In a series of articles about Twitter, we talk to Social Communication expert Dr Sean Rintel about Twitter in business, the media and the community.

VUE:  How do you find topics and time to Twitter?

SR:  Twitter is valuable because it is an unconstrained local broadcasting system that affords similarly unconstrained exact re-broadcasting. It is really the perfect medium to see the viral nature of information and sentiment.

Since it is my job to understand communication technology trends, I start most days readings tech news. Most comes from RSS feeds from tech blogs, but I also check through some personally-curated lists of categorised Twitter accounts. Although sometimes these are just repetitions of tech blog posts, often they include personal evaluations, re-tweets that link to relevant related material, quick real-time responses before officials posts come out, industry gossip, and, of course, some personal stuff. I also look at Twitter in gaps during the day, while travelling etc.

Obviously large scheduled events such as conferences etc. set hashtags and then increasingly attendees tweet the gist of presentations. This real-time feed can be very valuable both for information and for the sentiment of sessions or the conference as a whole. That being said, it is a self-selected sub-set of attendees, so its not an objectively faithful sense of what's going on.

Twitter really comes into its own when a major news issue arises. Indeed, it is often the place where one sees something *becoming* major. When a non-preset hashtag is used by several people in my lists within a short timeframe, I follow the tag and get real-time news. That goes for social events as much as industry events, or, more interestingly, things that cross boundaries such as the recent Qantas industrial action.

VUE:  What measureable business impact have you seen from Twitter?

SR:  In the communication technology field, Twitter is a very important place to evaluate the health etc. of startups or the roll-out of new features in existing applications. Since the tech community is also the early adopter community, the real-time discussion of the user experience, industry gossip etc. feeds directly into the tech blog posts.

From a reputation management perspective, Twitter is a powerful real-time indicator of the success or otherwise of information campaigns, interventions, or crisis management strategies. Going well or badly, the public will tweet their responses. It is the social media successor to late-night infomercials. Laugh at them as we might, those late-night infomercials are one of the few advertising situations where response is direct enough to know whether the product will sell (or, perhaps, whether the ad will sell the product). Within 10 minutes of an infomercial playing there should be a glut of calls. No calls means that strategy needs to be revised. Twitter is as close to that real-time reaction as one can have in social media. So business community managers should keep tabs on Twitter as a matter of course. Further, a large section of the public itself turns to Twitter to find out what others are thinking and then formulate their own response.

Again, the public outcry during the Qantas situation is a clear example. Many people I know who are irregular Twitter users jumped on soon after the announcement, and then started vigorously tweeting. I'm sure the Qantas PR team were watching the mounting outrage. I'm not privy to Qantas's strategy in that situation, but they must have expected outrage. Twitter would have let them roughly evaluate the type and amount of that outrage and whether that fit their strategy or not. Obviously just *because* there is outrage doesn't mean the strategy should necessarily be changed, although if it came from an unexpected place etc. then tactical adjustments could be made. E.g. responding to those users via Twitter itself or rapidly releasing audience-specific media releases.

VUE:  What are your tips for building a presence on Twitter and gaining followers?

1. Use some Twitter automation application to search for keywords in users' profiles. Auto-add those users (with a randomised set of greeting messages) and unfollow those who do not follow back within, say, three days.
2. Tweet at least twice a day. One should be something news-y preferably with something that looks more informal than advertising campaign material or press releases, and the other should be something that affords easy engagement: a question, a poll, etc.
3. Have someone ready to respond to tweets: thank followers for positive tweets, have someone deal with negative tweets--both will build word of mouth.
4. Make it worth following a Twitter account as well as other social media services/websites. Not everything should be auto-cross-posted everywhere. Save some things just for Twitter.
5. As in all business communication, spelling, grammar, and punctuation count. That being said, standardised abbreviations can be used so long as they fit the business and Twitter account profile.
6. Twitter thrives on the personal. It is hugely consumed via mobile devices, which are highly individualistic and personal. So Tweets will do best when they are themselves personal. Given my tech news reading habits, for example, I will follow an individual in a company but unfollow if they just post links to their blog or other places without other comment. I'll curate my own news, thanks very much.
7. Because Twitter feeds scroll rapidly, you can get more reads and re-tweets if you re-send about three hours after the initial post.

VUE:  What’s been your biggest learning experience on getting the most from Twitter?

SR:  Apart from the above, which is what I've gleaned from looking at how Twitter is being used in the tech industry, I see Academia as on the brink of discovering social media. And that includes me. While I've watched Twitter since its inception, this year I've decided to embrace it to enhance my own expose. So this year I've started Tweeting about my recent publications, tweet about conferences and tried to produce at least a couple of tweets a day about social media issues. This has led to more people reading and citing my work, more media attention, more potential students contacting me about courses etc. So far I have not made a determined effort to attract followers (as in points 1 and 2 above), preferring to see how organic follower growth works, but I'm very happy with the amount of exposure I've received from this fairly limited effort.

VUE:  Thanks Sean! Dr. Sean Rintel is a social communication technology researcher and lecturer at The University of Queensland. His research focuses on how the affordances and constraints of communication technologies interact with language, social action, and culture. His teaching focuses on facilitating students’ discovery of strategic opportunities for making principled communication choices.  You can follow Sean at @seanrintel or find him at his website.