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WORKING SMARTER June 14, 2015 12:59 pm
Distinctive ways to use Twitter for success in the workplace
Emma De Vita
If you still measure your success on Twitter by the number of followers you have or Tweets you post, you are not as good at Twitter as you think you are. The most effective users adopt more sophisticated methods, according to new research.
Salvatore Parise of Babson College and Eoin Whelan of the National University of Ireland interviewed 205 Twitter users at five businesses over five years. They discovered that the most efficient users were those who cultivated
a deliberately small but diverse network that challenged their way of thinking or alerted them to new ideas. That led them to more creative and better solutions to work problems.
What made them so good at using Twitter was the distinctive way they used it. Their approach was highly selective, preferring quality over quantity. They followed a maximum of 100 tweeters, picking about a third from completely unrelated fields, or who had very different views to their own, or were even people they did not like.
“One software programmer designing user interfaces followed interior design and architectural design Twitter accounts, since it helped him in the creative process, even though the system interface he was developing had nothing to do with homes or art,” says Prof Parise.
Expert users only followed people after a period of “listening” to colleagues or industry leaders on Twitter, found using hashtags for particular subjects of discussion. They perhaps used an app such as TweetDeck. They did not follow tweeters recommended by Twitter nor did they follow their own followers. They also pruned their followers regularly, often dumping them all.
The most effective Twitter users, however, were the ones who took the time to absorb the ideas they found and work out how they might be of practical use to their work or organisation.
“It’s not just about using the technology but it is also how they used their absorptive capacity,” says Dr Whelan. He refers to the ability of these users to limit how much information they took in, taking time away from their screens to digest what they had come across. “They had a tendency to switch off and find a way to think about things deeply, even if it just meant sitting down and having a cup of coffee.”
They passed on discoveries to colleagues. Some used in-house company blogs, while others contacted colleagues direct with discoveries.
As one respondent put it: “I try to sift through all the Twitter content from my network and look for trends and relationships between topics. I then put my analysis and interpretation on it.” Some even set up webinars and training sessions to share Twitter tactics with colleagues. Many used Twitter to find and introduce themselves to new contacts before following up with face-to-face meetings.
Neither Prof Parise nor Dr Whelan is a big user of Twitter. But Dr Whelan says the research has nudged him to read more widely: “It is about exposing yourself to different views and cross-pollinating ideas.”
workingsmarter@ft.com
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dc06b144-0f68-11e5-b968-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz3d2jS54ZC
WORKING SMARTER June 14, 2015 12:59 pm
Distinctive ways to use Twitter for success in the workplace
Emma De Vita
If you still measure your success on Twitter by the number of followers you have or Tweets you post, you are not as good at Twitter as you think you are. The most effective users adopt more sophisticated methods, according to new research.
Salvatore Parise of Babson College and Eoin Whelan of the National University of Ireland interviewed 205 Twitter users at five businesses over five years. They discovered that the most efficient users were those who cultivated
a deliberately small but diverse network that challenged their way of thinking or alerted them to new ideas. That led them to more creative and better solutions to work problems.
What made them so good at using Twitter was the distinctive way they used it. Their approach was highly selective, preferring quality over quantity. They followed a maximum of 100 tweeters, picking about a third from completely unrelated fields, or who had very different views to their own, or were even people they did not like.
“One software programmer designing user interfaces followed interior design and architectural design Twitter accounts, since it helped him in the creative process, even though the system interface he was developing had nothing to do with homes or art,” says Prof Parise.
Expert users only followed people after a period of “listening” to colleagues or industry leaders on Twitter, found using hashtags for particular subjects of discussion. They perhaps used an app such as TweetDeck. They did not follow tweeters recommended by Twitter nor did they follow their own followers. They also pruned their followers regularly, often dumping them all.
The most effective Twitter users, however, were the ones who took the time to absorb the ideas they found and work out how they might be of practical use to their work or organisation.
“It’s not just about using the technology but it is also how they used their absorptive capacity,” says Dr Whelan. He refers to the ability of these users to limit how much information they took in, taking time away from their screens to digest what they had come across. “They had a tendency to switch off and find a way to think about things deeply, even if it just meant sitting down and having a cup of coffee.”
They passed on discoveries to colleagues. Some used in-house company blogs, while others contacted colleagues direct with discoveries.
As one respondent put it: “I try to sift through all the Twitter content from my network and look for trends and relationships between topics. I then put my analysis and interpretation on it.” Some even set up webinars and training sessions to share Twitter tactics with colleagues. Many used Twitter to find and introduce themselves to new contacts before following up with face-to-face meetings.
Neither Prof Parise nor Dr Whelan is a big user of Twitter. But Dr Whelan says the research has nudged him to read more widely: “It is about exposing yourself to different views and cross-pollinating ideas.”
workingsmarter@ft.com
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