The Communications Department

I recently learned that there is a significant difference between blogging and Tweeting about how to use blogs and Twitter to communicate and grow business and actually using these tools for those purposes. Here are some insights I have gained as the guy handling the Twitter account for the Holyoke Blue Sox of the New England Collegiate Baseball League. I’m filling this role right now because The Communication Department’s value proposition is that I can become either an extension of an existing corporate communications department or a virtual communications department for clients who do not have the resources to employ a full-time communications professional. My role with the Blue Sox is the latter and includes overseeing marketing and communications for the team, so I’m doing the Tweeting in the short term until I transition the responsibility to one of our several interns.

The Challenging Stuff

• It is tough to Tweet from the road. I recently had a meeting near Boston, which is about an hour-and-a-half drive each way. While it is not illegal to text while driving in Massachusetts (at least not yet), it is not something I like to do. Between drive time and meeting time, I was away from Twitter about five hours, during which time I wanted to tweet about our recent deal with radio station ESPN 1450 AM WHLL, the local ESPN affiliate in Springfield, MA. It had to wait until I got back. So much for the real-time nature of the application.
• I could not have Tweeted from the road, anyway. Most of my Tweeting is done via laptop. While I do have the Twitterberry application on my BlackBerry, it would not let me switch from @_DaveS (my Twitter account) to @HolyokeBlueSox, and I wanted to Tweet as the team, not me. I have since added the TinyTwitter application to my BlackBerry and set it up as @HolyokeBlueSox. So far, so good.
• I missed an opportunity. Before I had TinyTwitter on my BlackBerry, we had a radio interview at ESPN 1450 AM WHLL in Springfield, MA, to promote the upcoming season. Without laptop and WiFi access, I could not Tweet from the interview. So my first Tweet afterward was something like “Just finished interview at ESPN 1450 AM to promote upcoming season.” Not terribly exciting.
• I don’t make it to every game. I attend as many home games as I can, but rarely travel with the team. I like to Tweet real time game activity, but I can’t be there for every inning. So far none of our followers have said anything, but it’s a challenge. This should change when the intern(s) take over the game day Tweeting.
• I was surprised that none of the interns were using Twitter.They were all Facebook only folks. Speaks to the generational aspect of Twitter, I guess.

The Good Stuff

• Overall, handling the Blue Sox Twitter account has gotten easier. I’m online most of the day. I have my @_DaveS account open on my desktop using TweetDeckand the @HolyokeBlueSox account open using Twhirl. I have a column set up on TweetDeck for Tweets with Blue Sox so I can monitor those Tweets.
• We’re building a nice following of local folks on Twitter. It was cool to see people Tweeting about the game during the home opener.
• The real time nature is a plus. It was great to Tweet about in real time as our players were drafted during the Major League Baseball draft.
• I try to keep our Tweets interesting. I have used Twitter to give away free tickets to games, which has helped our marketing efforts. I will use it to promote our YouTube channel. I also use it to promote upcoming home games and to share information about our players.
• TinyTwitter has been an easy and effective application for my BlackBerry.
• Twitter is a different way to engage people.Interaction with individual Blue Sox fans via Twitter is different from the normal communication channels like e-mail and print.
• Twitter has been an additional channel to promote our sponsors. This has been a nice value-add that we will discuss with them when renewing their sponsorships next season.
• I learn things. One of our followers told me about a social networking site (www.holyoke.ning.com) for the city of Holyoke, which I did not know about. I have set up the Blue Sox on the site, which has connected us to a community of folks I did not know existed.
• We are where the media are. We are connected through Twitter to some of the local media outlets, which helps us gain exposure in the area. The local newspaper has re-Tweeted some of my Tweets.
• The more we Tweet, the better.I Tweet throughout the day and find that I will pick up additional followers the more frequently I tweet. Number of updates is often a factor when someone is deciding whether or not to follow you. So if we have a healthy number of updates, it becomes obvious that we are active on Twitter. People prefer to follow active Twitterers.

The Fun Stuff

• I like to keep up with the competition. We follow the other teams in the NECBL who are on Twitter and see how they’re using the tool.
• I often re-Tweet the Blue Sox Tweet through my @_DaveS account.My network of followers is bigger than the Blue Sox network right now, so I’ll re-Tweet to get the Tweets to more people. One time I did a re-Tweet and @HolyokeBlueSox thanked me for the re-Tweet. I responded that I was glad to do it. Of course, this was a conversation between me, myself and I. (I don’t recommend doing this a lot. You could lose credibility.)

This has been an eye-opening experience about the realities of using Twitter for business. As I have worked out some of the kinks, managing the account has become easier and I believe Tweeting has helped raise awareness of the team in the region, which has led to some ticket sales. As for what happens next, how does that cliché go? We’ll just take it one game at a time.

I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Podcamp Western Massachusetts this past weekend. While I could only make it for the half of the full day podcamp, I did come away with some useful learnings and insights. Here are five of them.

1. Social media gatherings are positive experiences.The purpose of the podcamp was to bring people together who have a common interest in social media. One of the fundamental behaviors of social media online is to share thoughts, ideas and knowledge with one another in a free and open manner. This remained true during our face-to-face time together, too. Helping with this experience was the use of the Unconference format, which allowed for a free-flowing agenda defined by the interests of the group and the opportunity for attendees to opt-in to workshops that have the greatest appeal to the individual.
2. This social media stuff is real and significant. This isn’t really a learning for me but a reinforcement of what I have been experiencing over the last year or so. The folks at podcamp represented a wide range of occupations, economic status and life experience. They also represented a wide spectrum of social media and technical expertise. And yet there were so many stories of how they were engaging or being impacted by social media on a daily basis — from doing business to connecting with people they would never have met without these social media tools to driving cultural change.
3. It’s still all about relationships. I attended a workshop about using social media to promote  yourself and your business and one of the first comments was that interpersonal relationships remain the primary driver  for success. This idea is of particular interest to me because I’m trying to get a better understanding of the effects — positive and negative — social media has on authentic relationships. And as the podcamp helped prove,  there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction. There are plenty of online tools to facilitate the workshop topics covered at podcamp. However, there is real value in coming together as a group and seeing and hearing one another in person.
4. Twitter is hot. There was a lot of discussion about Twitter during the time I was at podcamp. It appeared to garner the most interest, leading to its own Twitter 101 session. While the discussions included information on what it is and how to use it, there were several discussions on why we use it. With Twitter growing so quickly and making its way into the mainstream, the information and networking on Twitter has the potential to grow in value and importance. I say has the potential because the downside is that it also is growing in spam and losing some of its “purity,” as a cottage industry of ghost Tweeters seems to be growing, too.
5. Attend more social media gatherings. Podcamp was a great experience and as mentioned in the first learning in this list, social media gatherings generally make for a positive and worthwhile time. And with social media evolving and changing at lightening speeds, attending an event is a great way to keep up with what’s going on in the social media world. So be on the lookout for social media podcamps, Tweetups (gatherings of local folks on Twitter) and other social media conferences.

For more learnings from folks who attended Podcamp Western Mass, make sure to check out the links on the Wiki.

Ever wonder what goes on in the lockeroom at an NBA game during halftime? We now have a brief, 140-character glimpse of what transpires thanks to Charlie Villanueva, a forward for the Milwaukee Bucks, sending a “tweet” via Twitter live from the Bucks locker room during a recent game against the Boston Celtics. Needless to say, his coaches were not too happy about it. (”Bucks Coach Calls Foul on Villanueva Twitter Post”).

While this is a high-profile example of tweeting from the workplace, the reality is that it is becoming more prevelant as the number of Twitter users continues to grow like crazy. I have read that there may be as many as 2,000 to 5,000 new users opening Twitter accounts everyday. You know it is just a matter of time before some of your employees  are tweeting from work. In fact, some may be doing so already.

What’s the Risk?
As you think about work, think about the meetings and conversations in which you engage during a typical day. Now think about how comfortable you would be if those conversations, planning sessions and/or workplace operations plans ended up in the Twitter streams of hundreds or thousands of people. Feeling uncomfortable? I have seen tweets from employees at locations where job eliminations were just announced and tweets from folks who were on conference calls. While most of the content was benign, it is easy to see how harmful or proprietary information could make it out of an organization. For one such example, read the storyof FedEx and the employee from Ketchum.

What Can We Do?
With the proliferation of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, it may seem impossible to believe anything can be done to curtail or stop these kinds of communications from your employees. However, there are some proactive steps you can take to help influence their decision-making process.

1. Create a social media policy. Many companies have created or are in the process of creating social media policies for their employees. These policies may include guidelines for the kinds of business-related information employees may discuss via Twitter or Facebook, as well as disclaimer language an employee should include with any work-related posts. Some policies also include consequences for violating the guidelines, including termination.
2. Monitor the conversations. For Twitter specifically, there are applications that allow you to monitor Tweets by key word. Tweetdeck is on example. If you monitor Tweets that include your company name, you will not only see what employees may be saying about you, but everyone else, too. From there, you will have to decide when and how you would like to intervene.
3. Have a voice in the conversation. Don’t let the only information in the social media world come from employees or customers who may be uninformed, misinformed or disgruntled. The percentage of people creating content for social media platforms is much smaller than the number of people reading and commenting on that content. You should be creating the messages on which others comment and share with their networks.

As the use of social media tools grows and posting information becomes easier due to the increasad adoption of portable handheld devices, expect to see more workplace commentary in the form of Tweets and Facebook and LinkedIn status updates. That reminds me. I have to do a workplace Tweet about my Workplace Tweeting blog entry.