Our team has some experience with Twitter, and we focused on
utilizing the various expertise among us in order to successfully launch a
Twitter version of our campaign. The first thing we did was create a Twitter
handle, of which you can see a screenshot in our previous post. After our
presentation from Deidre Walsh, it was confirmed that Twitter is best used as a
quick and easy way to disseminate industry information to those who have
specific interests related to the challenge. Therefore, we needed to find those
people and understand how to show up in their feed. We chose to post every
couple of days using the hash tags and key Twitter accounts found below. Each of
our posts included one or two of these references, a TwitPic of our poster and
a Bit.ly link to our innovation challenge page. Due to the limit of 140
characters, however, we were forced to leave off the TwitPic in some instances
to ensure that the targeting was complete.
Hash tags:
#disaster
#disasterrelief
#disasterrecovery
#hurricane
#housefire
#typhoon
#tornado
Key
Twitter Accounts:
@RedCross
@DisasterRelief1
@DU_BreakingNews
@DirectRelief
@Disasterpeace
While we did create a marketing plan
for Twitter, and followed through on that plan, not everything went well. It
became clear via our research that Twitter fans do not trust Tweeters who have
few to no followers. This was almost impossible to accomplish because of the
short time frame we had to post about things other than our challenge. After
failing at getting a large number of followers (well none) we proceeded to use
Jaime’s Twitter account @JLSutton to post about the challenge because she has
over 500 followers, aka more credibility. This proved successful to an extent
but we still didn’t work the Twitter system quite right. Due to the fact that
all of these disaster accounts and hashtags have so much activity, we would’ve
needed to post to them every couple of hours in order to remain near the top of
any one person’s feed. Finally, we didn’t have the bandwidth to truly create
unique content and ended up having posts about the same things one after
another, which looks like spam to a new follower. If you look at the following
from Mashable you will notice that we did do many things correctly[i]:
·
Tweets with hashtags get twice the engagement
of those without, yet only 24% of tweets during the time of the study used them.
·
Using one or even two hashtags in a tweet is
fine, but if you add a third, you'll begin to see an average 17% dropoff in
engagement.
·
Posts with images have double the engagement
of those without even though users can't see them until they click on them.
If we were to do over, there are
definitely some things we would change and do differently. These include
creating a HootSuite account and using it to schedule multiple tweets for any
one day, and multiple per day, so we could stay relevant in the targeted feeds.
The following graph from Mashable shows which days and times are most effective:
The article
also explains that the optimal number of tweets per day is four and after that
you experience diminishing returns.
With more time allotted we would work to begin posting
earlier on our project Twitter account to gain followers prior to asking them
for something. In relation to this we
would also begin following key members of this target group prior to launching
the challenge. According to experts, the more individuals you follow the more
follow you, and once they follow you it is good practice to personalize that
relationship through a direct message. In conclusion, Twitter did yield quite a
few click-throughs to via the Bit.ly link but none of these individuals
followed through with challenge entries. Overall, we learned that Twitter is
not a format that you can immediately start using in the hopes of gaining
results. It is a platform that is better developed over time, with a very
specific target and strategy.
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