Twitter in Twenty Twinutes

Paul Ayres

Intute: Social Sciences

intute.ac.uk/socialsciences

Who is this man?

Online Information Specialist …

… covering economics, education and learning technology

What we will cover today

• What is Twitter?

• Why use Twitter?

• Intute use of Twitter

• Keys to Twitter success

Let’s Twitter

• Stand up, pair up, don’t talk

• Show us your fingers

• 20 words on– What you had for dinner last night– Seen a good website recently– Last thing that got you excited

… or anything else

Twitter is …

… a lot like talking

… so what’s the point of Twitter?

… well what’s the point of talking?

What’s Twitter?

Short messages (140 characters) shared online

• What are you doing?• What has your attention?• What do you care about?

Sent from a web browser, mobile phone or a Twitter app

Twitter-isms

• Following / followers (opt-in)

• @username for replies

• Re-Tweet RT

• Direct Messages DM

• TinyURL.com to shorten links

Twitter is …

… a bus full of crazy people talking to themselves, except you get to choose who is on the bus!

… from Twitter is like

Twitter is …

… a fantastic collection of real peoples thoughts and problems - unlike the media which is full of media people's thoughts and problems - that is Twitter's USP - We can now do media without the media - and you lot don't get it!

… comment from Guido Fawkes’ blog

Why use Twitter?

Why use Twitter?

Why use Twitter?

Why use Twitter?

Intute use of Twitter

• Find out about new websites• Discover and pass on subject specific news• Develop new contacts• Pass on knowledge by answering questions• Get to know existing friends much better• Help spread the word about all things Intute • Monitoring what people say about us

Re-Tweeting Intute links

Gain a reputation

Provide support to users

Monitor your brand

Active Twittering

• A real person provides updates

• Become a trusted guide on a subject

• Approach undertaken by the Intute: Psychology channel

• http://twitter.com/IntutePsychUK

Passive Twittering

• Re-purpose some of your existing content by sending it to Twitter

• Automatically update a channel with news, blog posts or other updates

• Approach undertaken by the Intute: Economics channel

• http://twitter.com/intuteeconomics

Keys to Twitter success

• API and open data approach makes it easy to build on Twitter

• Real time news and search engine

• Does one thing, but does it well

• Opt-in model of followers / following

Analyse your followers

Bigger than newspapers?

Bigger than Google?

What you can do …

• Sign up for a personal account at Twitter today

• Set up a project account and send items to it using Twitterfeed

• Monitor what’s being said about you using Twitter Search

• See more Twitter related links at delicious.com/cfbloke/twitter

Become one of these people

Thanks for listening

Paul Ayres

http://twitter.com/cfbloke

Intute: Economics

http://twitter.com/intuteeconomics

Intute: Social Sciences

http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/