I wanted to kick of a discussion about some Twitter strategy. @WordPress has almost 24K followers, and we've got a handful of non "official" accounts here and there.
I'd like to review where we are at and brainstorm some ideas plus gather tweeters to participate in some of the accounts. Laura Scott from pingVision has agreed to be another Drupal Association permanent member to help with this, but we're looking for anyone and everyone to pitch in. Very specifically: if you want to sign up for an around the world timezone slot where you "man" the account, please leave a comment below!
First of all, we can't share passwords around. A local company here in Vancouver has a great product called HootSuite. Basically, we'll set up all the accounts, and then hand out editor roles so multiple people can "tweet" through one account.
If we get more ambitious we can do something like create a marketing.drupal.org site where we can gather links and use the Twitter module.
I've set up a Drupal Association account as @DrupalAssn. Right now, I've posted a few things and set it up in HootSuite and given Laura S an editor account on it. As well, I've got the a.d.o. blog feed going into it.
One of the ideas I had with this account was to highlight members. That is, as people signed up for individual or organization memberships, we could tweet a thanks and link to the URL they signed up with. e.g. "Thanks to So-And-So at http://example.com for becoming a member". This would nicely drive traffic to those sites, too, which is a good benefit. I filed an issue requesting an RSS feed.
Any other ideas for topics or automation for @DrupalAssn?
@Drupal is currently owned by Ber kessels, and he's getting the password reset and handed over. This is the biggie, and we need your ideas.
My main idea right now is to hook it up to Drupal Planet plus the d.o. front page (maybe the g.d.o. front page, too). I'm kind of nervous doing anything other than automation with it. Oh yes, dmitri just setup @drupalplanet, but I'm going to ask him not to: I think we need to consolidate accounts in order to get our follow count up.
At the same time, "real time" news is definitely something we want passed to the account -- e.g. the news about recovery.gov being a Drupal site.
Ideas, please?
@Druplicon is lovely and automated and all CVS geeky and I'm not sure who runs him :P He's probably fine how he is.
@drupalcon is handed over from organizing team to organizing team, and also is fine as is.
Some other things:
* should we follow back everyone or no one? (I'm thinking no one, or at least only selected people, or your account gets followed if you're on Drupal Planet, or ... something)
* auto retweeting? I don't have much experience with it and personally hate re-tweeting -- not sure what would qualify?
* other tools to use?
Comments
Following is courteous, but
Following is courteous, but after a while could get a bit unmanageable. However, it might make sense to follow as many people as possible who are tweeting about Drupal, to get the ball rolling -- at least for @Drupal. For @DrupalAssn, the automated thank you from the membership sign-up could be great, though there are some complications (e.g., it's CiviCRM that handles the membership tracking). For the Drupal Association, another automated thing might be leveraging some pipes-filtered feeds for other content out there -- a kind of vanity tweetfeed?
Laura
http://twitter.com/lauras
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
I'd prefer to see us rename
I'd prefer to see us rename @DrupalAssn to just @DrupalAssociation. "Assn" brings up the wrong connotations and doesn't look official at all.
Character limitation
I would have, but there's a character limit on usernames. Assn is the abbrevation for Association. Not sure what else we could use?
If there needs to be a
If there needs to be a difference between @Drupal and @DrupalAssociation, try @DrupalAssoc or even @DrupalOrg
+1
Drupalassn sounds like Drupal Assassin. I'm for DrupalAssoc if it fits.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
Changed
Is now @DrupalAssoc
@Drupal
Honestly I really don't like the idea of feeding the planet into @drupal. I'd prefer @drupal to be ran by a human that twittered about major development in the community that are tied to blogposts or at least closely tied.
Things like
Drupalcon Europe announced
Drupalcon D.C in just a few days, buy your tickets now @Drupalcon
Drupal 5.15 and 6.9 released,
Fields into Drupal 7 core, Drupal 7 shaping up to be an awesome release!
but only every few days.
Feeding planet into the twitter account would just give me a headache.
Tweeting the Drupal front page I can see but there has to be a little something more to the account to make it different and give people a reason why.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
No problem
All that stuff is no problem, and is exactly what we would be doing. I have two thoughts:
* I don't want to split traffic into (for example) @drupalplanet -- it would be nice to have one very large account
* I don't think ~12 posts per day from at planet would flood it (I don't know what the number is...that is what it feels like, and the tool can actually be limited. I could literally say 24 posts per day or something like that)
It also most definitely won't be one human :P As above, I'd like to have around the clock "coverage" with hand off. The planet would be in addition to this human stuff.
that is a problem
Personally I think ~12 posts a day that are just planet stuff is noise.
In looking at wordpress' twitter feed its somewhat useful information. It major breaking information about the project once every few days and it seems as though its by a human.
My point is that I don't think we need another way to get planet stuff to people, we need a way to tell people what's happening with Drupal (a new release, drupalcon, etc.)
@drupalcon is successful because its about something that people care about, its always about Drupalcon and it is by a real human being. Its also only every few days to a week or more.
that's just me though.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
I disagree
I think both could be a benefit. However, I don't feel that it all needs to be shunted into @Drupal -- @PlanetDrupal would be great, imho.
I don't see Twitter as being about a tweet every 2-3 days. (I don't see the d.o FP that way, either, but that's another story.) It's about sharing a lot of info. I don't find relevance in 99% of the tweets of the people I follow. But it's that 1% that is golden. I also pay more attention to Twitter than to my RSS feedreader these days, so having Planet Drupal posts tweeted would be wonderful. Let's face it, 12 tweets a day is not at all over-busy. In fact, Twittering the Planet would be a fabulous way to add to the community power.
Personally, however, I don't see Wordpress as much of a model. It's one thing to have VC-funded marketing, and another to have a ginormous community somehow represented out there.
We could keep @Drupal lean, have @DrupalSecurity for security tweets (retweeted by @Drupal), @DrupalAssoc for those tweets, @DrupalCon (et al.) for conference news, @DrupalPlanet (and squat on @PlanetDrupal, or vice versa) for tweeting community posts, and let people follow their interests ... just like they download modules on top of a lean Drupal core. (I bet even a @DrupalCVS account autotweeting contrib commits would get a decent following.)
Laura
http://twitter.com/lauras
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
Difference of opinion
Sorry its just a difference of opinion. I defollow people that twit >10/day because the signal/noise ratio is just too high. Moreover my tweets are SMSed to me so 12 tweets from the 60 people I follow would be 720 SMS messages every day. To me that's noise.
but hey that's me. I like the wordpress twitter because its highly relevant information about Wordpress. A @drupal that just sends out planet, something that I already read elsewhere, isn't worth it to me and I wouldn't follow it. I don't see twitter as a different conduit for the same information I see it as a different information source.
We're not always going agree though so take my opinions for what they are; opinions.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
The medium is the message
If I were attempting to Twitter via SMS, I'd unfollow prolific tweeters, too. In fact, I'd have given up on Twitter by now. ;)
Laura
pingVision, LLC (we're hiring)
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
I agree with you. If I open
I agree with you. If I open twitter and the page is filled with one person, I unfollow them. It's really rare that anything they are saying is interesting, except for, like, Brent Spiner because he's hilarious.
Twitter's post limit is too small for meaningful titles plus a gibberish URL, so I think that reposting the homepage and Drupal planet is not very useful (as it is, I rarely click through after reading the teaser in my RSS feed... I'd never click through after reading only a half the title that could fit in the tweet character limit). Keeping them as separate feeds so people can opt into them would be much more ideal. I would be heartbroken to have to make the decision between cluttering my twitter feed with a mass of content duplicated from my RSS feed and missing the occasional human generated piece of information.
I agree that we should consider twitter as a different information source. What does twitter mean to us? Why are we using it?
For me, I see it as small bite sizes of information that is too small for writing up a full post about it but could be interesting for people to know. I see it also as a means of distributing information quickly. It can spread important, time sensitive information, and be used to create anticipation and buzz to something coming down the pipeline. Reposting information readily available elsewhere -- and more easily consumed elsewhere -- doesn't accomplish this.
@Druplicon
Laura -- @Druplicon already tweets core commits.
heavy tweets vs. light
Even using the web or twhirl or tweetdeck I don't follow people who tweet more than twice a day in general.
It's easy to follow an account, so let's split the traffic by topic across multiple twitter accounts. This way jredding (and people like him) can follow only what he wants and people who want the full load can follow @drupal, @drupalassoc and @drupalplanet and @druplicon and...
If we put all the content into one account then people who prefer fewer tweets will simply not subscribe. If we split it up then we can satisfy all preferences. This also answers the question of who to follow - @drupal could just follow the 4 or 5 different @drupal* items that we want to help promote.
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Why a separate account for DA?
Everything the Drupal Association would want to announce over Twitter would be something that we'd also want to announce over the main Drupal channel. Why give people multiple places to check?
Just do it all under @Drupal (I see that hasn't been updated since 2007, so let's get the account info and give 3-4 community members access). I agree with 1-2 posts per day max so we don't annoy people. Looks like WP is doing something like one post every week or two, all of it highly relevant to all of its community members. Quality over quantity, imo.
A separate @DrupalPlanet is fine for people who follow Twitter more than RSS.
Difference of opinion
Basically, unless you are planning to sign up to help tweet on the account (oh, and respond, too -- anyone questions or comments to @Drupal will get responses), then let us (Laura, me, ?) run it and we'll see how it goes and gather feedback, and modify accordingly.
Frankly, I was hoping to get some non-DA discussion and help in this thread. So, um, are you out there? :P
So far, it sounds like Laura and I are more typical and experienced users -- i.e. follow lots of people, use clients like Twhirl / Tweetdeck, etc. Following a lot of people or 12 / day tweeters isn't heavy in my world. I can tell you that every twitter post of mine with a link in it results in 40 - 60+ web visits to that page. That's called marketing!
Why a separate account for DA?
Well, different "audiences", in the same way that you've talked about different accounts above. We have no control over "Drupal" so it should be the community voice IMHO. Also, for purely promotional purposes, the memberships + links I'd like to have.
more than a difference of opinion
"more typical" and "more experienced" is not possible - the typical twitter user has been using it for less than 6 months.
Let's say that twitter users are mixed between people who like to follow accounts with lots of tweets (80% - I'll be generous here) and people who don't like lots of tweets (remaining 20%). If @Drupal sends out a mix of 10+ tweets a day then we lose out on that 20% of the audience right away. Can you provide an explanation or any documentation for the idea that tweeting a ton every day is going to draw a wider audience of followers?
With 5 data points this seems to claim it helps. 5 is not much. Anything else?
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
I can offer anecdotal
I can offer anecdotal evidence:
When I tweet more, I get more followers. When I don't tweet much, I don't (or get fewer).
The most followed tweeters are either (a) extremely prolific (Guy Kawasaki, Dave Miner) or (b) celebrities (Barack Obama).
With the reach of Twitter extending beyond the geek community, I don't see a quiet reserved Twittering policy doing much for Drupal.
I'm agnostic as to whether it should be all together or separated out. I'm leaning towards the latter. And will get started as soon as Boris and I get communications cleared up so I can get access via HootSuite.
Laura
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
My point..
in case my point was muted out by the other items
You are most likely correct BUT duplicating planet onto twitter doesn't seem a wise choice to me. To a point I don't believe it is the amount of twittering but the quality of twittering. (<2-5 twits a day is my preference though).
At this point I'm going to play the role of Board member and/or delegator (you choose). The two of guys seem eager to handle this and I do not want to stop you in any way. I have stated my peace and you are free to do with it as you please. I trust you guys. (not as though you needed my sign off or opinion but well you got it ;) )
Do what you think is best for the community as a whole. I may eat my words and you guys will be correct, or maybe it'll be vice versa. Debating forever won't get @drupal going though.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
keep @drupal_planet
I actually subscribe to and really enjoy the @drupal_planet twitter feed.
I find myself using twitter more and more as an aggregator to interesting posts via my phone, and it actually helps drive me to more Drupal-related posts.
I'd much rather keep it atomized and separate (i.e. @drupal vs. @drupal_planet)
Uh, ok. :P
Laura asked for input at http://twitter.com/lauras/status/1245449957 and I was trying to help. If you don't want peoples' input, then don't ask for it. :P
I was looking for "outside" input
Sorry, I knew part of my post that would come across as harsh, but I was hoping to gather some new ideas from new participants, rather than downers on how it shouldn't be done.
I wanted to recruit some outsiders, as in - "I'm not currently on the DA but interested in helping with marketing and have an interest in Twitter" -- rather than just inside baseball on the DA mailing list.
We'll do more "doing" and then we'll circle back around and see what Twitter user feedback is. Dmitri has already set up DrupalPlanet, I've asked for access and will ask for a logo on Twitter.
difference of opinion
Well as of today I've twittered 1,871 times and you 1,847 times. It seems as though strictly speaking I've used it more often thus I'm more experienced. So lets stop with the "we're more typical/experienced" talk, its not going to help get things sorted.
We are a different audience and have differences of opinion, that's it. Twitter is not a marketing tool for me its a separate information gathering point thus I'm not following thousands of people or looking to be marketed to. I get information about my friends and from those that have similar interests to me. Right now the majority of my personal traffic is people living in/around Shanghai. I also follow chx, dmitrig01, you and several other people.
I read planet via RSS
I read CVS commits via RSS and through multiple filters (too busy w/o them, imo)
I read Drupal's frontpage, again.. via RSS
And why is it so hard to manage a twitter account. I'm spending 1-2 hours a day reading/responding to Association email and it takes at least 10 minutes to proof a front page post before it is posted. Twitter takes even less time since that's the exact reason it was developed...
Twittering:
"Excellent post on Popsci build, http://tinyurl.com/popsci"
or
"webchick just committed some awesome fields-in-core code, Drupal 7 is going to rock!"
or
"Drupal 7 unstable-build 2,372 now ready for download"
Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes of a person's time once a day or once a week. If we can't find a volunteer(s) that is willing to do this once a day or once a week then something is really wrong with our community. My money is on the fact that if it take it slow (once a week) this isn't going to be a big deal.
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
food for thought
I'm totally going to out Lizak (Sorry Liza).. but she twittered this today and I thought it was relevant to this conversation.
http://twitter.com/LizaK/status/1254049149
Ok now I'm done.. honestly I do trust you guys. Have fun!
-Jacob Redding
-Jacob Redding
Yeah, just RT is maybe not the best thing
Have many people started following @Drupalchix? That would be one measure. For me, it's duplicating a lot since I'm already following many, if not most, of the Drupalchix now.
Angie, are you following this thread? Any thoughts?
Laura
pingVision
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
Yeah...
Basically I was going for something I'd only have to set up once and never touch again. My only manual work is adding a feed node for each new account. I don't personally have time to make a curated list of tweets, and I don't really like the idea of giving the password out to 50,000 people. I also didn't want each Drupalchick to have to follow 100 other people manually; seemed like a waste. But I agree that now that there are ~40 people on the list of re-tweets it's getting a bit cumbersome and spammy.
So, I have a new idea that maybe a few of us chix can hack on at Drupalcon (unless for some reason I have time this weekend):
Have the @drupalchix user follow accounts of women in the Drupal community. Have them follow back. Then, if they want to announce something via the @drupalchix account, they can simply direct message. Drupal sucks in the DMs and pushes them back out as tweets.
This means whoever maintains @drupalchix only needs to curate the list of people that are followed (~100) and not a list of individual tweets (~50,000 :P). And it also means that announcements only get pushed through there if someone in that group felt that they were relevant to everyone else. Seems win-win to me, and would probably also work well for the @drupal and @drupalassoc accounts.
I think the @drupalchix
I think the @drupalchix account should also post when new things are posted to our group, or announcements, like where & when our BOF meetup will be at DrupalCon.
DM == excellent idea.
The direct-message idea is excellent, as well as announcing new posts to the group. That's something I'd subscribe to.
moondancerjen, your comment made me grin and think, twitterdrupalchix flash mob at d*c.
/needs less caffeine
What is the purpose of
What is the purpose of grouping Drupalchix together? Is it so we can share information amongst ourselves (like the Drupal group), or is it advertising to the masses that YES Drupal is friendly to women developers, and look at the cool stuff we're doing.
We already have the Drupal group for information, so I would say that the twitter feed should be about what Drupalchix are doing. As such, I don't think that the only tweets should be directed to Drupalchix. I am envisioning people putting "#drupal #dupalchix #drupalcon #dcdc #view #panels" at the end of their tweets...
What about just retweeting tweets with #drupal?
Created a placeholder for Twittergator module...
And some ideas on implementation @ http://drupal.org/node/385134. Let me know what you think. Let's hack on this next week. :)
I was following @Drupalchix,
I was following @Drupalchix, until I realized that most of the posts weren't Drupal related. The problem is that people have one account and use it for a wide array of purposes. But, I really am not interested in, say, someone's yoga schedule.
Oops! Hi. :-)
Hey guys,
Sorry, I didn't realize this was such a big deal. Basically my complaints were this:
*There is no participation in the conversation from this account
*80% of my front page on Twitter this morning was @Drupalchix - including such tweets as:
"RT @supergeek09: 011001000111001001110101011100000110000"
*I couldn't see a rhyme or reason as to why the people that this account follows were selected
*This account does not follow back
Suggestions:
*Curate the retweets - find the good ones and pass them on
*Participate in the conversation
*Add value - overview, thoughts, etc.
Hope this helps clarify!
~L*
my thoughts on the different accounts
I think it'd be good keep specialized accounts, because otherwise it'd either get overwhelming or there'd paralysis for never posting.
As a subscriber to each of the twitter feeds, this is what I'd want to see:
@drupal should be front-page posts and a hand curation of any community-driven sprints events, annoucements (like it should be first post announcing new releases of Drupal for example). (use a distinct Drupalicon that says drupal.org or something)
@drupalplanet should post RSS feed of latest Drupal planet posts (use the Drupal Planet avatar icon)
@drupalchix should be hand-curated by a twitterer who is following all of the female drupal developers and retweeting interesting and relevant Drupal information
@drupalassoc should point to any Association press releases, and make any other announcements about meetings, or work done.
This sounds good to me too...
Only I'd add the caveat that noteworthy planet posts could be re-sent out through @drupal as well.
I'd be willing to help out with any of the accounts as well.
*Raises hand*
I'm a non-association member, and addicted to twitter. I'd like to help post to the account, but I'm a bit worried I won't know where to find the latest news to tweet about it. If you give me some pointers/guidelines, I'd be glad to help in anyway I can. I can even just answer replies/questions.
I'm @moondancerjen on Twitter.
If you want my opinion, I think having multiple accounts so people can choose what kind of Drupal news they want to receive is good. We should follow everyone who posts about Drupal, so people who follow us can find similar twitter accounts. Also, maybe instead of having an all encompassing rule about always retweeting drupal planet is wrong. Maybe we just highlight certain tweets that would be important to our followers would be a better compromise.
Another idea: with multiple posters to the account you may want to have people sign their name/initial after they post, just to make it more personal. I noticed that is what @BritneySpears does ;)
Let me know if I can help out,
~Jeannette
Additional ideas
I agree with Boris that we shouldn't split traffic, but at the same time it's hard to have the bot serve as a marketing device and also something a tenured Drupal user will want to follow.
However, I may have some insight that will help out (I just wrote a game for twitter). I think the status updates could be something pretty general, whether it be Planet Posts or major miletones/happenings in the community. Then, the bot could direct message users on important information like security, new builds, etc. One thing to keep in mind is that we can get the bot white listed so it can make an unlimited number of API calls, in order to serve the DM functionality.
In terms of the public status messages, I agree that Drupal Planet is too much noise unless we had a human choosing the "best" articles (which is tough and is unfair). I've had a lot of people email and direct message me about my twitter game sending too many messages and it only sends 1-2 an hour. Almost everyone suggested that one every 2+ hours would be more suitable. In any case, that's what the RSS feed is for, right? If we took this avenue of auto-generating status updates, how about we limit it to do the front page of d.o?
Finally, a small (large) idea on DM functionality. It would be great if users could toggle settings to set what updates they would receive. E.g., there would be a "tweet me security updates" setting so when a security release happened, it would DM all of those users. I know it's possible--thoughts?
To sum up: 1 bot with multiple layers of functionality that serves both for marketing (public status updates) and for common users. That way we can have all of the traffic/followers on one bot and there's a higher chance of getting noticed/re-tweeted, etc.
Matt
Large Animal Games | drupal.mattwkelly.com
Matt
Facebook | www.mattwkelly.com
hootsuite
Please don't use Hootsuite -- or at least don't shorten links through ow.ly. It hijacks the browser's address bar and makes it frustrating to click on links. There are good alternatives for URL shorteners like http://bit.ly/
There's a longer explanation here about why ow.ly is bad for Twitter followers:
http://tips.webdesign10.com/social-media/url-shortening-tools-twitter-35...