks who
are socially connected
 Suns are individuals with large to very large networks
of first-level connections

28. Twitalyzer

29. Complex, and costly

31. Summary
• Even if you aren’t participating, listen, and keep aware
• Develop your plan, re-evaluate, and keep up with it!
• Utilize simple tracking tools like Hootsuite or bit.ly until you need to
look for complex metrics
• Have a clear concept of what your goals are, and figure out if it is truly
“trackable” or use a variety of trackers for your metrics
• The Twittersphere is out there, so get ready to participate

32. Demonstration using
@ubclibraryvault

33. Resources
 Scheduling Tweets in  Learning more about Twitter,
advance: twuffer.com with How-To's: twitip.com
 Scheduling tweets, viewing  Figuring out how other
replies and direct messages, people, especially
and managing more than businesses, are using
one account: hootsuite.com Twitter: mashable.com
 URL shortener tools: bit.ly  Looking for references,
or tinyurl.com bibliographies, a list of
interesting people, or the
 Link tracking tool: bit.ly top 100 anything:
listorious.com
 Uploading pictures:
twitpic.com, twitgoo.com,
yfrog.com

34. Resources Continued
 Records Management and Articles:
Tweets: tweetbackup.com
 Chamberlain, B. (2010).
 Basic Metrics: Hootsuite.com Proceedings of the CASE District
offers Klout number and VIII conference: Is it worth your
“popularity” measures time to tweet? http://bit.ly/
(clickthroughs, RTs, and more). 99r2Cz
 More Advanced Metrics for  iLibrarian. Twitter in Libraries.
Valuing your Tweets: Twitalyzer http://bit.ly/dvUREh
Reports, Twitterholic, Tweepular
 King, D. (2007). Twitter
 Metrics research: Katz, J. Explained for Librarians. http://
(2009). Defining Influence As A bit.ly/at637f
Strategic Marketing Metric.
 Ward, B. (2010, May). Bird on a
wire. CASE Currents, 32-36.

35. Thanks!
Jessica Woolman
UBC Library Development Office
Web Promotions Coordinator
Jessica.woolman@ubc.ca
@ubclibraryvault