5. WHAT IS TWITTER?
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform
composed of 140 character answers
(tweets) to one question “what’s
happening?”
http://youtu.be/0UFsJhYBxzY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PThAriHjk10
26. JOIN THE CONVERSATION
@KTDIgital I really enjoyed your
Twitter for Academia session today.
What was the link to that Twitter
archive tool?
. @KTDigital Can you send out the
links to the Twitter archive tools you
mentioned today?
Really enjoyed today’s Twitter for
Academia session by @KTDigital
today. Links to the slides are here
http://www….
27. JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Great article published in
#Dickens2012 in the Times today:
http://www….
Great article published on the
legacy of Charles Dickens in the
Times today http://www….
#Dickens2012
28. JOIN THE CONVERSATION
RT @KTDigital Slides for today’s
Twitter for Academia presentation
now up at http://www…
Very useful, especially the strategy
bit RT @KTDigital Slides for today’s
Twitter for Academia presentation
now up at http://www…
Really enjoyed today’s Twitter for
Academia session by @KTDigital
today. Links to the slides are here
http://www….
32. TWITTER FOR
RESEARCHERS
• Tweet your work and others (and
link to open web full/summary
versions of publications)
• Ask questions
• Crowdsource data
• Reach out to external audiences
33. USING TWITTER IN
DEPARTMENTS / COLLEGES
• Tweet outside speakers and events
• Tweet news to students
• Foster internal comms
• Use separate accounts for admin
alerts or teaching info
• Connect with alumni
34. TWITTER FOR UNIVERSITY
LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS
• Tweet events and activities
• Tweet something we can’t find on
your homepage
• Gather user/visitor feedback
• Customer service
• Create a daily/weekly feature
35. TWITTER IN THE
CLASSROOM
• Create a course twitter feed
• Ask students to summarise points of
a lecture in 140 characters
• Ask students to tweet questions
during a lecture
• Ask students questions and display
the answers and discuss
36.
37. THE ACADEMIC
CONFERENCE
• Use the conference hashtag
• Introduce each session/talk
• Boil statements down to main point
• Link to speaker resources
• Any questions?
http://inflexionadvisors.com/blog/2010/05/13/how-to-live-
tweet-a-conference/
http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/04/25/ten-tips-for-successful-
conference-tweeting/
44. THE IMPACT FILE
• Number of followers
• Names of useful people for future
collaboration
• Invitations that come via twitter
• Number of hits to your blog /
website via twitter
45. SUMMARY
If timely communication,
engagement, relationships and
conversation are considered of value
to academic activities then, if used
effectively, platforms such as Twitter
can have a marked impact.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYP-wBaqQAI
Structure of the presentationBriefly look at what Twitter is and how it can be used as part of your social media strategyWe won’t look at how to use twitter in great detail but rather ways of presenting yourself and building that presence on twitter to get the most value from itWe’ll then move onto look at how Twitter can be used for specific academic activities
I manage 3 Twitter accounts – tweet me your questions!
When Twitter emerged in 2006 I thought it represented the apex of what concerns me about internet technology- Narcissism - Sound-bite communication Excuse not to dedicate ‘real’ time to conversation or ‘real’ peopleIt seemed everyone just talked about what they had for Breakfast.
Twitter stinks on the surface - tweets don’t last long, people are on their sporadically, it falls over when too many people in the world are trying to tweet. There is a lot of information on there about what people had for breakfast and the other mundane aspects of daily life.It’s not all about what Lady Gaga had for breakfast, time wasting or for hip juveniles…it’s an incredibly valuable resource for academics. If you’re allowing inaccurate stereotypes to deter you, you’re missing out. It works because it does something very small, very well……
Twitter, the micro-blogging online social networking service has been in existence since 2006. It allows users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”.It’s not always easy to see the value in answering this simple question, especially in an environment where we are used to explaining complex ideas in 5000 word journal articles or 80 000 word books. See: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=417878#.TqllpIsFMCY.twitterJapanese Earthquake 11th March. 0.05% > 12% Twitter Traffice, 1200 tweets per minute from Japan- Device-agnostic- Real-time - Everything is immediate and everything is relevant now.A Social network (you don’t have to listen to the noise of the world, just what the people you are interested in are saying)It’s public Then I heard a presentation at a small conference on how a group of PhD students were using Twritter and it convinced me that perhaps it was worth giving Twitter a try.I have been using it for over three years now and watched how it has started to become visible in more and more academic activies,
Twitter is like a news broadcast. People all over the world are publishing tweets (very short messages) any of which can be viewed by anyone. You select what tweets you want to read. There are two ways of doing this. You can ‘follow’ particular people or organisations who tweet. Their tweets then appear in your timeline, which appears as a scrolling list when you open your Twitter page. The other method is to search for tweets that include a particular word: for instance, if you type ‘migration’ into the search box at the top of the page, you’ll see all the tweets in the twitterverse that include that word, starting with the most recent.In the circles I move in, a high proportion of tweets are messages pointing to a weblink, which may be a news article, blog post, journal article…. This is where Twitter is such a useful resource for the academic, you are continually connected with the most current research and developments in your field. Instant relevant recommendations, almost your own personal journal.But to think of it just as a way to broadcast information is an injustice. Social media should be regarded as a conversation.
Social media use at Oxford has grown enormously in the past couple of years. Departments, colleges and services are increasingly using platforms such as Twitter to tell the university's story, and to directly engage with students and alumni, hold conversations, answer their questions and re-post their content. Oxford has over 120 accounts (risen from 80 in November)It’s ok to be just as passive user, many people are. But this is an important shift in the way that we communicate – to not be part of the conversation is to ignore those you may be seeking to engage.
The term ‘media’ makes you think ‘push’ or ‘broadcast’ - think of it as a conversationSocial Media isn’t a successful, it’s the content that’s a successful and social media is the channel for it. Social media does not change the fact that relationships take time.
Before you jump into using twitter it’s a good idea to think about the plethora of social media tools that are available to you and if Twitter is the right tool to start with.Do you simply want to Broadcast information, use it as a marketing tool?Do you want to engage in conversation?Make connections?Publish openly?Think about who it is you want to engage with. What online spaces are they moving in?When it comes to choosing what social media you should use, you have too many choices. Choose one as your basic platform and grow from this.
The biggest point of overlap between the Big 4 is in sharing news and other content online. Each site provides a mechanism for sharing the latest headlines with your friends and colleagues. Facebook – is the biggest, but highly personal in nature. It’s generally a place where you share content with your friends, some of that content may be things you wouldn’t share with anyone else.Twitter benefits from immediacy and simplicity. It’s network is growing faster than facebook. It is considered a public place. If you want the world to know about something you go to Twitter.LinkedIn’s niche is it’s business focus, it’s like your virtual business card holder, supplying your own and collecting others. Content is related to your professional status.Google+ was one of the hottest things in September 2010 when it went public it hit 13.4million hits alone, but there has been a massive backlash with people using it less and less. It’s unlikely to topple Facebook like Facebook did MySpace. But don’’t discount Google - it remains the most-visited site on the Web and it has been said ‘the best is yet to come’…..http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/101711-sean-parker-google-unlikely-to-252068.htmlSee: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/102111-tech-argument-google-facebook-twitter-linnkedin-252279.html----- Meeting Notes (09/11/2011 12:10) -----Google+ 13.5 million views in sept 2010Unlikely to topple fb
Grow your social media platform – launching a blog may mark this point. It is one thing to send a tweet and have no replies, but putting effort into writing an 800 word blog post and having no one read it is another thing.
If you google ‘Getting started with Twitter’ there are plenty of online resources to tell you about the technicalities of tweeting. Go to twitter.com and you will be guided through the registration process.
Keep your username fairly short and avoid numbers or underlines: you want others to be able to remember it and type it easily. You can be anonymous if you wish, but I’d not recommend it: you are more likely to have interesting interactions with others if they know who you are. A brief description of what you do and what your interests are will help kindred spirits discover you.Do put up a picture, but if you would rather it not of yourself make it something symbolic
Able to tie a face and a name to the account to help build a community around it. All of the tweets coming out will still be about the organisation, with the exception of a few spice of life tweets to add some flair and personality. However, it will still be very clear that the person tweeting is doing so on behalf of the organisation and that’s their reason for being there. It is in no way seen as a personal Twitter account.
Difference between being a representitive from a department or college tweeting on their behalf and being a project/organisation on twitter. Here’s no employee or real personality publicly tied to the account in any way. The focus is on promoting news, blog posts, services etc. It’s not on building genuine relationships with people. Everything that is done is done from the perspective of TheOrganisation.
Creative tweeting! Character-based accounts have the tweeter posting from the voice, perspective and insight of an object/animal/plant/whatever. Everything is done through that character and the tweeter never breaks that character. It may sound silly, but we’re actually seeing a lot more organisations take this approach as they look for a way to stand out and connect with customers. If you do it right, it’s often ingenious. If you don’t, well, you just look silly.
Creative tweeting! Character-based accounts have the tweeter posting from the voice, perspective and insight of an object/animal/plant/whatever. Everything is done through that character and the tweeter never breaks that character. It may sound silly, but we’re actually seeing a lot more organisations take this approach as they look for a way to stand out and connect with customers. If you do it right, it’s often ingenious. If you don’t, well, you just look silly.
Following someone is kind of an endorsementTwitter some kind of sixth sense: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson
Use a free text search for areas you are interested in and go from there
Follow the trails that Twitter provides for you
I suggest you start out by just identifying a few people that look interesting to follow, and see whether you enjoy the Twitter experience. If you are getting fed up of the Tweets of someone you are following you can stop following them.
Some pieces of software give you the functionality of randomly following up to 500 people a day, then dropping those who don’t follow you back. Or auto-following people who follow you without you having to do it yourself.With any business – whether it is commercial, academic or promoting yourself, people look for shortcuts and see everything as a numbers game – how many followers. Building actual relationships and conversations takes time, so why not automate it? This is not twitter etiquette. It’s not about how many followers you have but your engagement with them, one person at a time.
Whilst content is king, and good content will attract followers. Twitter is not just about pushing information, it’s about connecting with people and being part of a conversation, in Twitter’s case, a public conversation.
There is no point Tweeting unless you have the followers to tweet to. And one way to draw them in is to make them part of your tweets and talk directly to them. You may have direct things to say to other tweeters or you may want to reference them, you do this by using the @ symbol followed by username.
Alert people to your presence and join in world wide conversations by using the hashtag – hash tags evolve
RT – delicate little social dance that twitter has inventedA way for you to repeat (and perhaps change or give value to) what somebody else has said and give them credit for it.Retweet button – breaks the sociality of the RT convention. It means that the act of curation and co-creation has been lost.
Good to throw in a banal tweetNot everything has to be epic. It’s the small things that help you get to know people.
Can work well if you already have a large followinghttp://joelcomm.com/fourteen-types-of-tweets.htmlhttp://www.epicpoker.com/news/blog-pages/2011/10/social-director-the-seven-types-of-tweets.aspxBritish Library / Stephen Fry / THEhttp://joelcomm.com/fourteen-types-of-tweets.htmlhttp://www.epicpoker.com/news/blog-pages/2011/10/social-director-the-seven-types-of-tweets.aspxBritish Library / Stephen Fry / THE
For researchers Twitter is part of a digital presence/ personal learning networkContinual publishing across social media as well as journals can increase the size of an academic footprint.For tweeting to work well, always make sure that an open-web full version or summary of every publication, conference presentation or talk at an event is available online.#phdchat where a group of PhD students, academics and researchers ‘meet’ weekly on Twitter for an hour on Wednesdays between 19:30 and 20:30 to discuss research-related issues. The discussions are themed and you can suggest a topic by tweeting @NSRiazat. These twitter conversations have been so popular that participants now include postgraduate researchers and academics from around the world.Twitter provides many opportunities for ‘crowd sourcing’ research activities across the sciences, social sciences, history and literature – by getting people to help with gathering information, making observations, undertaking data analysis, transcribing and editing documents – all done just for the love of it. Some researchers have also used Twitter to help ‘crowdsource’ research funding from interested public bodies.See: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/09/29/twitter-guide/
Departments have regular outside speakers and events going on. Twitter is great for alerting people to details of talks, seminars, guest lectures and parties. Add in tweets of highlights from people who are there and ‘the place to be’ factor is strengthened.Many large departments are sub-divided into groups that may not keep close tabs on what each bit is doing, or on developments in neighbouring departments. Again, Twitter’s brevity and immediacy is great at fostering internal communication.A Twitter feed is also great for reaching students, PhD students, and part-time researchers, often the groups that are last to know about events they could attend.Don’t try to combine departmental administrative alerts (e.g. about essay or exam deadlines) into a single departmental Twitter stream. It is best to run those through separate teaching accounts.
Tweet what’s going on but don’t be spammy about it…..constantly telling people to visit you is belittling their ability to plan their day.Respond to people – show that this is an institution that is engaged with the community.Use tweets to drill down to content you wouldn’t normally find, give behind the scenes infoDaily/weekly feature – e.g. Smithsonian ‘name that artifact’ game
Course twitter feed fed into WebLearnhttp://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/02/twitter-in-academics-this-prof-shows.html
Tweeting at conferences has become a love-hate relationship with some.Some say it’s become passé or disturbing. -spread information and engage with conversation in the backchannel.allows many conference attendees to share what they are learning from the conference with the multitudes. It’s a way to set the conference content free and have it spreadable outside of the four Tweeting from conferences benefits everyone: the Tweeter (through reputation), the speakers and the event (the latter two through worldwide broadcast of the event’s content). Event promotion
How to live tweet a conference (either as a delegate or as a conference organiser).http://inflexionadvisors.com/blog/2010/05/13/how-to-live-tweet-a-conference/http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/04/25/ten-tips-for-successful-conference-tweeting/
You may be tempted to use automation to keep a presence on Twitter when you are not around or so you do not have to dedicate time reguarly. Don’t.Twitter is a conversation. If you use a 3rd party to tweet for you when you are not around, it’s like send a mannequin to a conference in your place with a post-it note attached. It’s not authentic and it says you want people to listen to you but not vice versa. There is no such thing as automated engagement or programmeauthenticitty.It is a different story if the goal of your account is a feed of events/news and that is what people are following you for. The problem is when people think you are tweeting and you are not really there.
If your tweets are valuable to you, archive themTwapper Keeper online tool that lets you archive tweets based on a hastag or person accountThe Archivist is a Windows application that helps you archive tweets for later data-mining and analysis. Start a search with The Archivist and get as many results as it can. The, leave The Archivist running and it will poll Twitter for that search. Twistory lets you back up tweets to your calandarand browse through your personal Twitter diary,See: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_ways_to_archive_your_tweets.php
Tweet RegularlyThink of things you can tweet that are helpful to othersConsistency is very important – if you have a few hours a week to commit then spread it out, rather than spend it in one chunk.Manage expectation by having opening hours – bio with the times they are available to tweet and the start the day with a ‘good morning’ and end with a ‘good night’Show why you think something is valuable enough to pass on rather than just RTWhen retweeting think if you can put your own spin on it and do it via via instead. Follow Others and have a conversationFind people you want to follow, learn from and get to know and start replying to them and then start replying to them and share the things they have said.If you receive a random @ message from someone you don’t know promoting something it is probably spam.Craft your tweets2. In order to make yourself more retweetable make sure you leave enough characters for some one to @ your name
1. Moving from looking for new relationships to enhancing existing ones2. Start to mix social media and the real world, e.g. going to a conference or other event in your field, use twitter before, during and after the event to cement relationships3. Think about using your social media more effectively by using a desktop application such as tweetdeck or Hootsuite.See: http://socialmediatoday.com/leo-widrich/371186/10-top-twitter-tools-suggested-pros
Take your dialogue with followers to the next level and grow the relationship.Insert the ability to engage in your blog – a blog without engagement is called an article – interacting with the comment system changes a post from being something static to ecstatic.
An approach called altmetrics (alternative metrics) aims to measure web driven scholary interactions – e.g. how often research is tweeted, blogged about or bookmarked. Do more tweets mean high citations?Impact fileHow much do new "likes" and "follows" from this effort translate to meaningfulcontacts and engagement, follow our news and share their views and ideas with us? Create an impact file- number of followers you haveNames of useful ppl for future collabInvitations come via twitterNumber of hits to blog / website via twitter
But if we think of a role of academic work to engage with people, to spark conversations and debate, pull together specialists in a field to network we find the value of social media. Social media pulls insiders out, and allows outsiders in to organizations, so that they can create a more meaningful relationship between themselves and their academic work and communities.