cc licensed flickr photo shared by Will Pate (the irony of this photo is it pre-dates twitter!)
We’re trying out a new strategy/approach/technology for our communication via twitter for NMC. Up to know, for an organization, we have the typical approach of having an “official” account @newmediac (Neil M. Cameron got there first – you have to roll with that; my thinking of “newmediac” = new media + maniac).
For our twitter account I use Twitter Tools in our WordPress sites and TwitterFeed for our drupal site to push certain content out. I’ve also set it up with HootSuite to provide a way for other NMC staff to send messages out (HootSuite allows us to do this w/o sharing the account password and to schedule tweets, yes three are a number of other tools to do this).
This works, but it is an approach of having one entity to represent an organization. And this makes sense if you are a Big Giant Conglomerate with Postions Like Social Media Spokesperson or even a PR person.
But we are small, and the nebulous organization account pretty much masks the fact that we are a group of individuals.
So I’ve been experimenting with a new avenue, as suggested by Beth Kanter, called ConnectTweet
ConnectTweet allows the contributors to your central Twitter stream to continue to use their personal accounts that they are familiar with, no new logins to remember. This approach also allows your organization’s followers to discover the Twitter streams of the unique individuals that make up your company.
It works like this- once our @newmediac account is set up on ConnectTweet, I can add the twitter handles of people in our organization (or anyone I like) whose tweets can be selectively be re-broadcasted via our main account.
The method is similar to the way, if you associate your twitter account with your facebook account, that you can filter the tweets that go there by including a #fb tag — in ConnectTweet, if anyone whose account I’ve identified, sends out a tweet with #nmc, our @newmediac account will essentially retweet it, and give attribution to the tweeter.
For example, I tested with this message (yes not all that original…):
and in a few minutes, automatically, @newmedic sends its own message via ConnectTweet:
I rather like this as our NMC staff can more easily, via their own twitter accounts, send a message that goes to a different channel of followers.
cc licensed flickr photo shared by -Christophoros-
Or maybe you see it as spammy, re-tweeting yourself? i dont think so, but we are exploring it over the next few weeks.
I want to thank Ben Hedrington for giving us an early in to try ConnectTweet.
Not spammy at all. Love it.
I really find those official/corporate accounts rather impersonal. It is obviously someone disguised under the name trying to sound more like “we” instead of “the usual me”, which is a detour from what, in my opinion, makes Twitter relevant, attractive, etc.
I am always curious to know who is behind the robes of any official account. Particularly at conferences. Sometimes I play a guessing game with @k12online. I try to identify whether it’s @dkuropatwa or @wfryer. I think I can easily tell their voices from their sentence rhythm. Call me language maniac if you like. Granted.
My rating for this solution: two thumbs up.
Hmm. I think I can tag too. What would happen if…
Nope, you cannot tag unless I add you to our ConnectTweet account- it’s not *every* tweet that contains #nmc but every tweet from people in my access list that contains #nmc
This sounds like a useful solution. I work for a small nonprofit that also tweets about our work. We have an “official” Twitter account but several staff (like me) also have personal accounts. It would be great to be able to merge the two where it’s appropriate. I’ll be sending your blog post on to my communications person to consider.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Great post, Alan, and a very, very good solution to a common problem. I went to the ConnectTweet site to try to set this up for a non-profit I do some work for, but couldn’t figure out how to sign up on the link you provided. Decoder ring required? Secret handshake needed? Thanks for the tip!