Student of Social Media

As I mentioned in a previous post, I found Twitter directories (WeFollow & Twellow) to be a great resource for finding stand-out handles by category.  Just recently, I used them to quickly filter out leading handles in the airline category.  For the most relevant and interesting according to their bio, I visited their sites (whichever one they linked to from their profile) and determined a shortlist of handles that may be considered as thought leaders in the airline category:

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The further I delve into various brands’ usage of Twitter, the more I learn of the range of its potential. Accordingly, my ah-ha moment was understanding how brand’s are leveraging the microblogging infrastructure to meet seemingly disparate business objectives. On the one hand there is @DellOutlet set up as a promotional channel and @wsdot set up as a real-time/hyper-local informational outlet, and on the other hand there is @LonelyPlanet set up as a community building effort and @comcastcares as a customer service tool.  The list goes on, and I imagine, will continue to do so.

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If I was asked to speak on the “best practices” of brands using Twitter, I’m certain I would go on for hours. Then, I suspect, if I was called upon weeks later to address the same topic, I may offer an entirely different spiel.  Reason being, Twitter (as an infrastructure) is still evolving to meet a range of business objectives.  Brands are leveraging it in a number of different ways.  Some are achieving great success and others are not.  Speculating on what is going wrong with the brands in the later category, I have attempted to generalize a few best practices.

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This summer I’m taking part in one of the very first graduate classes exploring the microblogging platform, Twitter.  In partnership with ten of my classmates and instructor, I’m committed to help write the “UW Twitter Book.”  It won’t be just a book about the basics, like this one, but one that offers a bit more insight into the brands that are finding “success” with the platform on number of different levels.

Excitingly, we have already begun the process; we are now scouring studies on Twitter: speaking with known early-adopters, leaders & detractors; and, brainstorming the structure & content of the book.  As it relates to the latter, we have not yet resolved precisely what we should cover & how we should best wrap our learnings & analyses in a cohesive and compelling way.   So, in this post, I would like to not only share my ideas on what category I am interested in, but also how I envision the book coming to together.

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