210904_Impulse21_Remco_ Timmermans session

12:12PM Apr 13, 2021

Speakers:

Moriba Jah

Daniela Rodriguez

Remco Timmermans

Keywords:

twitter

tweet

people

hashtags

companies

space

social media

question

followers

follow

tool

nasa

relevant

reply

general

interact

content

automatically

user

active

Yes, I think so. So welcome, everyone to this master class, for learning how to use Twitter for speed outreach, and honoured to introduce ramco raymer. For the One, two has no know who Jesus was usually visualised in this in here he called side creating and running online campaigns for a wide variety of speed customers around the world. And Rambo is also the CEO of the space up foundation and adjunct faculty member of the International Space University ism, and one of the driving forces behind space agenda dotcom. Recently, Aramco was announced as the leading hashtag, eu influencer for space in 2020. And which is another word for the most influential social media users in relation to different policy areas in the European Union. So welcome, everyone, and the microphone. It's all yours.

All right. Well, thank you very much for that introduction, Danny. And let me share you my screen and take you into the wonderful world of Twitter that I know many of you know a lot about already. But I'm going to see if I can teach you a few new things. You should be able to see my screen here now. So welcome, everyone. My name is Reza tenements, please follow me on Twitter. And that's what I'm going to talk about in the context of traditional social media, because Twitter's been around for quite a while. So why do we continue to keep Twitter to use Twitter? Why is Twitter still relevant? Well, Twitter, to me still is the best social media channel for quite a few things. From a personal point of view, demonstrating your thought leadership, but Twitter is really good at reaching large audiences better to my opinion than some of the other channels community building, which is an important element using social media, there's no tool which doesn't as well as Twitter does direct social interaction, the live element, the being on the scene straightaway finding people who are broadcasting news as it happens, there is no tool as good at that as Twitter. And then and I'll have the last slide on that to meet the space community because the space community is one of the active communities, especially on Twitter. So a few of the basics. And I know most of you know all this stuff. But just to cover some of the basics of how to use Twitter, well, first of all, make sure you have a complete Twitter profile. So make sure you have a meaningful Twitter handle. I know many, many are taken, but many more are not. So don't be a random combination of letters and numbers. Fill out your bio, use the space that they have for your description. And mentioned some of the topics that you that you will tweet about what can people expect if they follow you. And something that many people don't want to do for various reasons, which I totally respect, but I really like having a profile picture that actually looks like you. And it's, it's got me a lot of benefits at conferences, for example, where people were following me on Twitter, they actually recognise me because I live like my my Twitter image. And then make sure you use the functionality to link to either your website or your LinkedIn profile, but link to some where where people can read more about you. And use the background picture. Many people don't Well, maybe people don't even know it exists. But many people don't use the background picture. I use it to advertise whatever is relevant in my life at the moment, like this conference at the moment, and keep your profile up to date. I've been on Twitter since January 2009. While my profile looked very different back in 2009, than it does today about tweeting itself. First and foremost, Twitter, like any social media channel is more about social than by media, the media tend to change tend to evolve. But the social aspect, why we love social media so much has not changed. The fact that you can reach out to people all over the world that are not in your direct area is has changed the world in the last 15 years. And that is what social media is to be useful is to be social. And you should take that very literally. It's okay to go and listen only mode when you get used to Twitter. But the real value of Twitter comes when you start interacting. The whole point of Twitter just like any other social media is in the interaction, probably more so in Twitter than in tools like Instagram, where it's much more about showcasing and use the functions that Twitter provides. us the retweet button. If you see something you'd like retweeted, use the reply function if someone asks a question or once you to interact with them, it's okay to reply to any tweet, you can budget into any conversation, which is the whole point of Twitter. And you cannot tweet too much I get this question a lot. But there is no such thing as tweeting too much, maybe one or two exceptions, but really in general use. You can't overdo it. About followers. Many people put a lot of emphasis on followers on Twitter and having lots of followers. But that's not the point. The point is, that's when you start sharing relevant information, the followers come will come automatically. It makes sense. But it's a personal choice. I like to out of politeness. And if people are interested in me, I would like to show interest in them by following them back and building a following. There's a few I'd say ethical tips and tricks that you can use. One of them is use hashtag FF for follow Friday. It's something that was introduced many many years ago. And it still works. And people like it when you recommend them a certain number of followers on Friday, and people will actually follow that up by giving them a follow up as well. Another really good one that I've been doing over the years is to use twitch chats. One that I'm active in is a weekly twitch chat called cycle chat every Wednesday. So follow those hashtags, use those twitch chats. And those are great ways to find new people to interact with find new people with common interests, and build your followers that way. And last but not least, just don't worry about them. When you share good information followers will come automatically. Then what about content? Twitter is all about great content. We follow people because they provide meaningful and useful, great content. The number one rule to follow in that sense is to be yourself. Authenticity, people will see it when you are real versus when you're acting to be something that you're notes. It's also a reason why it's much more difficult to tweet on behalf of companies, because a company is not a person. So I do a lot of social media for companies. And I always recommend them to have a personal voice. To not tweet as a company, we as the Coca Cola company, but no talk as the person john from the Coca Cola company that gives people a face to talk about. Be positive and polite. I mean, we all know about this, there's so much negativity and impoliteness on Twitter, just don't play that game. Don't troll the feeds. And don't feed the trolls. If you've been active on Twitter, you know, you know the drill. visual content. Text is, is of the last century, the 21st century is all about multimedia. We'll hear a lot about that today. But use visual content, use photos be original, and we were all getting sick and tired of seeing the same gifts over and over again. So why don't make your own gifts or use your own photo or use your own material to show your emotions rather than just another actor, that someone recorded from TV. And remember to interact, retweet, reply, be in be interactive on Twitter and talk to other people. That's the whole point. We don't think about hashtags. Hashtags indicate a topic. They have to be relevant. The great to find new people, I read lots of hashtags. Rather than follow my standard timeline. I follow hashtags a lot, because they indicate a topic which is which which is an interesting way to find to find new people look to know first of all button. There we go. stacks are also useful in corporate social media to measure campaigns. When I when I use Twitter for a corporate reasons. I use hashtags a lot and I measure them. In the end, it's a great way to get the statistics on the popularity of an event for example, like hashtag impulse 2021, to tweet about this event. So please do that. On the amount of hashtags 123 hashtags in a tweet, you don't have that many characters will make sure the hashtags don't clog up the tweet and your message stays in the centre of things. How often should you tweet Many people ask? Well, there's no thing is tweeting too often I've said that already. Because a tweet has a really short lifespan. Everybody who has a little bit of following knows that tweets disappear down the bottom of your screen very quickly. And I always say tweet has a lifespan of 15 minutes, and you can repeat the message after 15 minutes. Because it really doesn't live that low. For companies, one tweet today would be the absolute minimum if you want to be relevant on Twitter. But as I said, there's no upper limit. Sometimes the day are more effective than others. And Twitter analytics will give you that information. If you go to analytics.twitter.com. It will give you the information when one of the best times to tweet, there's lots of tools out there that will help you see when your followers are awake and alone. It's okay to repeat the same message of several times over like, again, for companies if you repeat your same message every day, for example, that is perfectly okay. My last slide on the space community on Twitter. I mean, Twitter is the reason why I'm part of the space community right now. It changed my career, it literally changed everything. And this specific event, the NASA tweetup for the STS 135. That was my first encounter with the space community and I found these people through Twitter. And still the space community is very active on Twitter. And that has a lot to do with NASA experimenting a lot with social media back in the early 2000s, when they were one of the first to embrace social media as a way to communicate to the to a larger audience. And they've grown since and what not many people know is that NASA is actually the largest corporate user of Twitter and of many social media bigger than Coca Cola bigger than General Motors, just because they started early and they they really got it. So I participated in NASA tweetup that became NASA social, I hope many of you have attended one or multiple of these events. If not, then I can highly recommend it. And this slide was only if I had a little bit of time left, so I have no idea how I'm doing on time. I haven't heard a bell yet. So this is a this is about some of the characteristics of my own Twitter. So I use my actual name I actually use look like my picture. I hope this session confirms that. I've written 57,000 tweets you have to bear in mind 5000 tweets is the length of a short novel. So it gives an indication of how much you are active on Twitter. I do this for a living So I think I have an excuse to tweet a lot. But bear in mind that with every 5000 tweets, you write a novel, I use my background pictures advertising space. As I said before. I follow a lot of people, I don't read the tweets that all these 27,000 people write, I found out that if you follow 1500 people, or more, your timeline goes at about the speed that you can physically read. If you follow more people, your timeline will move faster than you can then your eyes can follow. And I make it a habit to follow people back. That's why I have so many I will stop now. And hopefully, we'll have a little bit of time for questions if anyone has questions.

We did I have a question? I generally see on Twitter that one it's up cooperate, or it's a company or even as an association is always storytelling on I do this, I do that. Follow me for this or follow me for that is never a two way conversation. And do you have any suggestion on how to get better on that?

It's very difficult for companies and I represent a few companies on social media to get from broadcasting to having a conversation online to really using what social media are for. And you have to find a voice, you have to find a way to how should I say that? To find a way to interact with people, as a company. One thing you can do, for example, is thank people if they mentioned you, as a way to start a dialogue to start a conversation or ask questions to your audience use. Folks, if you like polls, to trigger the interest of people in topics that that are interesting for you as a company. Did it depends a little bit on the type of company that you are, that's easier for for consumer to consumer than it is for consumer to business. But in space, you know, many space companies, they they have outreach objectives as well. And they help the general outreach, the the general outreach, space outreach, and you can you can use tools like that to ask people to answer questions, polls, contests, things to engage the general user on Twitter with your organisation and you need to think about that you need to have a strategy for that.

Okay, thanks.

Anyone else?

I have a quick question. Sure.

How effective Do you think it is to pair Twitter with other social media sites such as Instagram? Or is it better to really focus on one?

Yeah, there's there's two things and Okay, we're going back in 49 seconds. So I have 49 seconds to answer. I don't believe in automated cross posting, because every channel has its own tone of voice, its own language, its own way of tagging people and tagging subjects. However, of course, if if you have something interesting to say something visual, that is good for Instagram, that is usually good for Twitter as well. But I would say create two posts rather than one that is automatically copied across across everything. I see you have a question in the chat as well. Yeah, LinkedIn, it's a question about LinkedIn. What you have to bear in mind and I've seven seconds I see is that every tool has its own purpose. So make sure that you write for the purpose that the tool is for. So