With this post, I will summarize my project on Twitter from a business perspective.
First, I just compiled our weekly Twitter stats for @UWBadgersdotcom. As I mentioned, I was curious to see if my tweeting from the Kohl Center inspired a new high in at mentions for the week. We had over 65 at mentions this past week! What I have learned as far as at mentions is: you see a noticeable jump when your football team defeats #1, wins the Big Ten, or goes to the Rose Bowl. Other than that, we were at about 15-25 per week. So did my tweeting help? I hope so. I hope it gave some followers the chance to interact with us and see some new content on there, but did I make a big impact? I was not even close to having the impact that the football team causes on our social media sites when they have success. It's just the way it goes, I guess; when your football team succeeds, social media succeeds.
That brings me to my final thoughts on this project. I was extremely happy when I received this assignment because the project would allow me to learn even more about something that I care deeply about (social media in the world of athletics). Combining concepts we learned in class, it was interesting throughout the semester to see the different levels of usage by followers (see who was participating) and to see how different businesses construct their identity on Twitter. As we have hit on, Twitter is a challenge because the site gives you a framework with which to work, but you have a good amount of freedom to give your page the look and feel you want it to have. A business Twitter is so much different than a personal Twitter and I got to experience that first hand. Punctuation, spelling, content, clarity of messages, what I could or could not say were just some of the noticeable differences I encountered over the semester.
It is hard to get down everything that I learned or discovered, but I think the big takeaway I will have from this project that I will use later in life is that in order to successfully engage your fans, you need to stay active on Twitter. Every person out there uses Twitter differently and our goal from the athletic department is to touch every single follower that we can. People go on Twitter to be a part of a community, and we are in the unique situation in that we already have so many fans across the country, we just have to get them to buy in to what we are selling on Twitter. Many people automatically flock to our page because they want to be identified with the Wisconsin Badgers. But as happy as we are that they want to identify with us, we want to reach out to them and give them all the more reason to like Wisconsin Athletics and become a fan on more than just Twitter. All athletic teams are the same and all businesses on Twitter are the same in that regard; a business is a unique Twitter page because people will automatically flock to the page to be identified with that product. Your goal is to give them a reason to follow you other than just having their name appear in your followers list. It is very different from a personal page; as a business on Twitter, the people come to you. Usually, a business would struggle to get people to come to its store or buy its product. With Twitter, the people come by the thousands just because they want to be associated with your business. The goal is to capitalize on that and make it worthwhile for them and profitable for you.
This was a fun project (one that I will be continuing during the spring) that I will no doubt use knowledge from class in helping to make our social media sites all the more effective. I hope everyone keeps following us!
http://twitter.com/UWbadgersdotcom
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