Social Media Tips: Twitter 4/14

Agricultural Experiment Station • Cooperative Extension Service

Twitter Best Practices: twitter.com/NMExtensionPubsby Frank Sholedice, Assistant Editor

Tweet Content • NMSU/CES/AES stories in local Social Media Goal Our tweets fall into four main media (Sun-News, etc.)Our primary goal is to raise categories (listed in order of • “Fun” content (e.g., images, awareness and encourage prevalence): facts about NM/ag/crops/etc.)engagement about the • New or timely publications Retweets diversify our content following: • CES/AES events and news while engaging with similar or like-• New and timely AES/CES • Retweets minded users.

publications • @ replies to other users• Extension and Experiment It’s important to develop and use @ replies

Station events and news an authentic voice in your tweets. Sometimes we reply directly to other • College of ACES and You want followers to be able to tell users, for two reasons:

NMSU events/news there’s a real person behind your • Answering questions/comments Twitter content. from users: On rare occasions,

We must try to engage our Photos and videos are great content users tweet us directly with a followers by providing content to add to your tweets; keep in mind, question/comment. It’s important that they find interesting and though, that photo/video links eat to respond as quickly as possible relevant to their lives, with into your 140-character limit. to show that we are listening the goal of driving them to and engaged with what users are our publications website and Note: Any NMSU employee can saying about us. It’s also a great NMSU in general. It takes time request high-resolution photos from opportunity to interact with users.to discover what your followers the NMSU photo archive free of • “Fun” content: Sometimes we find interesting. Start by charge: http://photo.nmsu.edu/ will spot a tweet that provides a posting about the work you good opportunity to interact and your peers are doing. Retweets with users.

Our retweets fall into three main Twitter is a real-time service, We recommend you develop categories: and tweets are constantly streaming your group’s goals before • Content related to ag or Extension through your timeline. If you follow a starting social media (in NM or U.S.) lot of users, you may be overwhelmed

accounts. by the volume of tweets, and it may be

Extension/Experiment Station Publications • University Communications and Marketing Services MSC 3K • New Mexico State University • P.O. Box 30001 • Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001 Social Media: facebook.com/NMSUExtExpStnPubs • twitter.com/NMExtensionPubs • pinterest.com/nmextensionpubs/575-646-1174 • fax: 575-646-2702 • pubs@nmsu.edu

Social Media Tips: Twitter

difficult to spot these opportunities help users who are interested when the tweet will be posted. We use

for “fun” interactions. in a certain topic discover your this feature to write a week of tweets at

There are a few new strategies content. If you have room, add one time, and then schedule them to

we plan to start using to support one or two simple, descriptive be posted throughout the week. This

NMSU/CES/AES and help grow our hashtags to your tweets (e.g., takes about an hour. This way we are

engagement, such as incorporating #gardening, #climate, #energy). not stopping multiple times a day to

NMSU’s “All About Discovery” theme When users search for a particular write tweets.

into our posts. We will tag/mention hashtag, they will see your tweets We tweet at least twice a day, once

like-minded users or other stakeholders along with all other tweets using around 10:30 am and once around

in our posts. Finally, when we have a the hashtag. 2:30 pm. We are in the process

post that mentions an agent, specialist, of gathering analytic data on our

or other NMSU personnel, we plan to Before using a hashtag, it’s a good followers to better determine their

start contacting them and encouraging idea to run a search on it to get a sense tweeting habits, which will help ensure

them to share that post on their own of what that hashtag’s conversation we tweet at times when users are most

social media channels. is like. For example, we used #alfalfa active.in alfalfa-related tweets until we Because Twitter is a real-time,

Hashtags discovered that almost all tweets using streaming service and because users

Adding a pound sign (#) in front of a #alfalfa were talking about the Little are active during different times of

word makes it clickable and searchable Rascals and not forage crops. day, your tweets will not be seen by

on Twitter (e.g., #water, #pecans). If all of your followers all of the time.

you want to use more than one word Twitter Client It’s therefore a good idea to “recycle”

in a hashtag, the term must be mashed Many people use a separate content by posting similar (but not

together—no spaces/punctuation application to manage their Twitter identical!) versions of a tweet at

(e.g., #CooperativeExtension, accounts. We like TweetDeck different times of day. This helps

#NewMexico). (https://about.twitter.com/products/ ensure that more of your followers

The following are two good ways tweetdeck). TweetDeck allows you to will see specific content.

to utilize hashtags: set up columns for different areas of

• Campaigns: You can create your Twitter account, such as your Tracking Link Clicksa hashtag that is specific to timeline, any @ mentions or retweets, Since tweets are limited to 140

a messaging campaign (e.g., direct messages, and hashtag searches. characters (including spaces!), many

NM Tourism Department’s It’s a great tool to help separate people use a URL shortening service

#NewMexicoTRUE). Add the important aspects of your Twitter to shorten links in their tweets. We

hashtag to your tweets and ask stream and to make your stream of use bitly.com, which is a free URL

others to use it. You can then incoming tweets more manageable. shortening service that also tracks the

track the hashtag’s use. number of clicks your links receive.

• Conversation topics: Hashtags Tweet Scheduling This is an easy way to see which of

can be used to add your tweets TweetDeck allows you to input the your links are getting clicks and which

to ongoing conversations or to content of a tweet and then schedule links are most popular.

Social Media Tips: Twitter

Tweets Retweets

Fun interactions

FAQs and help topics to get you started using Twitter at:

support.twitter.com