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Twitter only allows you to send 140 characters, which doesn’t seem much. In academia, we almost always write at length about complex ideas, so it’s difficult to say something meaningful in such a short amount of text. But that doesn’t mean that Twitter is superficial or only used to tweet about frivolous things. Many people, especially in an HE context, who are new to Twitter aren’t sure what to say, or why updates about whatever they’re doing would be interesting to others. But there are actually many aspects of your day-to-day work that would be of very practical use to others. Have a look at some Twitter feeds from learning developers and see what kinds of information they share, to get an idea of how you really can say something useful and engaging in 140 characters.

The appropriate tone for a professional Twitter account doesn’t need to be overly formal – you can be chatty and conversational, and allow your personality to come through. In fact, you’ll have to be a bit informal if you want to fit everything in, using abbreviations and even textspeak! Even if tweeting on behalf of a department or group, you need to be engaging rather than formal. Do remember though, if you’re tweeting in any professional capacity, that Twitter is a very public medium, and that your tweets can be kept by others, even if you delete them (more about this on Day 10). Don’t say anything you wouldn’t normally say openly in a work context.

Some examples of what you might tweet about:

• an article you’re reading that’s interesting or a book you recommend
• an online resource you’ve stumbled across
• a workshop or conference you’re going to – others may not have known about it, may want to meet you if they’re also going to be there, or may want to ask you about it if they can’t make it
• a new person you met today who might be a good contact in future
• some insight on learning development work from an incident that happened today
• study advice or insights into how you teach a topic
• a question asked by a student or colleague that made you think
• slides from a talk which you’ve just uploaded online
• your thoughts on an education news story
• a funding, project or job opportunity you’ve just seen
• a digital tool or software you’re using or problem you’ve solved with it
• a typical day – an insight into a learning developer’s life or moral support
• your new publication or report which has just come out (there are ways of mentioning this gracefully!)

Sending a tweet is really easy – when you’re logged into Twitter, you’ll see a box in the middle of the screen at the top, which says ‘What’s happening?’ If you click in the box, you’ll be able to write your tweet and then click the ‘Tweet’ button. You can also use the feather quill pen icon in the top right of the screen to compose.

Remember – you’re only able to write 140 characters including spaces. A small counter below this box tells you how many characters you have left. It will stop you once you go over and highlight how many characters you need to delete. You’ll soon develop a suitably concise style, and learn the tricks to abbreviate your writing, such as using ‘&’ instead of ‘and’. This all adds to the informal tone.

First Activity for Day 2:
This bit is important – For this second Day of Twitter, as your first message, please send the following tweet – we’ll explain why later!

Joining in #HSLU10DoT with @HSLU10DoT and @cinigabellini!

Over the next week, we’ll be sending the following ten types of tweets. For today, though, just send a few of the first type of tweet over the course of the day, using the examples above. You could include the hashtag #HSLU10DoT in your tweets – again, we’ll explain why later!

1. A simple message – what are you up to? What kind of event or activity might your intended followers find interesting, personable or quirky? You could let them know about an upcoming event they were unaware of or might also be present at, a thought about your research or work that’s just occurred to you, or just show that you’re approachable and share common experiences. Don’t agonise over it though – Twitter is ephemeral in many ways!
   

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No’s 2-10 are examples of what we’ll be moving on to over the rest of the week, you might skip this for the moment and return to them later on.

2. An @ message directed to someone. Ask someone a question, comment or reply to one of their tweets, thank them for a RT or welcome a new follower. NB: don’t start your tweet with the @ sign, as then only the people that follow both of you will see it! Either include their @name later in the message or add a full stop . before the @ if it’s at the start.
3. Send a direct message (DM) to someone. What kind of message would need to be private in this way?
4. A link to something interesting and relevant you’ve read online, or link to a journal or book. Twitter will automatically shorten it using Twitter’s automatic tool or you can manually shorten it using third-party software such as bitly or ly Add a bit of context or comment on it!
5. Ask a question of your followers – crowdsource their views, ask for tips or advice or recommendations on a topic of mutual interest! Perhaps ask them to retweet (i.e. ‘pls RT’)
6. Tweet a link to something you’ve shared online recently – a profile update, slides from a conference presentation, handouts from a workshop. Many platforms can be set up to do this automatically when you update, such as blogs, SlideShare, Storify, LinkedIn, and so on. Add an engaging and contextualising comment!
7. A retweeted, quoted tweet from someone else. Don’t just use Twitter’s retweet button – start with your own comment, then add RT and the @name of the originator or retweeter
8. A tweet incorporating a hashtag which links to a wider discussion. Search for your chosen hashtag first, to get a sense of what others use it for and what the discussion has been, and what you can add. Look at tweets from followers for hashtag discussions to join, make one up and see if it’s been used, or try adding something to an existing hashtag such as #oer or #infolit
9. Livetweet an event of some kind, even if only for 10 minutes. You might try a research seminar, conference presentation or lecture. It’s polite to ask permission from the speaker. See if there is a hashtag for the event and if so, use it. Practice summarising the event and distinguishing your comments from the speaker’s.

Take part in a livechat on Twitter: #EDchatDE, #LTHEchat are popular ones.

We’ll look at nos 2-10 over the next few days. If you can think of any more professional uses for Twitter, then do add them in the comments, or tweet about it!

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If you’re thinking of tweeting in an official capacity, then think about the balance of your own announcements to other information (Twitter is still a conversation, not an announcement service, and too much one-way, impersonal promotion will turn off your following!).

Second Activity for Day 2:
So – send a few tweets, now and perhaps throughout the day, following suggestion no. 1 from the list above!. Make sure that when people check out your profile from yesterday, there’s some interesting and engaging content there! And remember to tweet

Joining in #HSLU10DoT with @HSLU10DoT and @cinigabellini!

Welcome to Twitter, and to #HSLU10DoT!

The first thing you need to do is to sign up to Twitter. You can see people’s tweets without an account, by viewing their profile or by searching for a keyword, as it’s a very public social media channel. Without an account, though, you won’t be able to join in the conversation, and that’s the first and main thing to learn about Twitter:

Twitter is a conversation

Setting up an account on Twitter is the easy part! There’s still a few things to think about, though, in terms of creating an engaging and effective profile using

• your handle (@name), which people will use to identify and direct messages to you
• your avatar or profile picture, which is how people will pick your tweets out of their twitter feed, on a quick glance
• your identifying information, such as your location and personal website or webpage
• your ‘bio’ or strapline, which will sum up who you are and why people might want to follow you
• the overall look of your twitter profile, which makes it distinct and memorable when people view it
• and additional accounts, which you might want to set up to appeal to different audiences (you will need to use different email address to do so though, as each is linked to a separate account)

If you already have a Twitter account, then you could use this post to refine your profile and your overall aims and audience.

What purpose do you want to set up an account for? With Twitter, you can have more than one account (each linked to a different email address), as, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, it is not limited to single real life identities. Many people will start off with a personal, individual account to get used to Twitter, and then think about other ways in which they might use it to represent a group or service. For example, I’m both @cinigabellini for individual professional conversations, and also @HSLU10DoT for this programme! You might wish to set up an impersonal account to publicise your department, or other activity such as a conference team, journal, research group, module or service like this one @ZentrumLL.

If you don’t yet use Twitter, visit the site to set up an account.

• You’ll firstly need to enter a real name, email address and password to sign up and create an account. Different accounts will need separate email addresses.
• At the second stage, you need to think of a username, which will be your @name. This might be some version of your real name or, if your name is common and most variations of it have already been taken, you might think of a professional and memorable pseudonym which people associate with you in some way. Don’t worry – you can change this later without losing your followers or tweets, and you can also add your real name to your profile so that it’s identifiably you. If you want to set up an account to represent an activity or group, then something which will be memorable, clearly be identified with any known branding of your activity, and work well on publicity will be essential.
• The next steps of signing up on Twitter take you through finding people to follow, but I recommend you skip this step for now – we will look at it on Day 3!

The next thing you should do is start to fill out your profile, so that when people look at it, they will feel more encouraged to follow you.

1. Upload a profile picture. When skimming through a twitter feed of all the people they follow, an eye-catching profile picture will help them pick your tweets out. It could be of you, if you have a good, clear shot of your face (useful in identifying you when you meet followers in real life at conferences! Full body pictures work less well as at the size of a thumbnail image, it’s hard to pick out your face!). It could also be an abstract image which somehow reflects your @name, as long as it’s striking. If you are setting up an account for a service do check the Social Media- Guidelines on the use of University logos with the corporate marketing team. Make sure the image is clear enough, as it appear as a small icon. Don’t leave your profile picture as the default Twitter ‘egg’ – this suggests that you are either very new to Twitter or a spammer! You can also add a ‘Header’ image which customises your profile page a little more.
2. Add your real name, if you wish. This will appear on your profile, so if you use an abstract pseudonym and picture (like Helen Webster, for example, who calls herself @scholastic_rat), your Twitter account can still be identifiably ‘you’ – again, useful at conferences! If you use Twitter to represent a department or group, then the ‘full’ version of its title, especially if your @name is an acronym, would be something to add here.
3. Add a location (this could also be an institution or other affiliation). Your followers might be from anywhere in the country or the world, so this gives people a bit more context about which university or HE body you are affiliated with, lending you credibility and authority.
4. Add a URL to a personal website or webpage. You can have only one, so perhaps your university webpage, if you have one, would be most appropriate here. People can then find out more about you than is possible in your Twitter profile.
5. Add a ‘bio’. You have 160 characters to sum up who you are and what you might be tweeting about, to encourage people and give them a reason to follow you. Again, a blank or minimal bio isn’t very inviting, and suggests that you are too new to be interesting, that there is little to be gained from following you, or you are a spam account. A well-thought out bio is an important part of gaining new followers. Have a look at the bios on other tweeters’ profiles, and see what you find inviting or off-putting. If you intend to tweet in a professional capacity, then avoid too much about your hobbies and family or quirky, cryptic statements about yourself. It tells potential contacts nothing about why they might want to follow you or what kinds of information you are likely to be passing on to them, and therefore why they would want to network with you professionally. Some people like to add that they are “tweeting in a personal capacity” or that the “views are my own” to clarify that their tweets do not reflect the views of their employer, although you may feel that this is clear enough anyway.
6. You can connect your Twitter account to post automatically to your Facebook account too, if you have one. Think carefully about the two audiences for Facebook and Twitter – is this something you want to do? Or would you rather keep them separate?

People will often view your profile page when deciding whether to follow you, and you might add the URL (i.e. https://twitter.com/cinigabellini) to your profile page (e.g. on your email signature or business card) if you want to ask someone to follow you, so it is worth making it informative and distinctive. It will also be an important part of your publicity if you’re tweeting in a group capacity for your service.

Editing your Profile and other Settings

You can change all the information you entered while registering by clicking on the Edit Profile button:

In addition, you can change your Header image – the one that sits behind your avatar. Click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you’re happy with the results.

To change other settings, click on your small Profile Picture at the top of the screen, and select Settings. In Settings, amongst other things, you can request your Twitter Archive and access accounts that you have Muted or Blocked (which we will cover on Day 8 – Managing People). By default you will receive notifications of various Twitter activities by email, which can be a bit annoying. Under ‘Email notifications’ you may deactivate all notifications for the moment and come back later to refine your email preferences to be notified about specific activities.

Visit the twitter help pages on how to manage your account for more information.

You can create more Twitter accounts from other email addresses for other aspects of your life, and it’s best not to mix content and audiences too much – for example, if you use Twitter for a hobby, then a separate account for professional purposes means that you aren’t filling people’s Twitter feeds with things that don’t interest them or confuse them. It’s fine to add a personal touch to your professional tweets though!

That’s enough for now, take your time until Monday 11th April to create an engaging profile, which invites others to follow your tweets. Be aware that you still can change settings later on.

Let us know how you’re getting on, why not leave a comment on this blogpost with your twitter handle and a link to the URL of your profile? Or if you have any other comments or questions, let us know by leaving a comment! If you’re finding it hard to get in touch through the blog, do email me at HSLU.

Best wishes
@cinigabellini