Why and how to use Twitter

The latest data on Twitter users is staggering. With more than 554,750,000 active registered users and 58 million tweets per day, the online social networking website and microblogging service launched by Jack Dorsey in 2006, earned $259,000,000 as advertising revenue in the year 2012.

Every second 9,100 tweets see the light of the day and 135,000 new Twitter users sign up every day. Likewise, 115 million people actively use Twitter every month and Twitter site attracts 190 million unique visitors every month.  (Source: Twitter, Huffington Post, eMarketer -www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics)

Twitter is a real-time social network that helps users share, follow and interact with stories, opinions, links, pictures and 140-character messages. The power of Twitter allows you to receive the tweets from and listen to the opinions of the people and organisations you follow. The retweet (RT) facility allows you and your followers to spread the message to a wider audience and opens the door for your message to go viral.

Twitter basics
Tweets are small bursts of information of 140 characters long at the maximum. A user's Twitter Handle is the username s/he selects and the accompanying URL (E.g., www.twitter.com/username). An @reply is a method of responding to another Twitter user publicly. If you place @ before the receiver's username, your message will be directed to that person publicly.  

The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to categorise tweets for reference and to facilitate conversations on specific subjects.

Twitter lingo
As the users are bound to a 140 character limit, they have come up with innovative acronyms.

at (mention) @
hashtag #
caret/hat sign ^
financial hashtag $
as far as I know AFAIK
carbon copy CC
correction CX
direct message DM
Follow Friday FF
hat tip/heard through HT
in case you missed it ICYMI
Music Monday MM
modified tweet MT
not safe for work NSFW
overheard OH
partial tweet PT
real life retweet RLRT
retweet RT
shaking my head SMH
thanks for the follow TFTF
today I learned TIL
too long; didn't learn TL;DR
tweet me back TMB
thanks for the retweet TQRT
translated tweet TT
with W/

Simple steps to use Twitter
To create a Twitter account, you just need an email address. Go to www.twitter.com, sign up, assign a username and a password. A username can't be more than 15 characters – you are free to use letters, numbers and underscore. Make sure you use a name that you use in your websites and blogs. Using your real or business name makes it easier for search engines to find you.

After signing up, add a photo (not more than 700 KB and should be either in JPG, GIF or PNG format) and a short bio – your bio should not exceed 160 characters and should tell people what you do, your interests and personality. You can customise your Twitter profile page (Password, add devices, notices, picture, design and colour schemes).

Follow your friends, opinion leaders and organisations you want to receive tweets from. To get followers you need to tweet regularly. 

To start tweeting, tell people what you are doing, disseminate the news from your industry, share helpful tips and your opinion on a trending topic. As the maximum characters you can use is 140, shorten the URLs of your links through URL shortening services (Tinyurl.com, Bit.ly etc.).

Add a hashtag (#+word/phrase) to your tweet to make it more searchable and increase its chance of becoming a trending topic. Don't use more than 3 hashtags per tweet.

You can retweet (RT) to share the best tweets you come across with your followers. You can send someone a tweet publicly or reply to his/her tweets by adding @ before the username. You can send a direct message (DM) to a person who is following you. It is private and directly goes to the follower's twitter inbox.   

You can follow back a follower, un-follow and even block him/her if you find them annoying. To block a follower, go to the profile of the person, click the person icon, from the dropdown Actions menu select Block from the listed options. You can Unblock him/her by clicking undo on their profile page. 

If you are a beginner, follow the steps in the presentation (in Nepali) below to start tweeting and be an advanced user by tweeting at regular intervals.


Source: Twiends.com, Mashable, USC Rossier School of Education.
 

The benefits of creating a local brand

Rentury Turmeric Powder - a local brand

Almost like all kirana pasal (general store), the shop is crowded with a melange of daily essentials. At the cash counter plastic pouches of edibles, and sachets of shampoo, hair oil and tobacco almost cover the shopkeeper. As a customer appears at the sales desk, he peeks out, shows his head amidst the dangling strings of sachets and pouches.

I am a regular visitor to the shop and I find nothing new about the hanging sachets and pouches. However, when I saw a lady haggling over a packet of turmeric locally produced and packed in the same locality, my eyes fixed to a string of yellow packets. The shopkeeper tore off a packet and handed it over to the lady.
   
Actually the lady was resisting the shopkeeper's advice of buying a well packaged carton of turmeric powder over a local product. There was a vast difference in the package quality. The one she resisted belonged to a well-established brand Century. She had chosen a lesser-known brand Rentury Turmeric Powder. In fact, it was the copy-cat product of the well-known brand.

When the lady left, I enquired about the sales trend of turmeric powder and in particular the Rentury brand. I also talked with few buyers and it offered me some insights in product branding.

Creating a local product not only contributes to local economy but also creates employment and sense of belonging among locals. The buyers had the feeling that the product was from their own place and they should promote it. The product matches their expectations and is at par with other well-known brands.  The product is generating economic benefits for the locals and is providing impetus to the local economy.    

Besides, I saw minimal packaging. A printed plastic wrapper contains 50 grams of turmeric powder. Meanwhile the nationally renowned brand packs the powder in a plastic packet which is then put inside a paper carton of thick printed paper laminated on the outer surface. Local products generally spend less in packaging which is in a way good for the environment. The carbon footprint is lower in case of a local product.   

Another satisfying logic that the buyers put forward was the freshness and genuine nature of the product. The buyers are always afraid of getting adulterated products. The local products are closer to the production points and less time is spent in transportation. It maximises the chance of retaining the freshness and natural flavour if consumed within the stated duration. As the product evades the chain of processing, the adulteration is controlled.

A crucial factor that controls the purchase behaviour is the price of a product. A local product is generally cheaper than the products that spend a fortune in refining, attractive packaging and transportation. In case of Bhattarai Spice Production and Packing Industry, the owners of Rentury brand, turmeric is sourced from the neighbouring districts, processed, packed and sold in the Surkhet (a district in Mid-Western Development Region of Nepal) and neighbouring districts. Due to the demand, now they have been selling even in the major cities in Nepal.
 
Looking at the benefits of going local, even multi-nationals have jumped into creating local brands. Recently, McDonald's added rice products to its menu for the first time in China, including Chicken Rice Wrap, Beef Rice Wrap, Chicken Rice Bowl and Beef Rice Bowl, to cater to the Chinese customers who can’t move away from the local tastes.

Earlier McDonald’s had introduced McTikki and McAloo to tickle the taste buds of potato loving Indians and a rice burger for Singaporeans. Likewise, KFC sells fish ball soup, spring rolls, several varieties of rice porridge and egg custard tarts including rice sets.

Like the lady who preferred local copy-cat brand Rentury over the well-established brand Century, a local product can beat the Goliaths and create a brand of its own. It just needs to retain its freshness and avoid adulteration. 

Learning Routes – developing pilgrimages of learning

Republished from www.asia.ifad.org

Knowledge sharing mechanisms and processes have evolved hugely in recent years. From the earlier documentation of knowledge in the form of manuals and booklets to audio-visual materials, online portals for discussion, and recent phenomenon called crowdsourcing, all have their own relevance and audiences to target at.     

Leaving behind the traditional forms of knowledge management, my colleagues from High Value Agriculture Project in Hill and Mountain Areas (HVAP), Sirish Pun, Ghanashyam Chaudhary, Krishna Thapa and I embarked on a journey to develop a Learning Route. The Learning Route comprises identifying a good case from which others can learn, developing it together with the community – staying with them and learning in the process, and following the visit trying to replicate it in other areas.

The training venue was in the outskirts of the town and the working area was almost 17 kilometres away from the venue. Both the places were peaceful, tranquil and far from the madding crowd. However, coping with the hot and humid Taulihawa was a challenge in itself. Then was the problem with translation for the instructors – the local language was Avadhi which was translated into Nepali and then into English. In the process, much information details were lost many a times. However, belonging to and having worked in the Terai region eased our language woes.

The case identified for establishing the learning route was the success story of Pragatishil Agriculture Cooperative Limited. With the establishment of the cooperative, the village has witnessed many avenues of development. Now there are roads around the village, groups are engaged in fish farming in the ponds, a shop that provides goods at reasonable price has been set up by the cooperative, the villagers can receive money sent by their relatives employed in foreign countries through the remittance service operated by the cooperative, more groups are engaged in vegetable farming and commercial onion cultivation, children are getting quality education in the boarding school established by the cooperative, local market is a well-managed weekly affair and a dam has been built to control the upheavals caused by floods.   

Community members preparing map of past.

The first assignment began with preparing the maps of past, present and future. The community members were divided into three groups and we asked each group to draw how the village looked like in the past, present and how they wanted it to look like in the near future. After the map preparation, the maps were presented among the groups to verify and validate the data incorporated in each maps by the groups.

Secondly, we held focus group discussion and personal interviews with the community members and local champions. We visited the places that tell the story of the cooperative and we met with the beneficiaries. This formed a basis for drawing timeline of important events and map of actors involved in the success story of the cooperative. A chart of learning insights was also drawn including the strengths, challenges and recommendations.

The timeline, map of actors and chart of learning insights was presented to the community members and the information was validated. With the finalisation of the data and information, a rough list of events, places and persons to meet while narrating the story to the visitors was charted out. This will form a basis for the community members to showcase their story to the visitors wanting to learn from their experience.

A Learning Route gives the first hand information of a success story to the visitor. Not only that, the visitor gets to meet the people behind the success and interact with them. This inspires the learners to replicate similar successes in their respective working areas.

Watch a video explaining the Learning Route process.
 

The Learning Route is a capacity-building tool with a proven track record of successfully integrating local knowledge and experiences, in development with innovation and the best practices from the field, that have scaling-up potential.

The Learning Route is based on the idea that successful solutions to existing problems are already present within rural areas, and that those solutions might be adapted and spread to other contexts.

Over the years and in rural contexts across several continents the Learning Route has shown to be a powerful method to foster capacity-building through peer-to-peer sharing of knowledge and face-to-face interactions.

The Learning Route cycle:

Step 1. Best practices are identified and systematically organised to promote the adoption and scaling-up of innovative processes.

Step 2. People who are successful in their own work are trained to become capacity builders, with their personal experiences as the source of training.

Step 3. Participants in the Route  have opportunities to directly gather knowledge from successful experiences in the field. Interest and curiosity arises from the exchanges with “the Champions”, leaders and practitioners of those successful experiences.

Step 4. Finally, when participants return to their organisations they will have the knowledge  and tools to innovate  and generate results.
Learning Routes for Asia and the Pacific: Strengthening Knowledge Sharing Innovative Solutions

Financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the PROCASUR Corporation, the Programme is targeted at rural poor men and women and the technical staff of public and private development projects.

Life-changing corporate lessons from animals

Do you love animals? What about fables? I am a great fan of Panchatantra – the famous book of fables where animals speak and act like humans and show us how to lead a good life. Last week while looking for some interesting fables, I came across three short stories teaching important corporate lessons in www.slideshare.net. With due credits to the creators, I would like to recite the stories.  



(c) www.morguefile.com

Corporate lesson 1
A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day.

A small rabbit saw the crow, and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?”

The crow answered, "Sure, why not.”

So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested.

All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit, and ate it.

Moral of the story is - To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

Corporate lesson 2
A turkey was chatting with a bull.

"I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree," sighed the turkey, "But I haven't got the energy.”

"Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull. “They're packed with nutrients."

The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree.

The next day, after eating more dung, he reached the second branch.

Finally after a fortnight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree.

Soon he was spotted by a farmer who promptly shot the turkey out of the tree.

Moral of the story is - Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

Corporate lesson 3
A little bird was flying south for the winter.

It was so cold, the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field.

While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it.

As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, it began to realise how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out!

He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy.

A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate.

Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him!

The morals of this story are:
1) Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy.
2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.
3) And when you're in deep shit, keep your mouth shut.
 

7 ways to make a success story interesting

Writing success stories is not only about showcasing the difference your programme is making in people’s lives, but it is also about grasping the attention of readers and creating a bandwagon effect.

Interesting figures grasp attention.

When a dog bites a man, it’s not interesting. However, if a man bites a dog, it not only becomes interesting but also gets the attention of a wider audience. To make your stories stand out among the millions of stories churned out by development professionals around the globe, you need to add that “X-factor” to your story. 

Begin with the most promising part
Take your audience to an event, place or character that is interesting. You don’t need to cling to the regular way of showing situation, challenges, interventions and outcomes in a success story. These can be interchanged. Show the most interesting part first, then take the audience to other sections.

It’s like watching a movie. Sometimes a director starts the movie with the climax and then uses flashbacks to tell the story. However, most stories follow a timeline. 

Follow a logical sequence and keep the paragraphs short
Try to write small sentences and small paragraphs. Then link the paragraphs in such a way that the story flows seamlessly and there are no hitches and halts in the way. 

I follow the sequence mentioned by Jennifer Stewart.

Put a man up a tree, i.e., start with an issue you want to resolve
Throw stones at him, i.e., present the problem
Get him down, i.e., show how an issue might be resolved

Another popular sequence is the SRRE method coined in the Journal of Extension: Writing Success Stories for Program Enhancement and Accountability (University of Wisconsin – Extension).

Situation: What prompted the programme?
Response: How did the programme respond? (inputs and outputs)
Results: Who benefited? What resulted? (outcomes) 
Evidence: What’s the evidence? (evaluation)

Add fillers to spice up the story
Mention the environs and ambience the protagonist lives in. It allows the audience to visualise the environment and situation of the protagonist. Explain the challenges, needs and rationale of your programme to the protagonist, community and the country.

Quote the protagonist
Mention catchy quotes from the protagonist and other participants in direct speech. It not only provides credibility but also provides the reader with a chance to empathise with the actors. Also present facts and figures. They help catching the reader’s attention. 

Add pictures to the story
A picture speaks thousand words. Add a picture with a catchy caption to the story. It convinces the audience. Try taking pictures from different angles in different layouts and choose the best ones. Also add charts and figures in boxes to illustrate the success of the programme. 

Present the programme interventions subconsciously
Readers don’t like to read about your programme in the story; they are interested in the protagonist and his/her success. However, you tend to talk about your programme and its interventions. Try to minimise the words and sentences describing your programme. If possible, try to add a quote from the protagonist talking about your programme.

Make the end interesting
Conclude your story in a question that makes the reader think about the story and programme interventions. Talk about the future possibilities. End with an interesting quote from the protagonist.

Now time for few tips on writing success stories (in Nepali). 

#Communicating #Success #Stories RT @sankuchy: A Communicator's Diary: 7 ways to make a success story interesting http://t.co/AhKZKY9aQz

— भाजु महेश (@Bhajumahesh) April 10, 2014

What is your social media personality?

How do you behave in social media? Are your posts informative? Or you just comment to others’ posts?

Your online behaviour determines your social media personality. According to an extensive new study by conversation experts first direct, you either fall under the category the Ultras, Dippers, Deniers, Virgins, Lurkers, Peacocks, Ranters, Changelings, Ghosts, Informers, Approval Seekers or Quizzers.

Source: bjoerntantau.com via Sanjib on Pinterest

Know your online target audience

Who are your target audience?

In simple words, they are the crucial actors who help achieve your communications objectives. Basically, while designing a communications strategy you take into consideration their willingness to support your initiative. Thinking in terms of time involvement and willingness of the audiences, they can be classified as partners, early adopters, wait and watch category, and rejecters.  

Most communicators categorise their audiences as ultimate target audience who are the primary audience, actors with the potential to strengthen the key message and influence the ultimate target audience, intermediaries who help to pass the message to the audience that are hard to reach but are easily accessible to them, and actors with the potential to weaken the message.

Analysing the target audience is always a cumbersome job. And, targeting audience according to their online behaviour has been much more difficult since the number of online visitors is humongous and the motives behind the visits are incomprehensible. Due to the influx of millions of blogs, online forums, and websites, the behaviour of online visitors too is changing day by day. 
So, how you analyse your online target audience?

Forrester has devised an innovative approach termed as Social Technographics Ladder to analyse the online target audience. Forrester’s Social Technographics classifies people according to how they use social technologies.

Inactives at the bottom are followed by spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, and creators at the topmost rung of the ladder.

Creators make social content go. They write blogs or upload video, music, or text.

Critics respond to contents from others. They post reviews, comment on blogs, participate in forums, and edit wiki articles.

Collectors use RSS feeds, add tags to web pages or photos, vote for websites online.

Joiners connect in social networks like MySpace and Facebook.

Spectators consume social content including blogs, user-generated video, podcasts, forums, or reviews.

Inactives neither create nor consume social content of any kind.

Conversationalists update status on social networking site or post to Twitter at least weekly.

Source: ifonlyblog.files.wordpress.com via Sanjib on Pinterest

So on which rung of the ladder does your target audience hang on? Try formulating strategies according to the behaviour of your audience and the success is yours!