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Twitter 101 for educators
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Click icons on a Twitter profile to find others to follow
The world has been all a-Twitter for awhile now. Recently, Twitter has found its way into the news, churches, businesses, and classrooms. I have found Twitter to be a valuable tool for me as an educator, and as I see new educators joining the Twitter ranks each day, I thought I'd share a few tips I've learned along the way. This article will not discuss the pros, cons, or reasons to use Twitter, but if you have already decided to try it out, it will be a good place to start.
Twitter is free, but you must register an account. The process is easy - just a few questions, and you're done. Visit www.twitter.com to get started.
Now for the tips:
1. Be courteous when you choose your user name. Twitter restricts updates to 140 characters or less. If your user name takes up 15 characters, you've just reduced the number of people who are willing to reply to you or re-tweet your posts. More on replies and re-tweets later. There is no set rule about the length of a name, but I think under 10 characters is good.
2. You can change your user name easily. If you read tip number one and realized that your user name takes up too many characters, you can visit "Settings" and change your name. I did this recently. When I first signed up for Twitter, I was glad2be. All of my other social networks have my user name as eplybon and I believe that is more recognizably me, so I changed my Twitter user name to eplybon. I was also tired of walking up to people at conferences and saying "I'm glad2be on Twitter" and getting the response "me too!". You still keep all your followers and who you follow, so the only downside is that it may take some of your followers a bit to realize who you are.
3. Tweeting (which is what posting updates is called) is not necessary all day every day. When you have something interesting to say or a resource you think may be beneficial to others, tweet it. I am a science teacher and an avid technology user, so my tweets tend to keel toward science and technology, but if I come across an article that I think may interest some of the history teachers in my follower list, I'll tweet it. There have been a lot of conversations about what is okay and not okay to tweet. While I believe that nobody can really tell me that I cannot tweet about my dinner, I do try to keep the meaningless tweets to a minimum. There was a video made that shows the comparison between what we say on Twitter and real life. Watch it here.
4. This one is really, really important. If you want to keep your real-life job, do not sit on the computer reading Twitter updates all day. Twitter will not go away. Any time you log in, there it is, with all of the updates that the people you follow have ever posted.
5. While number 4 is true, don't feel like you have to have read everything that the people you follow have said. The Twitterverse, as it is affectionately called, has a way of repeating anything of real value, so you won't have missed anything. Additionally, if you are looking for something in particular, tweet about it and someone will give you the information you missed.
6. Be sure to check your replies when you log in. Your replies are under a link on the right side of the page that has your user name with an @ in front of it. This is where you can see who has either replied to you, retweeted something you said, or suggested that someone follow you.
7. Be sure to check your direct messages, also. Direct messages are not seen in the main timeline and when you reply to them, the reply will not be seen in the timeline, either.
8. To increase the number of people who follow you, upload a photo and complete the biographical information in "Settings". People tend not to follow individuals who have not uploaded a photo - it is the sign that you are a person new to Twitter. If your biographical information doesn't include any information about being an educator, there are people who will not follow you. You need people to follow you if you want to be able to ask questions and get answers.
9. Once you have your account set up, it is important that you start following people. The more people you follow, the more helpful Twitter will be. When I started Twitter, I started off following an educator who I knew had a lot of educators on their follow/following lists. I viewed his profile and started following some of the people who were on his follow list. You can do this by clicking on the icons on their profile. There are other places you can find people to follow. Take a look at the "For more info" section of this article for a few suggestions.
10. The best way to search for specific subjects on Twitter is to use this search engine.
11. The proper way to reply to someone is to start your post with @username. Be sure to use the correct spelling and capitalization on their user name. This will ensure that it shows up on their replies page. Even if they do not follow you, they will see that you replied to them, which sometimes leads them to start following you. You might notice that some people will structure their replies using a period, an exclamation mark or some other character before the @. This is because of a recent controversial decision by Twitter that causes @replies to people who you don't follow to not show up in your timeline. Many of us have found people to follow by seeing @replies to them. I always put a period before @replies so that all of my followers will see everything I've tweeted. The only exception to this is if I'm replying to something that would not have any relevance to anyone else - for example, if someone tweeted to me "where are you going for lunch?", I would not use the extra character because nobody else cares where I'm going to lunch.
12. Hashtags (#). Any text that follows a hashtag, such as #necc09 means that post relates to a particular subject. Groups will get together and decide what the hashtag will be for a particular conference, topic, or holiday, then use the hashtag in all of their posts. You can use the search mentioned above to find any posts that use a particular hashtag. The hot topics found on the right side of your Twitter page is populated based on how many times a particular hashtag is used.
There are many more things to learn about Twitter, but these should get you started. Be sure to check out the additional resources below to become a Twitter expert.
For more information:
100 Tips, Apps, and Resources for Teachers on Twitter
Twitter4Teachers: wiki that contains the Twitter user names of teachers arranged by content area.
Twitter search
Wefollow.com: You can add yourself here and find others to follow.
@eplybon: Follow me on Twitter
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