APSE

Individual answers about Twitter’s place in our media organizations’ evolving online presence appropriately fit in the requisite 140 characters.

“It’s for branding and to develop a community with your readers,” Ramona Shelburne of the Los Angeles Daily News said in her presentation on Twitter at the APSE West Region’s meeting this month in Los Angeles.

But a comprehensive look at the social networking tool’s role requires the space once found in, of all places, a newspaper. That’s because the technology still is too new and fluid to capture succinctly. “We all just know that we should probably start doing it,” Shelburne said.

Shelburne starting doing it 140 characters at a time in earnest approximately six months ago, giving her followers typical Twitter insights into the minutiae of her life. That didn’t work. After all, many Twitter users barely care enough about what they had for breakfast, so would their followers?

“You’re probably not as interesting as you think you are,” Shelburne warned. What followers found interesting, however, was when she focused her tweets on a particular beat; in her case, it was the Lakers.

The new champions’ fans wanted all the information they could get about the contract negotiations with Lamar Odom and the status of Lakers coach Phil Jackson’s return to the team. When Shelburne hit her stride, her followers multiplied quickly through the wonders of re-tweeting and she is up to more than 1,100.

Shelburne’s success comes from following the approach of making sure those who want the information could find it.

“We know that we had the credible content,” Tracy Greer of the North County Times said. “We had to get it to where people are.”

What happens when readers get the information still is the tough part, especially as organizations continue to try to solve the mystery of monetization. And any discussion that aspect of social networking’s role would take far more than 140 characters.

But enough reporters are having the success measured in increased exposure, story tips from followers and page views that’s it’s obvious that this Twitter is a way to go … at least until it’s obsolete.

So Shelburne offered some tips on how to make it work:

1. Tweets with a purpose: Specific subject area, beat, voice (columnist/reporter).

2. Consistency: Like a good blog, you have to tweet often and readers (followers) expect you to tweet to attract a following.

3. Displays on other platforms: Live feed/link on sports homepage, blogs.

4. Twitter feeds: Set up RSS feeds to your blog, Web site and by writer’s name to automatically post content.

5. Don’t be afraid to re-tweet (RT) even if you get beat: Twitter is about being quick, being interesting and being entertaining.

Simple, huh? And all it took was 2,816 characters.