Last week I blogged
about how to get your account up and running, this week is more about getting
the most out of your Twitter account. I will talk about list curation, Twitter
terminology, Twitter chats, and the power of the hashtag.
It has been said that
getting information from the internet is like trying to take a drink from a
fire hose.
The internet is a wealth
of good information. But if you type a search term into Google, you will get
all kinds of information shooting at you, and it can be hard to decide which
information is most useful. Nothing out there can help with this problem better
than a well-curated Twitter account.
If you have a Twitter
account up and running, you probably have a list of people who you follow. It
is important to make sure that the list of people that you follow contains
people who have opinions and ideas that you respect and that they can be
trusted sources of information on a given topic. I have many people that I
follow on my Twitter account who I don’t even know personally, I have
participated in Twitter chats with them or other people have retweeted what
they have said and that compelled me to find out more about them and follow
them.
Last week I touched on
several terms and ideas linked to having a Twitter account, and this week I
wanted to explore them more in depth.
Tweet- This is the
message that you or other users send out to their follwers. These messages can
only be 140 characters in length including spaces and punctuation. This leads
to some interesting grammar, but it forces you to get to the point quickly. If
you want to share links on Twitter, it is a good idea to use a URL shortener to
save you some characters. (we can help you with this or it may be explained in
a later blog) You can also share pictures on Twitter.
Hashtag- In Twitter,
this is represented by a #. This is a way of tagging information so that it can
be found easily. When searching for information on a particular topic, instead
of searching for a person, enter a hashtag and then the topic (ex- #inelearn,
this will bring up all tweets that have this hashtag in them. (this is the
hashtag that the state has established for tweets about elearning in Indiana)
This will show you anyone’s tweets on the searched topic no matter if you
follow them or not)
When you Tweet, this
makes your topics searchable and lets people find what you are talking about.
If you tweet without a hashtag, it is likely that the only people who will ever
see your tweet are the people who follow you. If you want to reach a wider
audience, always use a hashtag.
Retweet- This is often
abbreviated with RT. This is a way of sharing a tweet that you like with your
followers. You simply click the retweet button at the bottom of the tweet
(looks like 2 arrows going in a circle) to retweet a tweet that you like. You
share “credit” for the tweet with the original tweeter, and your followers get
to see the tweet, link or article that you shared. The original author of the
tweet gets a notification that they were retweeted and they can feel all warm
and fuzzy inside :)
Mention-If you are
mentioned in a tweet or if you mention someone in your tweet using their
handle, the person being mentioned in the tweet gets a notification that they
are being talked about. It is a good way to get someone to chime in on a
conversation that you are having or to give thanks for a good idea that you got
from a fellow twithead.
Favorite- If you see
something that you like, but you do not want to share it with your followers,
but you want to have quick access to it, you can click the star at the bottom
of the tweet to favorite it. This will notify the author that their tweet was
favorited, but your followers will not see the tweet. It will put the tweet on
your favorites list so that you can see it again or look more into something
when it is more convenient.
Reply- Somewhat
self-explanatory, but you can reply to the author of a tweet directly. If you
reply from the tweet itself, it will be part of your feed and your followers
can see it. If you want to have a more private conversation with someone you
can…..
Direct Message- This is
an option to send a message to a particular user that is not published on
either of your Twitter feeds. It is a way to keep a conversation private. It is
still subject to the 140 character limit though.
Twitter Chat- Often,
there are scheduled times when groups are on Twitter to have a discussion. To
participate, you will need to know the chat’s hashtag and search it during the
time of the discussion. This way you can keep up with the conversation going on
even if you do not follow all of the participants of the chat. I will post a
schedule of education Twitter chats and their hashtags below.
I promise that I have
tried to keep both of these blog posts as short as possible. It is tough to
cover all of the possibilities of Twitter though. Please feel free to contact
any of us if you are interested in using Twitter more. I was not sold on it right
away, but now, as I have learned more about using it, I find it to be a very
useful tool.
Follow us! @mrkriswalsh
@jguillaume1 @zellersp Our hashtag is #pcelearn please feel free to search that
tag and use it when posting about technology use here at Perry Central.
Schedule of education
based Twitter chats and their hashtags are located at this website
A directory of specific
indiana Twitter profiles can be found here:
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