Comments on: @bkmcae’s 10 rules for associations using Twitter

By: Where to Start: Step 2 « SNAP’s Blog

Where to Start: Step 2 « SNAP’s Blog — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:41:53 +0000

[...] @bkmcae’s 10 rules for associations using Twitter by Ben Martin, CAE [...]

By: Maggie

Maggie — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:04:00 +0000

Dan–that is a GREAT way to announce it. Explains not only what it is but why they’d want to use it–and lets them know that they’re not making a lifetime commitment by trying it.

Thanks a lot–you just saved me some creative energy because I have to write up something very similar for one of our publications

By: Dan Scheeler

Dan Scheeler — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:25:00 +0000

Ben and Lindy — thanks for the great tips and suggestions!

Maggie, we’re doing something similar to you. A few weeks ago, I put together a rudimentary explanation of Twitter (http://www.ahcancal.org/News/Pages/Twitter.aspx), and posted to our site as an experiment to see who would be curious and tech-savvy enough to sign up.

Aside from putting it on our web site, I haven’t promoted Twitter to our membership yet, but I would like to use it on-site at our annual meeting this fall.

By: Maggie McGary

Maggie McGary — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:55:00 +0000

My association (ASHA) tentatively started tweeting "just to see what would happen" and it's actually been pretty successful. Our efforts were geared not so much at members but just at some hand-picked journalists and people blogging about our issues. Almost everyone we followed has followed us and we've gotten some good feedback.

Now we want to get the word out to members to try to get more of a following, especially with our annual convention coming up in November.

The thing is that I don't know how many of our members even know what Twitter is. I don't think this is really that much of an obstacle, though--we recently started an ASHA group on LinkedIn and have gotten a great response, so obviously our members are not totally in the dark about social networking.

So my question is do we just start saying "follow ASHA on Twitter" and leave it at that, or should we provide some sort of super- rudimentary explanation about what Twitter is and what the point of following us would be?

By: Lindy Dreyer

Lindy Dreyer — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:12:00 +0000

These are great. My rules would be…

1) Make sure your members are there before you start Twittering for your association. Otherwise just do it for yourself.

2) Never push an overt agenda on Twitter. Better to be a trusted resource–share links, comment on other folks tweets, connect members, be a real person–and the value of Twittering will blossom for your association over time.

I added a few more ideas in my sandbox.
http://tinyurl.com/56tv74