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NSA UNconference: Community, Controversy & Clients

Notes from MPK's Twitter Black Belt Session

Session Objectives: understand the value of building targeted communities on Twitter; identify the upside (and downside) of controversy and leveraging connections as a social media leader; and create special events on Twitter that grow your business.

Critical first step to community building: what is your purpose in social media?

My purpose is to serve as a resource for agriculture by informing, inspiring and inciting people around the food plate.

AgChat Background info

AgChat: a moderated conversation for people interested in the business of raising food, feed, fuel and fiber each Tuesday night, 8-10 pm ET. Founded by MPK in April 2009

Learn more from the #agchat FAQs.

#AgChat & #FoodChat Guidelines

AgChat Foundation: Founded in April 2010 by the community brought together for the weekly chat as not-for-profit organization in the state of Indiana and is seeking 501(c)(3) status. The Foundation’s mission is to empower a connected community of agvocates. It is a 100% volunteer organization of people brought together through the weekly conversation.

MPK’s Favorite Twitter Tools

Tweetchat: Favorite tool for moderating; it automatically adds the hashtag. Set refresh speeds to 5 seconds.

Twubs: Designed to follow tags like Tweetchat, but does not operate as smoothly. Excellent for back-up when Twitter

Tweetdeck: organizing community, following hashtags, filtering DMs, scheduling, updates to multiple social networks. Now allows tweets beyond 140 characters, so excellent for RTing during a chat.

Hootsuite: scheduling recurring tweets, such as chat announcements, guidelines, archives, etc.

SocialOomph: useful for mass purging DMs.

Tweetadder: automates some follower/following functions (e.g. unfollow those who don’t follow back)

Twentyfeet: simple metrics tool on social media monitoring

Chat Structure

7:50 pm Format for #agchat 1) Networking 8-8:15 pm ET 2) Moderated ?s 3) Executable idea 4) 9:55 Ask your own ?s, pitch your site or get ideas

8:00 pm Guidelines for #agchat, 8-10pm ET 1)intro w/ location & #ag interest 2)stay on topic 3)start responses w/ Q# 4)play nice, be professional

Typical facilitated structure (allows for consistency between moderators)

8:00 pm        Announce doors open – provide welcome, shout out for networking
8:15 pm       Q1 goes up – please remind people to use Q# in advance of any responses
8:45 pm        Shout out for any lurkers
9:50 pm       Last Q: What is the one executable idea you’ll be working on from tonight’s #agchat?
9:55 pm        Pitch time
10:00 pm    Announce doors closed, after party in session, thank people – invite next week, ask for topic suggestions.

Special guest: featured tweets

Twitter Info Shared with My Community

How Tweet It Is
Technology has made it simple these days to discover information on any number of subjects. Questions about agriculture? Well, some farmers in Nebraska are making it easy to go right to the source.

Replay It: Google Search Across the Twitter Archive
Since we first introduced real-time search last December, we’ve added content from MySpace, Facebook and Buzz, expanded to 40 languages and added a top links feature to help you find the most relevant content shared on updates services like Twitter.

Tiptoe into Twitter: “Twools” to Get Started
You have decided to try out Twitter and wonder what you should do now. I’d suggest you spend 15 minutes a day for three weeks to learn the tool and develop habits to utilize social media as a part of your farm operation.

140 Characters of Opportunity
Twitter. It’s likely to be voted most likely to leave you scratching your head. After all, how much can you really say in 140 characters?

Directory of Farmers & Ag Tweeps on Twitter
Great list of agricultural people on Twitter, orchestrated by three family farmers.

The Twitter Guidebook
Mashable has assembled The Twitter Guide Book, a complete collection of resources for mastering Twitter.

Why Twitter Will Endure
“Anything that is useful to both dissidents in Iran and Martha Stewart has a lot going for it; Twitter has more raw capability for users than anything since e-mail.” – Clay Shirky

Twitter’s Business Value to Agriculture

Questioning why an organization should be a part of Twitter? MPK shares examples to help more people in agriculture understand the business value of Twitter.

Twitter Empowers Farmer
Relationships, built through shared experiences, have been growing through hundreds of conversations online. A family beef and grain farmer in Ohio explains how this has helped him speak out more effectively.