We\u2019ve found Twitter to be a great way to keep up with research, share our practice and make new connections. However, we juggle tweeting with our daily learning design work, and it can easily become distracting and time consuming.
\nThese tips outline the tools and techniques that helped us make the most of Twitter and keep it from taking over.<\/p>\n
1. Live tweet from events.
\nThis is a great way to make new and relevant connections. Use the event\u2019s hashtag to find other attendees to connect with and discuss ideas during the event and after.<\/p>\n
2. Filter tweets with free tools.
\nUse a social media dashboard to filter tweets from relevant people and organisations. You can also use it to schedule your own tweets. We find that free tools are fine.<\/p>\n
3. Create lists.
\nCreate lists of different groups of followers (ours include OU teams and external researchers). You can then filter content from these lists via your Twitter dashboard and see at a glance what people with similar interests are discussing.<\/p>\n
4. Cut distractions.
\nYour Twitter dashboard will also keep distracting tweets out of sight \u2013 essential when strong opinions are being shared and time is precious.<\/p>\n
5. Explore others\u2019 Twitter lists.
\nPeople in your network may have curated lists of their contacts. If they\u2019ve made these lists public you can view them via their Twitter profile and include them in your dashboard.<\/p>\n
6. Save tweets for later.
\nSave interesting tweets and other nuggets of news to the drafts folder of your Twitter management tool. You and your colleagues can dip into this and share its contents.<\/p>\n
7. Schedule posts.
\nSchedule posts when you know you\u2019ll be busy so you can focus on the tasks at hand.<\/p>\n
8. Don\u2019t worry about repeating yourself.
\nThis can feel awkward at first. However, tweets are ephemeral and, with an ever-changing Twitter audience, repeats won\u2019t be obvious and will help you engage with relevant people.<\/p>\n
9. Share the load.
\nIf you\u2019re part of a team, split the Twitter work using a rota and individual responsibilities. Two of our team members create content to share while others focus on engagement with followers. This means we\u2019re working to our strengths and making the most of people\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
10. Use analytics.
\nEven a brief glance at your analytics will show which topics are of interest to members of your network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We\u2019ve found Twitter to be a great way to keep up with research, share our practice and make new connections. However, we juggle tweeting with our daily learning design work, and it can easily become distracting and time consuming. These tips outline the tools and techniques that helped us make the most of Twitter and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcript"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1167,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions\/1167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/learning-design\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}