When I decided to immerse myself in Twitter in early 2009, my goal was to learn the means whereby a business might effectively tweet. I chose Pete Cashmore of Mashable (then named “Mashup”) as a guide for my learning and performed a content analysis of his 747 tweets in the month of May 2009. The result was that I learned invaluable lessons about creating connections to content using Twitter and gained several thoughts on best practice for professional social media efforts.

The resulting paper, “A Month with Mashable: Bridging Information Content and Media Expression using Twitter,” was submitted for the National Communication Association (NCA) 2010 annual conference shortly thereafter and the time has finally come to present it.

Now, over a year after I completed the study, this data set has become a historical artifact of past Twitter use. Yet, the findings in this paper offer several insights. First, the paper establishes a proposed methodology for studying a user’s tweets from both content and style perspectives. Secondly, the tweets provide a baseline set of data upon which other research can draw inspiration and comparison. Third, the paper sets up a series of longitudinal studies in the changing nature of writing on Twitter. Finally, the paper can inform businesses grappling with the idea of implementing social media as a part of an overall marketing strategy.

Below is a copy of the slides from the presentation given at NCA. If you would like a copy of the paper, please contact me directly. And, if you find this research helpful, please use it with appropriate attribution:

McArthur, J.A. (2010). A Month with Mashable: Bridging information content and media expression using Twitter. Presented at National Communication Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, November, 2010. Retrieved from https://jamcarthur.com/2010/11/16/a-month-with-mashable/

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions related to this study, please leave them here or contact me directly in the medium of your choice.