2. It’s instant
It’s a great way to communicate and
start conversations
It’s a form of ‘micro-blogging’- up to
date news that is simple to digest
Allows us to keep abreast of relevant
industry news
Allows us to showcase a brand’s
personality and what interests it
Allows us to get the brand out into the
market space – it’s a visible public
exchange of information
Why Twitter?
3. Create a recognizable online
personality/brand for the FSC
Position the FSC as an industry leader and
‘go-to’ for all things fire service
We know what we are talking about
We’ve got friends in all the right places
We have knowledge of the most up to
date news/events/technological
developments in our field
Start and maintain conversations with
existing supporters
Encourage new supporters to take interest
Convert our online supporters to real life
attendees
Our aims
5. 140 characters long
can reference other users via an @ mention
can become more searchable via hash tags #
can link to external sites
can include a picture
A tweet
6. Re-posting another’s tweet on your feed
Useful to get across the FSC’s personality-
what you agree with/don’t agree with, if your
football team is playing, if a delegate has
tweeted saying they had a great time at the
FSC
A re-tweet/RT
7. Useful when another user has tweeted @ the
FSC - means the ability to connect and start
conversations
By hitting reply, Twitter will automatically
display the @username
If the @username is right at the start of the
tweet, this will only be visible to your common
followers
By putting a . at the start, or embedding the
@username in the body of the tweet, the reply
will be visible to all of your and their followers
A reply
8. A term or subject that most Twitter users are
simultaneously talking about
Hash tags # are often used when aiming to get
an item trending
Keeping abreast of what is trending is useful if
you want to be seen as a thought leader - you
can throw in your two pence worth
e.g. JustinBieber, #RoyalBaby,
#Comebacksun
A trend
9. Allow your tweets to become more searchable
Increase your chances of getting an item
trending
e.g. #BowlesRefurb, #M25Collision,
#SmokeAlarmsSaveLives
Hash Tags
10. Help you to organise those you are following
into categories
This is useful when monitoring the landscape
and keeping up to date with specific thoughts
from select bodies
e.g. Firefighters, Industry, CFOs,
International Fire Services
Lists
11. It’s a popularity contest!
The aim of the game is to increase our online visibility.
This means increasing our follower count.
Basic Twitter etiquette states that one should follow
someone back (even if for short period of time)
How do we increase our followers?
Post interesting content
regularly
Celebrate the content of
others- via links/retweets
Give our favourite followers
shout outs using #FF
Be interesting and conversational
Act as a go-to for
information
Be responsive- reply
to people, tweet at
people
The aim is
to be
Retweeted!
12. Is a social media management system
It allows us to:
communicate from multiple social networks
at once (Twitter and Facebook)
view our home feed, direct messages, @
mentions and searched terms
add images, shorten links and search
profiles
Hootsuite will be most useful to the FSC to
keep abreast of meaningful conversations
be aware of what others are talking about
and join the conversations
ensure that all retweets, direct messages
and @mentions are replied to
Hootsuite
13. Networks
Add FSC Twitter and Facebook
profiles
Tabs
Click plus on ‘Add Tab’ icon and add
separate Twitter and Facebook tabs
Streams
Select Twitter or Facebook.
Click + next to streams to be added
e.g. Home, Direct Messages,
Retweets, @Mentions,
Searched terms i.e. fire fighter
Organising
the dock
14. Tweets and Posts
Select Twitter and Facebook (will
post to both networks)
Compose and send!
Adding Links
Click Add Link and paste URL
Select to shorten link
Links can be analyzed via ow.ly to
monitor click throughs
Adding Images
Select the paperclip and add file
from computer
.jpg images will automatically be
compressed via Facebook- avoid
using these to keep quality high!
Composing
messages
15. Select magnifying glass in top right
Select Search Twitter or Search User
‘Search Twitter’ will find all conversations
mentioning your search term- useful if
you want to become part of or reference
a conversation
‘Search User’ will find all users
mentioning your search term in their
name or bio
Select bold link to view profile
Select ‘Follow X’ to add to your network
Following
users
16. Hootsuite operates an in-built analytics
system which will be useful to check our
progress
By selecting the graph icon on the left of the
screen, we can monitor:
Our follower growth
How certain conversations, mentions,
retweets etc. have affected our
popularity (and do more of the same)
The number of click throughs per link
(so we know what our followers are
interested in)
Let’s make sure that we are aware of what
works and doesn't’t, and tailor our
behaviour to this!
Checking our
progress
18. People relevant to the FSC
Individual firefighters, fire
stations, schools, industry
bodies, international
organisations and bodies
Relevant news sites
BBC News, Yahoo, CNN
People the FSC admires
Sports
teams, celebrities, politicians, ne
wsreaders
Follow,
follow,
follow!
Select ‘add to list’
when adding
followers to help
organise sectors
19. Split
personalities
People are much more receptive when
they know they are talking to a person
Benefits:
followers will get to know those that are
tweeting and look forward to their shift
divides that job so all need not be glued
to Twitter constantly e.g. person 1. 9am-
12pm, person 2. 12pm-3pm, person 3.
3pm-6pm
Every personality should tweet from the
same account- @FSCMoreton
Introduce yourself at the start of your
shift
If you are animated, your followers
will be too- make sure you are
tweeting about things that truly
interest you
20. Be aware!
The most successful tweeters are…
..reactive, posting news and
pictures as it happens
…monitor their landscape,
responding to, and reporting
on, things that are relevant
e.g. re tweeting, linking to external
articles and events
..respond swiftly and positively to all
interactions via Twitter
E.g. Thanks for the RT @Jamie! Or .@LucyT Bowles
House is being painted as we speak! You wont
recognise it!
Despite the
proposed shift
system, if you see
something
great, Tweet
it/send it to the
person who is on
shift!
21. Following
users
Assume that your audience knows
nothing about the FSC
Although there has recently been better
engagement, there are still thousands of
people that are unaware of your facilities
22. Get organised
Download Hootsuite and make sure it is
visible on your desktop at all times
Arrange the dashboard to display the
home feed, @mentions, direct
messages, lists by category, relevant
conversational topics
If you know that you will be in a
meeting, travelling etc. during your shift,
schedule tweets using Hootsuite
Schedule 1-2 tweets during commuting
hours 5-7pm
(once more comfortable, we can do this at the
weekend too!)
23. News
gathering Set up Google news alerts using
relevant search terms such as
Fire safety
Fire Services etc.
Spend a bit of time researching websites
that may be useful for industry news and
events
e.g. individual fire stations
If you have a spare ten minutes, check
the Daily Mail/The Times etc. website
Put an internal news system in place
e.g. compose a round up of all FSC
news, events, courses that are to
happen the following week. Circulate to
the social media team on Fridays
24. Produce a rota
Produce a Rota, splitting shifts up
amongst the team
e.g. 3 hour shifts on rolling basis, 1
person each day on rolling basis
Keep a note of who is on shift each day
and help each other out by sending…
relevant content
links
images etc.
…when you spot them
25. When to tweet
The aim is to be sending out around
4 tweets per day. This means
tweeting 1-2 times during your shift
Be aware of what has
previously been tweeted
and when. Make sure
we are not tweeting
straight after one
another
Optimum times for
tweeting include
lunchtimes (1-
3pm) and the
evening commute
(5-7pm)
After monitoring the
feed for a while using
Hootsuite, we should
get an idea of how
much engagement our
followers prefer!
We need to make our voices
heard without overwhelming
our followers! 10 tweets
each day is too much!
26. Examples
Big things are
happening at the
FSC. Keep up to date
with news here!
http://ow.ly/nFnH2
Morning! Another
exciting day at the FSC.
Wonder what we'll get
up to today?
Overturned
lorry, collapsed
Did you know that the
FSC goes through X
tins of beans each
week! Got to keep the
team big and strong!
Check out our website
for fire service news
and events in your
area http://ow.ly/nFnH2
Our very own Helen
Tooley competed at
the WPFG, find out
how she did here
http://ow.ly/nFo9J
