Thu 14 May 2009
Using Twitter & Tweetstats To Optimise Your Staff’s Productivity In The Office?
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo)Do you know how much time your staff are spending on Twitter? Join in with me as I optimise a member of my web design teams productivity, and even have a say what I greet him with in the morning. 
The rise of Twitter as a social networking / promotion tool is well documented, even in this blog. Tweetstats actually give you individual users twitter activity stats. I thought it would be fun to have a look at one of the young folk at Hobo to see how he was using it.
OK our young prodigy joined in august 2008 – he’s a website designer – which coincided with his Twitter usage as you can see from the graph below. Month on month, he seems to be enjoying himself and getting to be quite fond of Twitter – as perhaps his 400 followers might testify
Next up is his daily usage. Below, you can Tuesday seems to be his favourite Twitter. Monday and Wednesday close seconds. MMMM… I think the boy needs more work on Mondays, Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays…. perhaps especially Tuesdays!.
Below, you see what time of the day he does most of his Twittering. He seems to be more active in the mornings with Twitter density increasing as he heads for mid afternoon.
The below chart might be a bit clearer. He seems to a bit of a slow starter but around ten oclock in the morning, bless him, he’s pushing 72 tweets an hour. That’s a total of 1021 tweets all told up to now. Certainly, he seems to be enjoying Twitter.
What can I do with this information? Well if it’s accurate, for a start, he’s getting more work on the above days mentioned, I’ll be making sure his work diary is a bit more fuller in the mornings too. In fact I think I’m going to ride him like Seabiscuit over the next wee while
I’ll leave it up to you to determine what I say to him when I get into the office after meetings tomorrow (about 12 noon GMT).
- Congratulations on embracing Twitter! Keep at it, it’s a valuable networking and promotion tool!
- That must be impacting productivity. No more Twitter during work days for you my young protege I have your career to mould!
- Congratulations on embracing Twitter. Now limit your Twitter usage and get back to work or I’m going Alan Sugar on your ass!
Vote Below, or add your comments
Check out your staff’s productivity on Twitter at Tweetstats
MMMM… added a timely post
Did you know when you link to a Hobo SEO post we have search engine friendly links back to your site if approved? Our comments are also search engine friendly you know (once you've commented on a few posts)! Do you need any more encouragement to get involved in the conversation ;)
I could make him the official Hobo Twitter I suppose
Love the post Shaun! Which vote did you go for?
Another factor that should be considered is the topic of his tweets, is he:
* promoting Hobo & improving brand awareness
* keeping uptodate with the industry
* or just staying in touch with his mates
I’m sure he is …
At first, I thought you were joking. You do realize that, at his absolute peak, he posted 150 tweets in a month…5/day.
On first impression, it seems like the one who’s wasting time is the one who put together a long blog post with 4 graphics but no actual advice on “Using Twitter & Tweetstats To Optimise Your Staff’s Productivity In The Office.”
(I found this post through Twitter, and wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.)
Fire his ass, I followed him and he snubbed me, these young whippersnappers think there taking over the place
hahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahah
thats just brilliant….
pwnnnnnnnnnnne’d
Write a small app that appends #shaunisthebestbossever to every tweet he makes on company machine in company time. Not only is this a good way to remind him of his office responsibilities and what a kind person you are for letting him tweet, it also reduces the number of chars he has radically forcing him to truly wonder is it worth it.
lol
@Anon – Its a joke!
and;
First it took literally 5 minutes for me to write that post.
Second, thats part of my job – to write posts on this blog
Third, I did the post at home out-with work hours (hmm maybe I am wasting my time!)
Fourth – I twittered at home
Fifth – welcome to the blog. It got you here. Job done – don’t suppose you’d like to subscribe?
Regarding the Twitter posts and how many it actually adds up to (at the moment) I’ll have a look and confirm your numbers in May
@Lynne I’ll tell you in the morning
Looking at the stats that’s 60 tmes so far this month with usage rising generally month to month. Also, this is only tracking actual tweet time here remember…. not including time wasted / distracted on Twitter reading after being bombarded with interesting sites and articles to read.
Actually he could be on there all day lols
As someone stated above, at the very most it works out at five tweets a day and even then you aren’t taking into account home hours etc. Is this really such a big deal?
Is this post supposed to be concentrating on the person in question or is it more to do with the fact that you want to rank for a twitter term because its currently the most popular thing on the internet? Surely as an SEO/SEM you should be applauding the person in question for their keenness to network, regardless of the social media site and especially for the fact that they seemed to get into it a long time before it became mainstream.
What about the rest of your team, will you be putting out reports on them for their favourite social networking sites like bebo, facebook and youtube or is there something else behind this blog post?
I think you’re taking it a bit too seriously – it was a laugh. Nope this wasn’t an attempt to rank for anything to do with Twitter.
On a more serious note I pay the wages, and if I let the distraction of social networks interfere with work then I’m not very sensible am I?
Also, if I let participation go unchecked, how many hours does Tweeting and scouring Twitter cost me over a year? What benefit did I get for paying for such Twitter activity?
Now I’m not exactly going to ban the twitter in the office, and if you know this blog you’ll see I actively promote world wide web investigation during work hours. If there’s a purpose, especially one that helps my business and improves the ability of the chaps I pay to spend time with during the day.
The purpose of this post was to make sure everybody in the office is using social media sensibly, and not in a way that interferes with client work (which we have tons of). And to have a laugh.
Hallo, for those missing their funny bones, this post is supposed to be a joke – young ****** has experienced a bit of online stardom recently, due to his profile being raised, and there’s nothing like a good bit of west coast scottish humour, to bring his feet back down to ground level – even if it is for just 5 minutes.
After reading my comment again my tone does come across as rather argumentitive. For that I appologise. I dont know why I was so defensive, especially when I dont even know the person in question.
Perhaps its just because you have singled them out and could potentially harm their career prospects with such a nothing blog post. Remember, nobody wants to hire a rubbish worker.
However I will echo my previous comment when I said “five tweets a day….is this really such a big deal?”
Now if I was out to ruin anybody I’d put their name in the Blog Title and make sure their name was in my link profile
And I’d actually add their name to the page!
I’ve not outed them, I never critisised his work, nor do I have a problem with his work ethic or what he produces because like every body at Hobo he’s excellent at what he does.
Anyway I’ll be writing his reference at some point in the future – I’ll have plenty of chance to damage his rep lols
“five tweets a day….is this really such a big deal?†– Of course not.
It’ll be interesting to see if when the blog post is emailed in the morning, if the vote will even up, as obviously the twitterers (see timewasters lols) have been in first!
This post is obviously just a joke. Some people need to get a sense of humour. There are more important things to worry about.
Great investigation, Shaun. You’re dead right, this use of social & communications technology during work hours has to stop. It’s time to take drastic steps here – you’re going to need to block access to:
twitter
facebook
myspace (none of them are actually using MySpace, right? That’s a question for the performance reviews!)
google
yahoo
msn|live|whateveritscalledthisweek
gmail
all email services
In fact, you should probably just disconnect your office connect entirely. It’s the only way to be sure.
As for young *****, don’t let all this attention go to your head!
Thanks for the comments. This was obviously a joke post, and the stats looked worse than they were. I voted for no1 actually lols.
“# Congratulations on embracing Twitter! Keep at it, it’s a valuable networking and promotion tool!”
Social media for networking purposes is incredibly useful and i actually harassed all my staff to join twitter and get their own blogs because it will make them better online marketers.
However social media is far to great a potential distraction and i believe you’ve got to keep it checked when you run a small company perhaps any company because it’s unlikely that directly it’s paying any bills.
Aye, there’s an element of truthiness behind the joke.
However, I wouldn’t recommend an SEO company blocking employee access to Google
Aye Alistair I’m telling you, i’d get more work done if that where the case!
In fact, I do do most of my Google ‘research’ at night or I simply wouldn’t get things done!
Tch – kids eh?
Looks like the balance between work and tweeting is about right to me. A break every now and again from real work to spend on Twitter and blogs is much better than just constantly slogging through work. Plus it’s more productive than a cigarette break or loads of emails to their mates (although I’ll bet he’s doing that too! We need a TweetStats for email!).
Actually the scamp was going to create a chart for the smoking timewasters (which includes me!)
I think everybody in the office got the message with this lighthearted post…. even me!