Getting Started with Twitter
Once you’ve started your Twitter account, here’s how to get active on Twitter and start building your
PLN (Professional Learning Network):
1. Choose a short Twitter name that captures who you are.
2. Use a picture of yourself. When you attend meetings people will immediately recognize you.
3. Your bio should tell about your interests and what you teach or supervise. This enables those viewing
it to know who you are. Add a link to your blog or website.
Find other educators (“tweeps”) to follow.
You can search by your interests using the search box at the top of the page. For example, if you want
to follow other educators interested in Daily5, you will type #daily5 in the search box. This will bring up
a list of tweets that contain #daily5. Click on the @Name of a person to bring up their profile and click
“follow.”
Other hashtag searches to find educators like you:
#cpchat (Connected Principals)
#commoncore
#sbac #Educoach (Instructional
Coaches/Mentors) #engchat (English Teachers) #mathchat (math) #ntchat (New Teachers) #scichat
(Science) #sschat (Social Studies)
Grade Level Chats: #1stchat #2ndchat #3rdchat #4thchat #5thchat #6thchat
Another way to find people to follow is to look at the profile of someone you follow to see who they
follow or who follows them.
Type your first tweet to the world.
It doesn’t have to be a literary masterpiece. A simple “This is my first tweet!” will work just fine.
Reply to another person’s tweet or mention someone in one of your tweets.
“I just learned about twitter and am now following great people like @ToddWhitaker”
Share a link in a tweet.
Find an article or blog post you want to share to your followers. Paste the URL into your message
(Twitter automatically shortens the URL so it doesn’t eat up all 140 characters) and then add a comment
about your thoughts on the article. “Here is a great blog post about Pencils by @dmjz4
http://bit.ly/syi2CG”
Retweet someone else’s tweet.
If you read something that you find interesting and poignant, retweet it so that the people who follow
you can also read it. Simply click the retweet button or copy/paste the text and precede it with RT.
Use a hashtag in your tweet.
A hashtag is like a subject line and also makes it easy to sort and find tweets. Try it in one of your
tweets. “I’m having a blast learning about Twitter at #AWSA2012”
Send someone a Direct Message (or DM)
Direct Messages, or DMs, are the private messages of Twitter. This is the Twitter equivalent to email.
Only you and the recipient can read these messages. You can only DM users if they are following you,
but you do not necessarily need to be following them.
Brandon Twyford wrote a great blog post “Twitter? I don’t get it! A 3-step guide for newbies”
(http://www.brandontwyford.com/?p=281)
“I just don’t get it” “I don’t care what someone had for lunch” “Twitter is stupid”
Twitter can be mystifying to the uninitiated user. If they’re not a marketer, business owner or blogger,
Twitter may just be a way to get celebrity updates and converse with friends. The non-social-mediasavvy user will typically join Twitter because they keep hearing about it and they feel like “everyone else
is on it.” They’ll follow a few famous people and random real world or Facebook friends. They’ll
sporadically post mundane updates for a short time, with no real engagement—just broadcasting to
their audience. Then they get bored and quit because nothing interesting is going on. There are many
thousands of these inactive Twitter accounts, with minimal posts and no current activity.
If there is one single thing that will make a newbie “get” Twitter instantly, it’s this:
1. You have to have a reason to use Twitter.
It helps to have a goal in mind when you start to use Twitter. Are you trying to market something, build
a network around a brand, promote your blog? Regardless of what Twitter’s tagline says, it’s not just for
getting short, timely updates from your friends. In fact, the word “updates” is kind of misleading. It
makes you think of the update section of Facebook. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but no one really cares
what you’re having for dinner, or what movie you’re watching. They may comment, but only because
they want you to comment back when they post what they’re eating for dinner. There’s a weird kind of
voyeurism going on between these types of users. Your reason might be sewing, or dog washing, or
bodybuilding, or cartooning. Start a free blog and get involved in the community of sharing that already
exists around your passion. Building a network of like-minded people and sharing information with them
in real-time is the purpose of Twitter.
2. You have to follow and interact with interesting people.
If you’re following the wrong people your timeline will be cluttered, noisy and annoying. It can easily
discourage you from getting engaged on Twitter. See who is active in the discussions you want to take
part in. Engage with them by mentioning them in your tweets. Read blogs that are relevant to your
interests, comment on them and follow those people on Twitter. Soon you’ll build a valuable network of
people who are well-suited to provide you with helpful information.
3. You have to be active.
Facebook is great for scrolling through and seeing what happened earlier in the day, yesterday or even
earlier in the week. Twitter is the real-time sharing of social media. With Twitter, things move fast. It’s
what’s happening right now. Things that were discussed even an hour ago can be old news. If you are
away for long periods, your network will move on and you’ll become less in touch with what’s going on
in your industry or area of interest. Keep up with a large network by creating lists and grouping the
people you follow into them. You can view each list as you have time. Mark favorites to go back and
read at your leisure. This way you keep informed on the most cutting-edge trends in your industry. If
Facebook is this week, Twitter is today.
There’s a lot more to Twitter than this. But these three key steps will open the door and get you well on
the way to being a Twitter guru.