Day 2 of #YSJ10DoT: Sending Tweets

What to tweet?

Examples of what you could tweet about (Click to enlarge)

 Twitter only allows you to send 140 characters, which doesn’t seem much when we are used to writing at length about complex ideas. 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 existing YSJ tweeters and see what kinds of information they share.

The tone of your professional twitter account needn’t be overly formal – you can be chatty and conversational, and allow your personality to come through. Even if tweeting on behalf of a service, you need to be engaging rather than formal, ‘passing on information’ rather than ‘making announcements’. Do remember though, if you’re tweeting in any professional capacity, that Twitter is a very public medium, and that tweets can be kept, even if you delete them (more on this on Day 9). As a rule of thumb, don’t say anything you wouldn’t normally say openly in a work context!

If you’ll also be tweeting in an official capacity for your service, 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!). Marketing & Communications at YSJ have created two toolkits to pull together some helpful guidelines as to how to approach social media as a member of the York St John University community:

• Staff Toolkit
• Student Toolkit

Sending tweets

Sending a tweet is really easy – when you’re logged into Twitter, you’ll see a box in the top right-hand side saying ‘Tweet’. If you click in the box, you’ll be able to write your tweet in the text box and then click the ‘Tweet’ button. Remember – you’re only able to write 140 characters including spaces, and there’s a small counter below the text box which tells you how many characters you have left. Once you go over the limit, it will start to count in minus numbers to 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.

To give additional location context to your tweet, you can choose to add location to your tweets using twitter.com, or Twitter for Android, iOS or other mobile apps. This feature is disabled by default but can be enabled for all of your tweets or on a tweet-by-tweet basis. See the Twitter’s Adding your location to a Tweet support page to find out more. We’ll get to adding media to your tweets in a later post.

Throughout the rest of the week, we’ll be varying the types of tweets you send until ultimately, your tweets may look something like this:

Click to enlarge the image.

That’s it! Today’s task is to get tweeting. You can start by posting this tweet:

Joining in #YSJ10DoT with @YSJTEL

Roisin (@Roisin_Cassidy)

Further reading:

• Twitter: Posting a Tweet
• Twitter: Deleting a Tweet
• Social Media Today: 100 things to tweet about besides yourself
• Day 4 of #twooc: 12 Days of Twitter training. #Twetiquette and How to start a conversation