How to use Twitter
- 1. How to use Twitter – a quick guide
- 2. What is twitter? • A social networking and micro-blogging service where users have 140 characters to say whatever they wish, known as “tweets” • Users are followed and have followers: tweets of users you are following will appear in your news feed and your tweets will appear in the news feeds of those who follow you • Most if not all Colleges are on Twitter - Cornwall College has among the largest amount of followers, with more than 8000. A growing number of FE leaders and opinion formers tweet.
- 3. Why is it so popular? Builds communities During the recent riots in England, Twitter users organised a mass clean up of the affected areas just by communicating on Twitter #twitterwombles Ability to communicate with important and influential people The President of the United States is on there... @BarackObama Freedom of speech Twitter users exposed Ryan Giggs for having an affair even though he had paid for a super injunction Drives traffic to websites Use interesting/enticing tweets to direct followers to our website which can highlight our services to Colleges
- 4. Go to www.twitter.com. Sign in to your team or individual account.
- 5. This is the home page for the AoC account – which is managed by the Comms team – but the layout is the same for any Twitter account. Tweets of the organisations/people we are following Following=number of organisations/people AoC is following and whose tweets appear on the home page Followers=number of organisations/people following AoC. AoC’s tweets will appear on their home page.
- 6. Click on ‘@AoC_info’ to view messages written to and about AoC. These are public messages which are viewable by all.
- 7. Clicking on ‘Direct messages’ lets you see messages sent directly to an account and vice versa. These messages are only viewable between the sender and recipient.
- 8. Click on ‘Profile’ to see an account’s tweets.
- 9. To tweet, click on ‘Home’. Then type your message in the ‘What’s happening?’ box using 140 characters or less.
- 10. You can use www.bitly.com to create shortened links, to give you more space in which to Tweet. Bitly allows you to see how many people click any link.
- 11. Bitly converts long URLs into smaller ones, usually around 14 characters. It also shows you how many people have visited that website page already.
- 12. Paste the converted URL into the ‘What’s Happening’ box along with your message. Click ‘update’.
- 13. Your tweet will then appear in the Home screen.
- 14. Help is available by clicking here or contact the Communications Team. Enjoy tweeting!