Twitter

If you can't see the value in posting links to all of your stories on Twitter ---- one of the most popular sites in the WORLD, then you would be the idiot.

 

If all you are doing is posting links, why would anyone follow you? How many visits are you getting via Twitter? Out of about 100,000 visitors, only 34 came via Twitter to my paper's Web site. And Twitter is the wave of the future. Spare me this nonsense. Readers are going to find your stuff because they know of the brand. Twitter dilutes branding.

The Web people need to get out in the real world sometime.

 

You know what? Stitch continues to speak the truth.
I think it should be required that "editors" (I'm not referring so much to sports editors that have prior experience covering a beat or features, etc; I respect a lot of sports editors) and publishers actually get out in the community once in a fricking while and see what truly is going on.
Those new age Web people and think tankers really truly don't understand the business. Just as they demand we attend their ridiculous think thank make no money meetings, they should get out there and see what the fuck is really going on in their communities. I worship Stitch.

 

I'm bitter and I'm not even 35. It's sad since I love the work, just not the job, if you know what I mean. And my point of view is coming from a few years of working in computer industry making more money than I do now and taking several programming classes. Trust me, the Web people have no idea what 99.9 percent of the community is doing.

 

Look, if the Coca-Cola Co. and Procter & Gamble think Twitter is useful to them, and they do, then the odds are pretty good it can be useful for a well-managed newspaper, assuming there are any of those. I say that as a non-Twitter user. As a misanthrope, I like the new media because it gives me more lines of communication to cut off.

 

What's the return on investment? If you're spending time on Twitter, how much many readers do you get back? As for getting tips, I'm pretty confident that the vast majority of people in my area don't know what Twitter really is. I'm sure they've heard about it, but that doesn't mean much. There is a vast disconnect on using social networks in a larger area versus a smaller one. The SE tweets from games and I haven't seen any spike in Web traffic.

I looked at Coke's Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/cocaCola. How much money does that bring in? There has to be value or is Twitter something we have to use even if it's a waste?

(BTW, big companies such as Coke can just put some unpaid intern on Twitter duty. Most newspapers can't afford to put more effort into Twitter.)

 

So brilliant it's going in the sig!

What I've noticed about Twitter - and if you post links using bit.ly you can track this - is how many clicks on my links that are more or less accidental. For instance, a story I wrote recently had the word "Younger" in the headline. Younger is the man's last name. That link was picked up via Twitterfeed by some user who tweets about ways to stay youthful, and that directed a bunch of that person's followers to click on the link, adding to the overall numbers of visitors to our site. Nevermind the fact that the story had nothing to do with what they were looking for...

This type of thing happens frequently. But, hey, Twitter is bringing visitors to our site!

 

Tracking how many clicks came to your site via Twitter is difficult unless the link is posted via HootSuite. If not, there will be no indication that the click came from Twitter unless somebody clicks directly from twitter.com. A very small percentage follow their Twitter timelines on twitter.com. Most use software such as TweetDeck and if a user clicks on your link from something such as that, you'd never know that was produced by your Twitter feed unless you have posted it with HootSuite.

 

My feelings, precisely...Are we related, MGee?

 

I just got back from covering the Winter Meetings and Twitter ruled there. Say you just follow a hundred baseball beat writers, as I do, I could glance at my Twitter feed and see what everyone else in the room had. It was a million times better than having to click on everyone's blog or web site.

How much money does it make the paper? I don't know that. I also don't know how much money it makes your paper by breaking a big story in print.

Either way, it's hardly a significant investment in time or money to use Twitter, and it slowly builds your brand.

I think the problems with Twitter are when people put too much personal stuff or stuff that's too timely ("that was a great catch.").

 

Two things.

1. The brand is you now.

Look at the Trib/Sun-Times paper swaps. Brad Biggs was the Sun-Times Bears writer. He just joined the Trib, and he took his Twitter account -- and 4,000+ followers -- with him. These are people getting their news a la carte, and if they get useful information from you, they won't care who you work for. Or, if you turn to freelance, if you work for anybody at all.

2. Smartphones are only getting bigger.

The more people get used to the technology, the more people are going to expect headlines to come to them. When you use Twitter lists or groups in Seesmic/Tweetdeck, you can see if something's happening faster than any other route.

Now, it may not make sense to devote a helluva lot of time to Twitter if the audience isn't big enough. But it's worth your time to know it and tolerate it, because the technology isn't going away, nor are the motives behind the technology going away. Both organizations and individual journalists are going to have to work harder to push stories to people via various tools, because they're not going to be sitting on the site. If their phone isn't going off or nothing shows up at the top of their Twitter feed or Facebook account, they're going to assume nothing that important is happening.

 

Can't imagine any sportswriter not wanting to use Twitter. I have been playing around with it a lot the last few days, adding a bunch of big name media people who use it. If you're covering a game and just sitting in the press box watching the game, why not send out a couple of tweets or more? It's a very effective tool to build a following and to direct traffic to your articles.

Mike Freeman and Rich Eisen are tweeting about the NYG/Philly game right now. Freeman is there, not sure on Eisen. JA Adande is tweeting about whatever basketball game he is at. Rachel Nichols was tweeting between ESPN pregame updates today. Schefter and Mort the same. Now, maybe they relayed info to an assistant to do it, but it doesn't take more than 30 seconds to tweet. It could be their fingers on the keypad. Plus it's fun.

And the power of Twitter -- Eisen retweeted one of my tweets. I picked up six followers in 10 minutes. That is pretty cool for a guy with under 100 followers.