by Susan Serra of Hansen Living (may be temporarily offline at the time of this posting). She blogs at The Kitchen Designer and can be found at Twitter @SusanSerraCKD.
At last the weekend came, and I decided to see what this Twitter concept was all about that I had been hearing of. I looked, I thought, I read and then read some more. Suddenly, I plunged in and became a follower and soon, a follow-ee.
It occurred to me that weekend, that, as a professional in the kitchen and bath industry for many years, Twitter is absolutely perfect for sharing the knowledge I have of my profession. Sharing on Twitter can include the communication of:
facts
concepts
information
experience
ideas
descriptions
images
I thought it might be interesting to gather some or all of these various ways of sharing my knowledge and organize them during the course of ONE day, to be focused into ONE subject.
For example, one day’s tweets had a subject of “Social Kitchen Design Day”. This title was in every tweet as a reminder of the topic. In the first tweet of the day, I announced what the topic of the day would be. Another day became “Kitchen Design Hood Day” where I provided information on kitchen ventilation. My key words are “kitchen design”. Therefore, I try to use those words in my tweets wherever possible.
Another use for this concept might be for the introduction of a product to convey useful information over time, creating familiarity with the product for one’s followers. I plan to do this for a product I represent, Hansen Kitchen, when new features are introduced into the product line. In my opinion, this type of use of Twitter should be done on an infrequent basis so as not to be viewed as a continuing “commercial” but I believe it can be very effective in building knowledge and awareness.
One day soon I will have some fun and do a topic called “Random Kitchen Design Day” which will be a whole day of random tweets on kitchen design issues. To announce it as “random” should, I hope, generate interest and anticipation as to what will come next, tweet after tweet, during that day. This can work for any business, any profession. One will quickly establish oneself as an expert in their field as they share their knowledge in this manner.
I try to make my tweets sometimes factual, sometimes fun, in an effort to keep the topic interesting. Sometimes several tweets will be connected in a micro way to one another to form a longer discussion and later tweets connected in a more general way to all the tweets, but they are all on the same topic.
Any business has a very wide assortment of topics to share information on. Selecting a topic for a given day adds substance to the days tweets, as one tweet builds on the next, helping the reader learn one topic in a way that is more broad, than is otherwise possible within one 140 character tweet.
@cottageguru
Nice idea. If you use hashtags and assign one to each topic, then all your Tweets and replies on that topic can be grouped together. So your Social Kitchen Design Day could have the hashtag #SKDD. Just add it after each tweet and voila!
I love your idea of Twitter Tips on this blog. You’ve motivated me to do the same on mine, and also to convert my blog to Thesis. I have several Thesis blogs but have never got around to changing my flagship one.
@emailcopywriter
That’s an amazing idea. Twitter theme days would be stellar for SEO. Instead of consciously trying to insert keywords, the relevant words come out naturally because of the connection to the day.
I think going beyond the topic is to vary the TYPE of topical Tweet. For example, a link alternating with a quote with a personal revelation with a tip. You keep people guessing and interest high, plus you hit people in their relevant way of absorbing info.
Kudos on this excellent blog post!
@MadlabPost
I like this idea as it relates to businesses and also think that it could help bloggers as well. It is similar to scheduling blogs or posts around certain themes and topics. This could be a fun way to carve out a niche and audience on twitter using micro-blogging techniques. It also helps to turn twitter into a website where members can actually get useful information in addition to finding out what their best friend ate for lunch. I wonder of these Twitter Days would interfere with topics on the actual blog OR if authors could tie their blog into their twitter posts in such a way that the tweets would be small bits of information that was not covered in the main post but are still related to posts on a particular topic.
I might try your idea one day and see how well it does on Twitter. It would be great if themed tweets could be just enough to interest other twitter users into reading it and then drawing them to a blog that delivers more extended amounts of information on the chosen topic. I wonder which topics twitter users would be interested in under the movie and TV category. Maybe a list of the best movie theaters? I’ll have to figure this one out.
@redwhiteandgrew
Theme days (Twitter for Victory Gardens Tuesday) have helped us build a nice group of victory garden proponents (including bloggers, writers/editors and one famous garden show host!) in a very short time.
It’s also fun (and gratifying) to see our hashtag (#twitter4vg) used by non-group members on occasion. That tells us that the principles/ideas we promote are becoming part of Twitter culture.
@wpdude
I love the idea of a twitter day, spending a whole day sending out volumonous amounts of information on a very targeted subject.
I would possibly have a load of backup detailed information on my blog to point people with FAQs to, this then could point them to your call to action.
@hectorhenry17
Mmm like create a brand and people will see it like usefull information.
thank you.