Sree Sreenivasan takes three to six minutes on every tweet he writes.
I’ve seen the Columbia Journalism professor’s process. It’s excruciating. The drafting, editing, tagging, re-editing… it’s quite a process.
But Sree has a good reason for his careful behavior, aside from saying that social media is “the only thing I do every day that can get me fired.”
“Twitter is the only thing I do every day that can get me into the Library of Congress.”
I send an average of 22 tweets per day, about five times more than Sree sends. He’s been on Twitter more than a year longer than me, according to twbirthday, a fun little tool Sree introduced me to. It’s obvious that one of us is much more careful about what we tweet than the other.
Also, perhaps not so ironically, one of us is a nationally-known expert on social media. Hint: It’s not me.
Sree describes Twitter as “important and dangerous,” and he developed best practices as a result of this view. He calls his approach the “ABCs” of social media. It stands for “Always Be Collecting.”
You always should have your phone with you and collect things you potentially want to share, including articles and photos, Sree said. But just because you have those items doesn’t mean you should share them all. Sree advises social media users to “share carefully.”
Other advice Sree offered journalists attending his presentation included:
Name check
When you write a tweet, consider who you can mention. Don’t just mention people when you need or want something from them. Name check people when possible to begin cultivating a relationship.
Provide tweet context
“Be semi-obnoxious” with your tags and handles as a way to help put your tweets in context. Try to put a link, hashtag and handle in each tweet you send. This will guarantee that at least one person (the person you tagged) will read your tweet.
Promote your content
It’s not enough anymore just to create content, you have to get the content in front of your audience, Sree said.
“Turning in the story is the start of your job. You have to be responsible for your own audience.”
Sree said journalists can use social media to:
- Find new ideas, trends and sources,
- Connect with readers and viewers in new, deeper ways,
- Bring eyeballs, traffic and attention to your work, and
- Help create, craft and enhance your brand.
Optimize your feed
Make sure your Twitter feed is optimized. Sree said this can be done by:
- reconsidering your Twitter handle. Avoid underscores because they don’t work on mobile devices.
- creating the shortest possible recognizable handle. Note: His is @sree.
- putting your best foot forward on your Twitter bio. Don’t be too cute.
- consider putting an email address in your Twitter bio. Journalists must be reachable.
Change your media diet
You should regularly add to your understanding of social media. Sree suggested doing this by reading sources such as Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and LifeHacker.
“Become a better student of your own social media.”
Create social good
People on Twitter like “do gooder stuff,” Sree said. Don’t believe him? Check out his case study on Four lessons from a single successful Tweet.
Know your key followers
Use Twiangulate to determine the most influential people who follow you. Create meaningful engagement with these followers as often as possible. Also think about what any content you’re about to tweet would mean to them.
We can agree that Sree knows a thing or two about Twitter. I certainly learned a lot from listening to him speak. I don’t know that I’ll take three to six minutes to draft a tweet, but I certainly will pay closer attention to the content I distribute.
