LFCTV's use of Twitter update

I wrote about LFCTV's emergency on Twitter at the start of March with some praise for what they were doing and some suggestions for how they could improve.

Following Paul Rogers' comment on this blog and my own observations this month, I'd like to update you on how quickly they've developed their use of Twitter and increased the readership.

1. More conversation
I'd previously suggested that the LFCTV team used Twitter to do too much broadcasting and not enough interaction. No more do my @replies go unnoticed though. For example, one of the team tweeted that they were re-writing the managers' profiles on the official website. Alarmed, I replied asking for clarification that Senor Benitez's profile didn't need updating. I got a swift response, killing unwanted specualtion quickly!

2. More personality
They've continued to add personal thoughts and reflections on to Twitter, sometimes even pushing against the official-feel to the website news. For example, the light-hearted banter in the warm-up to the Man United game was realy good and the songs afterwards were even useful for my local pub. The reflection that Adam Pepper's goal should have been higher-up the top 10 list after a vote on the main website was also a nice touch that you can't communicate through a corporate voice.

3, Match news
Done

4. Upcoming programmes
LFCTV had done this much better than I suggested, again with more humour and personality. For example, when two guests were late arriving for a recent show, we read all about it on Twitter, reminding us to go and watch the programme. Great use of multiple platforms.

5. Advertising Twitter
The team have done really well to increase the Twitter audience exponentially thanks to news stories, promotion on the TV channel, ads on the homepage flash screen and a logo at the footer of stories. All this has delivered over 15,000 followers - most of whom are followed back which is more good practice.

Well done LFCTV - innovating across all broadcast platforms. There's an awful lot that others could learn from their style.

And finally, thanks to Paul's complaints abotu leaving a comment on this blog, we've been able to change our moderation policy.

Blogging, Twitter and SEO

There is a raging - and not particularly interesting - debate about the value of Twitter for search engine optimisation. In short, people wonder if Twitter has any value for optimising your website because:
a) it depends on shortened URLs which don't build up link value and
b) Google places 'no follow' tags on Twitter links

The debate is dull because no-one knows how Google works (and those that do won't say) so people are groping in the dark.

However, I can report this:
a) that I have a wordpress plugin that reproduces my Tweet on my blog. I did this because I update Twitter more often than I blog
b) on some occassions, those Tweets have (unintentionally) added keywords to the page. As a result, people have searched for an unexpected combination of words which has revealed my blog at the head of a small part of the long tail.

For example, I recorded my concern about Conservative donations and mentioned large Tory donor Michael Ashcroft. A couple of days later I Twittered about Allen Stanford's arrest. My blog was therefore prominent on the search results for "Michael Ashcroft and Allen Stanford" to satisfy anyone looking for information about the two men.

I can't recommend this as a strategy per se: the volumes are too low to be able to research the keyword frequency. But there are circumstances where Twitter can help your SEO strategy.

LFCTV use of Twitter

My favourite TV channel has joined Twitter. I was interested to see what they had to say, over and above the content of the website, TV channel and what I'd pick up through the fans websites. LFCTV is currently using Twitter really well.

I started following the channel the day before the Real Madrid game and it was interesting to read 'behind the scenes' glimpses of the club. It wasn't just that you could follow the flight into Madrid and found out that they drank too much that night - but that there was an insight into the operational side of the channel too.

When news broke of Rick Parry's departure, LFCTV were first to confirm that a statement would appear on the official website.

The good things about the use of Twitter are:
* additional content over and above the day to day
* regular but not over-intense use of the channel
* the variety of content from match news to channel operations
* the personal element which came through strongly in the post match reaction to the Middlesbrough defeat

However, there are a number of areas where they could be still more engaging:
* they recently Tweeted that they were off to interview Rafa Benitez. They could have asked for questions to put to Rafa. The incentive would be seeing your question put to Rafa live on LFCTV - certainly an incentive to pay the subscription
* they have started responding to questions but it is still too much broadcasting and limited interaction
* advertising upcoming programmes. Twitter gets boring if it's just a series of commercials but for particular programmes or interviews on the channel this could help demonstrate the commercial value of Twitter
* match news (rights permitting). Twitter updates from the academy games which aren't shown live would be particularly uesful.

Overall, the Newscounter verdict is: great start, the content, tone and style is great; Now try to interact more with the community and use it to add commercial value.

Twitter is valuable for . . . sharing links

Twitter is really valuable for sharing links in real time. It's not the only useful thing about Twitter but the power of sharing links is borne about by Newscounter's research.

We tried sharing a niche interest blog post on three social networking sites: Delicious, Facebook and Twitter. All we did was post the same commentary and the link on our Delicious bookmarks, publish it via RSS on a Facebook profile (and in the status update)and write a short Tweet.

The size of each network was broadly comparable:
The Facebook profile had 169 friends - slightly above average
The Delicious profile is used twice a day
The Twitter account had 106 followers - slightly less than average

The results

The Delicious post didn't result in any traffic
The Facebook update resulted in a ratio of 10% click throughs to friends
Twitter resulted in 30% click through to friends and was RT once and 30 of these were from the key audience.

Moreover, on searching Twitter, we discovered that 4 older links had also been shared

So Twitter is really valuable for sharing links to generate traffic in realtime. We speculate that this is because:

The network is smaller and the information more valuable
The posts are pushed out to you rather than pulled in from Facebook
The links are most trustworthy

Measuring Twitter impact

There's an interesting debate on measuring the impact of Twitter.

Our experience is that not many companies track their products on Twitter. There isn't currently the volume to justify it. However, there's a growing case for doing so because:
a) Twitter is an incredibly useful tool for SEO (see Newscounter's Twitter page.)
b) Opinion formers use Twitter
c) An increasing number of journalists use Twitter personally and for new content

See some of the discussion here.

Do you know anyone who uses Twitter to monitor their brand reputation?