11 Twitter Recommendations

Before we start:

Quantity vs Quality of followers

What is more important: ■  Get a really high number of followers? ■  Get followers that are specifically interested in your topics?

1.  Provide interesting and relevant content. ■  What content is interesting for your followers?

■  Find the right mix of content.

■  Messages, Links, Videos, Articles and “soft” issues

■  What topics are trending?

■  Respect copyright and reference your sources.

2. Be professional and creative with your profile ■  Choose a name that appeals to your followers

■  Upload a picture that reflects you

■  Let the people know where your location is

■  Provide a link to your website

■  Describe yourself in the bio

3. Follow people that you want to follow you ■  Follow those that you want to follow you: stakeholders, journalists, influencers…

4. Interact with people you find relevant ■  Retweet messages from interesting users

■  @-reply users that you regard as strategic partners

■  Ask followers to retweet your content by adding RT to your tweets

5. Build strong relationships with influencers ■  Be relevant when you reach out to influencers and add value to conversations

■  Provide additional information to trending topics

What tools can you use to find influencers?

Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.

Klout measures influence online. When you recommend, share, and create content you impact others. Your Klout Score measures that influence on a scale of 1 to 100.

6. Be patient ■  Find the right balance between asking for support and support influencers

■  Building strong relationships takes time

7. Offer exclusive content for Twitter Followers ■  Maybe you can release a preview of a publication on Twitter

■  Share some results only with Twitter followers

8. “Live” Tweet from Events ■  Use Twitter to Tweet from interesting events or shows

■  Tailor your message to a specific audience

9. Offer Twitter Q&As with Experts ■  Offer users the chance to ask questions about specific topics

■  For Example, use International Women’s Day to hold a live Q&A about gender issues

■  You can also use public events, such as the Eurovision Song contest or FIFA Worldcup etc.

10. Use Hashtags to find a wider audience ■  Tag common topics with the # sign

■  Use themes, such as #SahelNOW or #FF

■  Find the balance between readability and participation

11. Integrate Twitter in your traditional communication ■  Integrate Twitter into your website

■  Integrate Twitter in your email

■  Integrate Twitter in your print products

HootSuite is a social media management system to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks.

For questions or more information, please contact: Social and Civic Media Section socialandcivicmedia@unicef.org