Effective twittering for Positive Eritrea – The Eri-tweet Manual

January 5, 2010 by Salina Solomon

Before going in to the main body of this article I would like to give credit to a dear friend for all the technical contribution incorporated in this article.

After carefully studying the different types of negatives on Eritrea via the different types of platforms on social media, it has come to the conclusion that the worst and one that can have a profound effect for the image of Eritrea is twitter for now.

The other one is digg.com where people submit all the negative articles about Eritrea. Nonetheless it is still imperative to keep a close watch on which platforms any kind of negative media is taking place.

Whilst going through twitter search on Eritrea it will display a shocking result about the amount of negative tweets that are being made about Eritrea. On weekdays it is possible to see live results by the minute or even less, on the weekends though it tends to slow down a bit due to the fact that people go out and about to socialise in the normal manner. At the moment the people who tweet the negatives are more or less non Eritreans. If we Eritreans do not tweet the positives, then the opportunity is wide open for people who like to ponder on negative thoughts which in turn gives us a negative image.

At present it is almost impossible to find any positive tweets or news about Eritrea either on twitter, blogs or search engines. This is due to the fact that more and more people are sharing the negative news in a fast manner. Therefore the aim of this blog is to facilitate the cause in to getting a balanced voice for Eritrea. The way we can achieve this is by encouraging as many Eritreans as possible to engage in social media so that we can have a multitude of voices.

We have many Eritreans on facebook, myspace, and other social networking sites where they involve in sharing or discussing constructively about Eritrea. However the downside to this is the fact that it could be a bit restricted only to the Eritrean community. Consequently the aim is to take the conversation on to twitter and the open social media as a whole in order to get a balanced voice visible to world. To achieve this we need visibility to this cause, and your involvement in introducing this blog and our fan page on facebook to fellow Eritreans is crucial.

Once we take the sharing of the positive news on to twitter and other forms of social media such as blogs, forums, and the like, then it will be possible to nullify all the negatives and restore the positives results being displayed on search engines.

The positive news that we will be sharing on social media may not solve all our problems, nonetheless it will definitely annoy all the negative twitterers, reporters and bloggers to make it worth all our effort.

Essential Tools & Techniques for twitter

• Create an account and before starting to tweet take time to configure your profile.
• Personal photos are always the best, not logo or any other thing. It is about building relationship and the human factor is always essential. In the real world people communicate with people not with logos or organisations. E.g. if you are representing YPFDJ-UK put Mr X at YPFDJ-UK (Head of communications) and put your photo there.
• On your bio put keywords that relate to the target of your cause. This will help in search results. E.g. Eritrean activist for the cause of development in Eritrea. Also an advocate to share the positive developments being achieved by Eritrea & Eritrean’s!
• Build a community, conversation, and relationship by attracting a targeted community and list. Start to follow the people who tweet negatives about Eritrea. You can find them by searching the search term “Eritrea” on twitter search box.
• Aim in creating a small community with in the big community, a community of common interest, such as community of values or community of education, and the like. E.g. if you have knowledge about Politics then use it only to tweet about politics. If you want to tweet about different topic then create a different account for different targeted communities.
• Need to have a plan and goal and stay focused to the topic you choose to discuss, ask yourself who you want to talk to?
• Background needs to be customised so that it can be used as an advertisement for your cause. You can use twitbacks.com
• Find and follow influencers that can retweet, and always do not exceed 130 characters, so that you leave space for the people that retweet your tweets.
• If you want to attract the attention of your followers post your tweets one after the other, don’t do this more often as it might annoy your followers.
• Always be creative on headlines, and if you come across long urls then it is possible to shorten them. You can either use tinyurl.com or bit.ly and if you want to know how many people clicked on that link just grab the url paste into the address bar then add the + sign at the end and click on go.
• If you are busy and have more than one account, then it is possible to sort in categories as well as automate your accounts by the use of tools for twitter like, hootsuite, sesmic,socialoomph, and tweetdeck
• It is also possible to use twitter for research purposes, gather back information form stakeholders. You can do this by creating polls on twtpoll.com and share them.
• Find out tweets by geographical location on nearbytweets.com.
• Many people that join twitter would like to see a lot of followers, hence they aggressively follow and un-follow those that don’t follow back by the use of sites like buzzom.com. This might be a good option for you but be warned twitter does not like this. If you aggressively follow, un-follow, and tweet the same tweets from different accounts then your account will not be able to be found on searches with in twitter.

Twitter Commandments: Dos & Don’ts

• Don’t be boring.
• Do not make an obvious attempt for your cause, entice your followers before making a hard pitch Follow, Share, Show, Interact, Engage, and Recommend.
• Don’t spam or SMS.
• Don’t forget to reserve important people from un-following them.
• Don’t forget to be humble, and don’t forget that you are there as a participant and and don’t think you are the owner.
• Do consider the language tone.
• Do give credits for Retweets, and appreciate followers.
• Do put value on to your tweets, and give more than you can take.
• Do promote your twitter account by using it as your email signature.
• Do talk about things that are of interest to the community, maintain conversation and don’t drift off.
• Do follow people who follow you, if you can send a message thanking them for the follow. Otherwise the least that you can do is follow them back.
• Do connect your twitter and facebook accounts so that when you update your twitter your facebook status will be updated.
• Always try to be personal – content is king, and personal interpretation and conversation on issue. Be extrovert, talk about the issues around the topic at hand.

• Last but not least to get effective results for our cause make sure you understand and employ Cialdinis “Six Principles/Weapons of Influence” Reciprocity, Commitment & Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, and Scarcity.

If you live in the US and want further reading about Caildinis material check the following link Influence: Science and Practice alternatively if you live in the UK follow this linkInfluence: Science and Practice

More information on effective swategies can be found here and if you want to start your own blog you can get more information by clicking here.

To conclude I would like to say thanks for taking the time to stop by and joining the positive revolution! I hope you have also learned something new today. Have fun by sharing the positive news and thoughts about Eritrea. If you would like to contribute with positive news, articles, photos, videos, and your positive thoughts please send an email to info@eritreacompass.com

The only limits to the possibilities in your life tomorrow are the “buts” you use today.—Les Brown. So drop the “buts” and join the conversation on twitter today to share the positives about Eritrea, you owe it to yourself & your country!

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