What next?

In this course we’ve looked at blogging and microblogging platforms.  We’ve explored motivations for their use, and what you might share through this medium.

But what do you and your organisation need to do next? 

Please share your feedback and your intended actions following the workshop and online course materials by commenting in reply to this post.

Thanks for joining in!

Using Yammer – for business microblogging

Yammer is a twitter-like solution for an organisation, school, or business to allow it’s members to have a “virtual water cooler”.    Everyone needs to have an email address with the same ending e.g. @prospects.co.uk or @anyschool.com or @mybusiness.com.

Check Lee Aase’s presentation below:

1. Sign up using your work (business, school or organisation) email address -i.e. NOT your personal home email
2. Reply to the confirmation email Yammer sends you
3. Now you can sign in
4. Invite other colleagues (in the same organisation) to join
5. Yammer about what you’re working on – note you can type more than Twitter’s 140 characters, and you can attach documents and files
6. Use tags by preceding a keyword with the # symbol
7. You can search for tags other people have been using and “follow” all mentions of that tag – that’s great for projects, special interests and company events
8. Yammer has SMS integration – go to SETTINGS and SMS, to add your mobile number starting with the country code – e.g. for the UK it’s 44 and you miss out the first 0.  You’ll get a verification SMS with a code that you need to type into Yammer online.  Then you can SEND a Yammer by sending an SMS from your mobile phone anywhere in the world to +447786207900.  (In the United States you can also text directly to the shortcode  30201). You can also receive alerts on your mobile when the colleagues you follow are yammering.
9. Twitter integration allows you to post a message in Twitter and add the tag #yam.  This makes your twitter message appear in Yammer too!  Just go to your Yammer Settings page and on the Profile Info page add your Twitter username.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yammer has a product overview, enterprise FAQ and customer case studies  at their website.

How could you use Yammer in your business or organisation? 

Using other twitter tools

There are many third party twitter applications.  People are constantly inventing new ones.

Tweet Later allows you to schedule tweets, so you can create several in advance and trickle them onto twitter throughout the day/week.  You can also automate the way you respond to people who follow you, sending them a direct message of thanks, and following them back if you wish.

Tweetbeep allows you to track keywords and get alerts ( a bit like google alerts) when that word is mentioned in someone’s tweets.  Companies can use this to be alerted when people mention their brand.

Monitter is another keyword tracking site.  Enter three keywords and track mentions within a specified radius of your chosen location. This is great for tracking  conversation among your stakeholders, existing clients and potential new customers.

Twibble is a desktop client for twitter, which allows you to use twitter directly from your desktop without having to log into the twitter website.  It makes managing tweets, replying and tracking people you follow much easier.  There’s also a downloadable javascript version for mobile phones which have web access.

Tweetdeck is another desktop client for twitter, with many user friendly features for tracking groups of people you  follow, search results and direct messages.  There’s a video clip on using Tweetdeck for Jobsearch in this course on the Using Twitter for Jobsearch page.

hellotxt works with a variety of different social networking sites, so you only have to update your status in one place, and all your profiles are similarly updated in one go.

Tweetstats produces graphs of a user’s twitter activity.

Twitterholic lets you type in any twitter username to check their ranking – based on how many friends, followers and posts they have.

Tweeps a smiliar tool gives you an interesting analysis of other users, telling you what they are tweeting about most, who they follow, and how they behave- sharing URLS, using hashtags, communicating regularly etc.

Twitteranalyzer gives an in depth analysis of a user’s behaviour on Twitter, producing interactive graphs of data around a number of key metrics.

Follow @MrTweet to get personalised recommendations of other people you might be interested to follow on Twitter.

The Twitter Fan Wiki lists many more applications which may be of interest.

The Twitter website lists a number of downloads  on the Apps link at the foot of  Twitter website pages.

Which of these tools do you think will be most useful to you? Have you seen other twitter tools and applications you like too?

Using twitter for jobsearch

Grace Kutney’s blog Sweet Careers brings you a series of 3 You Tube video clips give an introduction to how to use twitter for jobsearch and networking.  She recaps some of the points already covered in this course, but in the context of  jobsearch.  These are an excellent introduction for jobseeking clients new to twitter.

This additional video looks at how to use Tweetdeck to manage large numbers of followers.

Some ways you can use twitter for jobsearch include:

• follow people who work at companies or industries you want to work at
• use twitter search tools to find people with specific job titles
• use jobsearch related hashtags such as #job #jobs
• follow #jobangels a site dedicated to community support for jobseekers
• tell your followers about your jobsearch and ask them to let you know of opportunities
• have conversations with others and get advice about jobsearch and career development
• follow links to tips about CV’s, application forms, interview techniques
• follow twitter sites of recruiters or job boards – such as @topjobsinlondon,  @monsterjobsuk, @prospectrecruit, @tweetthisjob
• sign up to TweetMyJobs – the world’s largest Twitter Job Board. Currently tweeting over 300,000 jobs.
  Over 90,000 followers on our 5,500+ Job Channel network. 6,000+ companies represented.
• visit Twitjobs to follow various specialist UK job channels for different industries
• Search on Twitter Jobsearch using your location and keywords to filter the results from twitter job postings.  Users can also create a video CV or “elevator pitch” to attach to Twitter job applications.

What to tweet?

Twitter allows you to answer the simple question: “What are you doing?” using 140 characters or less.

But most people ignore the question.  Tweets reflect what people are thinking about, events they are attending, TV programmes they watched, news stories, links to things they found on the web, books they’re reading.  Sometimes are requests, for example seeking work opportunities, or asking for expert help on something.

When people mention other twitter users in a tweet, they add the @ symbol in front of the username – e.g. @michaellarbs.

Some people RETWEET a message, which means repeating a tweet they saw elsewhere.  To do this copy the message and prefix it with RT and the originator’s twitter username preceded by an @ symbol.  Some third party tools add these details automatically.

Advice on what to tweet about:

• vary your approach
• think about what your followers might want to read
• ask what you are trying to achieve by tweeting
• companies can use their twitter profile to communicate informally with customers and listen to them
• use the profile to portray and humanise your brand
• be yourself
• post what you are doing now, will do later, or already did earlier
• provide links to useful or interesting content such as blogs or websites (use shortening services to cut down long URLS – e.g. is.gd or tinyurl)  Twitter automatically uses bit.ly to compress weblinks.
• Services like twitterfeed allow you to create automatic tweets when you publish a new blog post.  This creates a tweet comprising the blog post headline, and a link to the full post.
• ask questions of your followers or the twitterverse
• start conversations by replying to other users’ tweets
• invite customers to give comments and feedback
• comment on news and events
• retweet other people’s tweets if you found them particularly insightful and want to share with your followers
• add photos with twitpic which adds a link to a photo in your tweet
• add short video clips using 12 Seconds
• share jokes, recipes, recommendations, book, film, music reviews
• answer other’s questions, share tips
• countdown to/promote events
• publicise organisation achievements, initiatives and viewpoints
• make special offers and exclusive deals, or advance VIP invitations
• campaign or lobby for change
• invite people to follow or retweet you
• advertise a job opening, or job requirement
• ask for people’s opinions or views on a topic
• promote products or services
• give or receive customer service

This blog post by John Kremer lists 136+ ideas of ways to tweet.

Here’s HomeDepot using Twitter to provide customer service

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also like to check out some other organisations to see what they tweet about:

@MayorofLondon - Boris Johnson’s team used twitter “to save the day” following complaints of roasting hot buses during hot weather in July 2009.

@MyStarbucksidea - complements the website of the same name.  People share ideas, photos, comments, complaints, feedback etc.

@BritishAirways - the North American division share information about news, offers, and respond to customer comments.

@Asda - The UK Walmart subsidiary tweets about special offers, responds to customer comments and re-tweets messages from customers saying what great bargains they found in store!

@NCSL – The UK’s National College for School Leadership tweets about courses, initiatives and issues relating to head teacher development.

@LewishamCouncil - This local authority tweets about events in the London borough of Lewisham, as well as publicising vacancies.

Which of these approaches could you use?

Using hashtags

Some people use hash tags on their tweets – a keyword or code preceded by the # symbol.   People agree (sometimes) on these in advance -for example a conference on the Connected Generation 2009 event  looking at young people’s use of social web, chose #cgen09.  If you search for a hashtag you quickly see tweets from everyone who’s tweeting about that topic.

It’s a way for you to find other people talking about the topic you’re interested in, and also for other people to find you!

You can set an RSS feed on a search result too.  This can be a means of following people you don’t know, when they tweet about something you are interested in.

Here’s a brief explanation of how to use hashtags.

A third party application called Tweetchat, lets you follow a particular hashtag and see updates on the same screen. This can be helpful if you are attending of following an event.

Read more about using hashtags at wild apricot blog

Getting Started on Twitter

Here are the activities we’re going to complete in the workshop:

1. Click Get Started now to create an account.

2. You’ll need to think how you would descibe yourself in your 160 character bio.  You can update this on the settings link, account tab.

 

3. Use the find people link to search by username, firstname or surname.  Try searching fror Stephen Fry or Ashton Kutcher, or Britney Spears.  Note the VERFIED PROFILE symbol,w hich twitter introduced to stop people impersonating well known people.

4. When you find someone you want to follow, click FOLLOW. Their photograph or icon will appear in your list of people you are following.

5. Another way to find people is to invite them by email, following the tab from the find people link.

6. At the side of your profile screen, and at the bottom of the screen on twitter there’s a link to SEARCH.  You can also go direct to search.twitter.com.

Try searching for keywords related to your interests, or for people’s names.

7. Twellow describes itself as the Yellow Pages for Twitter.  It’s a good way to find people using categories of interest.  For example try searching by the education category to find interesting people you may like to follow at Twellow.  You can also register your profile with the site.

8. Wefollow offers another directory site, where you can search by category to find twitter users and tweets of interest.

9. You can also add a link to your twitter profile in your email signature, to encourage everyone you communicate with follow you on twitter.

Welcome to the Twitterverse

Here are some slightly different views of Twitter:

The Twouble with Twitter – from Supernews gives a tongue in cheek view of the value of microblogging.

Have a look to see what wikipedia says about Twitter:

Twitter is a free  service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, mobile phone (SMS) or external applications.

What to blog about?

This presentation by Rohit Bhargava identifies the 25 basic styles of blogging and when to use them.

Some  things you can blog about are:

• your projects and activities
• your company’s new initiatives, products or services
• customer feedback e.g. success stories
• news stories and popular topics
• personal stories from your life
• lists of resources – e.g. top tens
• video, photo or audio content
• events
• causes or ideas you believe in
• interviews with someone else

Which approaches could you use in your blog?

Blogging to improve employment prospects

These days  the web is highly participative - people contribute.  People don’t just go there to READ other’s expert content.  Netpop’s research in the United States suggests non-contributors are now in the minority.

Jobseekers, those researching careers and those seeking career development can all benefit from blogs.

Producing your own blog can help people establish greater control of their online identity.  At present many employers and admissions tutors search online to see what they can find out about individual applicants.  This might trawl up facebook entries, photographs, youtube clips, as well as professional profiles on sites like xing or linkedin.  If you are active blogger, any web search could also draw recruiters or those searching for you to your content.

We can help our clients to audit their online identity.  For many people, “presence” could be important, as recruiters are looking to see whether you are engaged in the social web at all.  Not being there could mean your client not being shortlisted for a job, and reduces the chance of headhunter approach.

What you share is important too – the links, files, content, ideas you post.   Is it meaningful, legal, relevant?

What is your reputation? Do others comment postively on your posts?  Are you considered knowledgable or expert and therefore being linked to by others?

Who are you connected to?  Which other bloggers do you follow?  The relationships we make visible online say something about us. For example if you follow industry leaders, employees from a company you want to work for,  it demonstrates you are keeping yourself updated professionally, and might have some insight into how the company operates, and it’s values and priorities.  Following people in your industry, or the career specialism you aspire to gives you access to social labour market information. This is different from the statistics about employment in different fields, which some advisers share with their clients.  You can’t interract with employment stats, but you can ask a question of a blogger, or comment about their posts on a blog.

Recruiters are interested in who you are linked with, who inspires and influences us.  For example a relevant professional network could mean you’ll be perceived as someone who can bring business with them to a new employer, or be able to solve problems more easily because you can call upon your network for support.

(This article first appeared on Careers Work 2.0 blog)

How else could clients benefit from a) reading and b) writing blogs?