Twitter
Becoming a Networked Researcher | Ned Potter, Academic Liaison Librarian
A complete guide to Twitter including a glossary is available at http://bit.ly/twitterforresearch (case sensitive). It contains a version of the steps listed below, and a lot more information besides. PART 1 Setting up your account: 1. Go to www.twitter.com and register for an account if you havent already . Both your username and your actual name will be displayed on Twitter, so if its possible to pick a username which is distinctive and in some way meaningful without being too long, this is a good thing. NB: Doing steps 2 4 before you start following people will give you the most chance of developing a meaningful network right away. When you follow people they get a message alerting them to this fact: usually they would then click on your profile and make a decision within a couple of seconds as to whether to follow you back. Reciprocity on a social network is important for getting the most out of it, so its important to make the most of this opportunity - the decision to follow you back or not will be made based on your picture, your bio, and your recent tweets, so its good to get these in plac e prior to following anyone at all. Twitter may try and get you to follow people before it lets you fill in any of your details; it is trying to be helpful here, but it isnt! You can abort the process Twitter attempts to make you go through (follow 5 more people etc) by just going back to the home screen at www.twitter.com. Then go to your Profile Settings in order to do steps 2 to 4. 2. Put in a bio. Your bio is very important it needs to be meaningful and give people a reason to follow you. Try to mention what youll be tweeting about as well as where youre from. You get 160 characters to play with here, so make the most of them you can put a link back to your website or profile page on your Departments websi te, in the
separate link section. 3. You need a picture too (also known as an avatar) - by default youll be given the twitter egg which puts people off following you. Twitter is a personal medium where people make professional connections, so even if you re camera shy its good to have a headshot of yourself. If you have no picture available to you in the session, remember to do this later! 4. You can now start to explore Twitter. Whenever you to go www.twitter.com you will see you Timeline by default youll be on the Home screen, which consists of your own tweets, tweets from people you follow, and ReTweets. As youre brand new to Twitter this will likely be blank, or Twitter will be suggesting people to follow (whic h you can ignore). The @Connect screen shows you tweets directed specifically at you, the tweets of yours which are ReTweeted or Favourited, plus information about when new people follow you. The #Discover screen is an attempt to expose you to other Twitter activity based on your interests in practice this will be the screen you use the least, if at all. The Me screen allows you to view your profile as others see it, and also access your Favourites and Lists should you make any in the future.
Its worth coming back and exploring these four screens once youve started tweeting, getting replies and so on. 5. Youre now ready to try sending a tweet, using the Compose new tweet box in the top left hand corner. Remember tweets need to be 140 characters or less if you need more than that you can always use 2 tweets in quick succession. In effect youre seeding the pot here; youre giving people who click on your profile an indication of the kind of thing youll be tweeting about. Try and write 4 or 5 representative tweets (even if theyre just things like Im going to be tweeting about my research interests in area X) before you follow anyone. Please send at least one tweet using which includes #yorksocmed this hashtag will help us demonstrate another feature later on in the session.
PART 2 Exploring Twitter further
6. Now you can start following people, institutions, and organisations. Wed recommend following some local York-based accounts at first (theres a list in the Twitter guide mentioned at the top of this handout), then find researchers or organisations / bodies whose interests and output intersect with yours. You can do this by searching for keywords and subsequently finding interesting people or communities tweeting about those keywords. 7. Try searching for a hashtag. Type #altmetrics into the search box at the top of the page. Todays training has a hashtag: #yorksocmed type it into the search box on Twitter to find other participants of the workshop who tweeted earlier. 8. You dont have to search for hashtags, you can search for anything try searching for subjects that interest you (or even people you know). This is the best way to find relevant people and information on Twitter, and indeed the primary way to find out if Twitter will be of use to you is to search it for subjects which relate to your research both your subject and your research process. If you find an interesting tweet, you can RT (ReTweet) it by hovering over it and clicking the ReTweet button which then appears. You can also favourite things to refer back to later.
Click on a few interesting names and then press the blue Follow button on their profiles. Their tweets will now appear in the timeline on your home-screen. Thats it! It takes time to build a ne twork, so if you decide to give Twitter a try, make sure you stick with it for a few months, and seek out the interesting people who match your interests.
Further information
The tool for capturing and collating Twitter conversations, Storify, can be found at www.storify.com. Id recommend setting up an account (by signing in with your Twitter account when it gives you the option to do so) as Storify can be extremely useful for recording discussions, conference tweets, debates and so on right from the start of your Twitter use. A quick Storify tip: the easiest way to locate the tweets of other people which you want to record in a Storify timeline is to FAVOURITE all of the relevant ones. In the screenshot below, from the top right of the screen when creating a timeline, you can see I ve selected the Twitter icon, then clicked the Favorites tab, then put in my own username, to quickly find the relevant tweets:
The Becoming a Networked Researcher section of the Librarys Support for R esearchers pages can be found at http://www.york.ac.uk/library/info-for/researchers/networked/ The RDT (Researcher Development Team) webpages are at http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/hr/researcher-development/ The slides (with a link to an online version of this handout) can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/UniofYorkLibrary/ Please feel free to contact me with any questions or follow-ups: [email protected].
