Aptify

As we can see from the statistics in my last blog post, Twitter has the potential to provide useful information for associations seeking to improve member outreach. The rapid growth of Twitter over the past year along with the favorable demographics of the users leveraging the platform should lead to opportunities but only if a productive means of monitoring Twitter traffic can be developed.

If you believe that Twitter has some value for your organization, how can you possibly sift through all of the “tweets” that occur on a 24/7 basis to make sense of the information? Like mining for gold, a strategy must be put in place to avoid wasting significant time on irrelevant tweets that contain little value for your organization.

Monitor Your Followers

Once you have set up your identity on Twitter and informed potential followers that you are now using the platform, individuals will begin to “follow” your Twitter feed. The best way to gain followers is to follow other users yourself. Twitter has a number of search features that will allow you to locate your contacts. Once you have built up a list of users who you are following, Twitter will build a personalized feed of tweets from these individuals which will appear on the main page of twitter.com once you log in. An RSS Feed icon can be used to generate a personalized feed that you can monitor through Microsoft Outlook or any other RSS Feed reader.

Monitor Other Twitter Feeds

If you only monitor the Twitter feeds of individuals who you are explicitly following, the platform would still be interesting but of limited use. The real value of Twitter is revealed when you begin to monitor activity of users who you are not directly following. Twitter has a basic and advanced search tool that will allow you to search for tweets containing keywords that are important to your organization.

For example, let’s say that your association has an interest in monitoring a particular bill that is making its way through Congress. A timely example might be the health care reform bill (HR 3200) in the House of Representatives. By generating a simple search for “HR 3200”, you can monitor all Twitter traffic where individuals refer to the legislation specifically by its official name. An advanced search could filter the large number of tweets based on a more specific interest. Twitter’s search functionality allows for a number of search operators that permit more advanced queries such as "HR 3200" AND "Public Option". This search will return all tweets that refer to the legislation in question and mention the phrase “public option” which is one of the features of the health care reform bill.

What’s even more powerful about Twitter’s search options is that any search can be consumed as a RSS Feed which will allow you to monitor tweets meeting your preferred criteria from within a RSS Feed reader such as Microsoft Outlook, Google Reader, and many others. Using this approach, many search combinations can be used to generate specialized RSS feeds that will automatically notify you when relevant information appears on Twitter. For example, click on this link for a RSS Feed corresponding to the search discussed above. The icons below will appear on any search result. Click on the “Feed for this query” icon to generate the RSS Feed.

Many Possibilities

While the examples outlined above involve searching for information related to legislation, endless possibilities exist for monitoring other keywords including the names of important members or organizations. Associations should definitely create searches for their organization’s full and abbreviated name since tweets can reveal opportunities for better member outreach as well as the potential to reach out to new members.

Of course, in addition to monitoring Twitter using the search options, it is always a good idea to become a participant in discussions as well. By providing tweets with valuable information, more followers will emerge and possibly “re-tweet” your messages to their own networks. Through this network effect, your message can reach a much larger audience and you will attract additional followers.