Alert Blog Reviews

2009 cannot be over quick enough for the newspaper business. The year was full of bad news, followed by worse news, which in some cases, ended in business ending news. The prognosis for the future is not real rosy either so what can the reeling industry do? One thing is to erect pay walls but we’ve heard enough on that one. One thing that the industry can do is embrace social media and in particular, Twitter, to get the attention of the digitally inclined. The Bivings Report decided to do conduct an imperfect study of the use of Twitter by the newspaper industry. To their credit The Bivings Report themselves noted that the study was imperfect which shows some considerable integrity and makes their findings of greater interest to someone like myself. Their blog states: …..we decided to closely analyze 300 profiles from the top 100 newspapers in the country as a way of getting a sense, in aggregate, of how the media is utilizing Twitter. Among the things we look at in the study are whether newspapers link to their Twitter accounts from their website, how often and the manner in which the accounts are updated and whether newspapers are using their Twitter profiles to interact with readers or to simply promote their site content. While the study isn’t perfect, the results provide a compelling jumping-off point for additional thought and discussion. So the results are just that: thought provoking. Here is a sample. Only 62% of the newspapers included links to at least one of their accounts from their website – A head scratcher for sure. Why wouldn’t you promote your use of Twitter? 56% of newspapers maintained a directory of their Twitter accounts on their website – Another curious thing since most major newspapers can have several accounts for individual reporters etc. Wouldn’t it make sense to make it easy t find these people. The study noted that the LA Times does a nice job of this . The average account has 3,447 followers if you removed 4 statistical outliers who had over 100,000 followers. Include the outliers and the average jumps to over 17,000 per account. Gotta love statistics! The Twitter profiles of the newspapers send out an average of 11 tweets per day. Tweet frequency varies from 1.1 (The Boston Globe’s Big Picture, The Denver Post’s Woody Paige, and The Akron Beacon Journal) to 95.5 tweets/day (The Boston Herald). 51% of Twitter accounts were updated primarily through Twitter’s web interface. The findings also showed that the interactivity of the newspaper Twitter users was not very high but it also was not completely void. The fear of most is that the newspapers were simply automating tweets but that didn’t appear to be the case. So this certainly shows some areas of hope for newspapers since they seem to be adopting Twitter as a resource to reach potential readers. It also shows that there is a ways to go before the full impact of a service like Twitter may be felt in the newspaper industry. Do you follow any newspapers? Do you care to do so if you are not currently? What would be your expectation of a newspaper’s Twitter feed? Give us your opinions as quickly as possible so we can put the print edition of Marketing Pilgrim to bed. Oh that’s right, we don’t do that. Sorry.

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How Newspapers Use Twitter

By Mary Rose Maguire – Follow her @MRMaguire When you first join Twitter, it’s a slightly crazy world filled with celebrities, “wannabe-celebrities,” multi-level marketing folks (”Make money from home today!”), major brands, regular folks, and every kind of spammer you can imagine. It’s easy to spot those who will not add anything of value to your stream. On Twitter, you have three choices when someone follows you: 1) Follow them back. 2) Don’t follow them back but allow them to continue to see your tweets. 3) Block them, in which case they won’t be able to see your tweets and will not show up in your “followers” list. Usually, most people decide not to return-follow an account. Sometimes when you’re new, following back can make your follower list look more robust. Other times, you may not really care if a realtor from Alaska is following you but since you live in Hawaii and have no intention of ever moving to Alaska, you’re not following them back. Then there are “those accounts.” These are the accounts that may annoy you according to your own set of beliefs. For instance, I block all porn accounts. I also block the “get-rich-quick” accounts. I’m usually careful about whom I follow back, checking their bio page and recent set of tweets. You may be a huge sports fan but hate the Giants. If someone with an account like @GiantsLovah started to follow you, they might get blocked. So we know there are valid reasons to block people. But sometimes you may get blocked by someone you know, which can get tricky. I recently was blocked by someone I know. Not only do I know them, I have helped them on Twitter by giving them information they had requested. And, they live in my town. We travel within some of the same networking circles. We’re not closelikethis but I’ve sent personal responses to this person and received personal tweets back. I noticed the block after I answered a question they posed and quite frankly, my answer was very brief and as far as I could tell, far from being offensive. To say I was surprised was an understatement. Assuming that this wasn’t a glitch with a third-party application, I’ll explain some of the drawbacks of blocking people who know you. The Unknown Factor – You have no idea who they know, who they network with, or who they connect with on a regular basis. I’m a connector. There are few things that bring me more joy than playing “matchmaker” business-wise. When I attend networking events, I collect cards and write on the back who their “perfect client” would be. I keep my eyes and ears open for those who could use their services. When someone I know blocks me, they’ve essentially blocked off potential connections. The “Bad Taste” Factor – Getting blocked by someone who knows you isn’t pleasant. You’re not sure whether it’s personal or not. As a professional, you don’t want to jump to conclusions, yet the fact remains you’ve been blocked. The person who blocked me is selling something. I’ve actually referred several people to what this person is selling but do you think I’ll do it in the future? Nope. Reputational Risk – This is becoming a bigger issue as more brands jump on Twitter, only to find there are some people who don’t think they’re the hottest thing since sliced bagels. You may have employees that TWS (tweet while stupid) and show your brand in a bad light. We all have brands, whether we work for a large corporation or we’re a solopreneur. When you block someone who knows you and/or runs in the same business circles, you’ve placed your reputation on dangerous ground. I’m not someone who spreads malicious gossip but that’s me. However, there are people who would take such a situation and bad-mouth the person at every opportunity. For many years, I’ve lived by the adage my father gave me long ago: Be nice to those you meet on your way up because you may meet them again on your way down. You may be a rising star today, but in ten years when you’re in a new industry; the job you’re interviewing for may be given by the person you blocked today. People have long memories when it comes to those who offended them. I remember the first time I was blocked. I was still a “newbie” and had made an erroneous decision to respond to a “Twitterati” (Twitter celebrities who have thousands of followers) with an opinion that was controversial. You can only express yourself so far within 140 characters and some beliefs simply cannot fit into such a short space. I wanted to explain myself further but lost the opportunity after the person sent me a private message, blasting me. I still apologized, but realized I could no longer see their tweets. That was my introduction to blocking. Although I’ve since discovered this person was rude and vicious to others, I learned an important lesson. If you tweet for business, stay away from potentially controversial issues, especially those having to do with politics or religion. Even if I know a person well, I won’t tweet about such issues professionally. There are too many ways to be misunderstood and besides, you want people to focus on how your business can help them. So before you quickly click the “block” button, consider the consequences. Overlooking backhanded compliments or more obvious insults will only shine a positive light on you. Others will notice you’ve shown some class and taken the high road. I’m not advocating being someone’s verbal punching bag, but if they just tweeted something you may not agree with, send a direct message instead to open up a dialogue. Relationships are more important than ever in today’s business world, and you can work Twitter to your advantage by building them. Open doors, not blocked ones, will lead to success. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Business Accounts: Be Careful With the Block Button Related posts: Reader Question Roundup: Multiple Twitter Accounts In Business Answer A Reader Question: Multiple Twitter Users In Business Twitter is a Stage – Be Careful What You Say

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Business Accounts: Be Careful With the Block Button