#MediaLit14 : Join with Twitter

Signing UpGo to Twitter.com (https://twitter.com/)

Look bottom-right for ‘New to Twitter’, add your full name (for display purposes), your email (not shared with others), and choose a password. Press ‘Sign Up for Twitter’.

Follow the screen-by-screen instructions, including the prompts to follow a number of users (you can always unfollow later), an avatar picture (clear headshot is best, and keep consistent as people skim looking for particular users), and a 160 character bio (usually keywords - the basis for search, which may be the only thing someone sees when deciding to ‘follow’ you).

Sending a TweetGo to ‘Home’

Look for ‘Compose New Tweet’, and write up to 140 characters. You will see that the number of characters that you have left is next to the ‘Tweet’ button. Once you are happy with your tweet (don’t take too long over it, but also remember that it’s a public message, so be prepared to stand behind what you have written), press the ‘Tweet’ button. You can also select the camera icon and

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add a photo, or the pin icon to add your geographical location. Links can be cut and pasted from elsewhere on the web, and the web-version of Twitter will shorten these so they don’t use up so many characters. If you write #medialit14 anywhere in the tweet it will appear in the Twitterwall that we are using for the week, and be visible to the whole room.

Interacting You can of course respond to any tweet in your timeline, but to respond to those that others have interacted with you on first, click on ‘Notifications’

You will see something like this, which includes people favouriting your tweets, retweeting them, or ‘mentioning’ you in a tweet (which involves writing the user name with an @ symbol in front – anywhere in the tweet, e.g. @drbexl – saves you missing any important messages people have sent ‘for your attention’):

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Following Other UsersThe core in Twitter is finding other users to interact with. Ask the other people in the physical room, search for their name in the search field (top right) – bearing in mind that users with more followers will appear higher up the list, find someone interesting & click on their ‘following’ or ‘followers’ and ‘piggyback’ on the people they find interesting.

Simply click ‘follow’, or ‘unfollow’. The ‘cog’ next to the follow option gives a range of other options, including mute for people busy at conferences!

There’s lots more you can do with Twitter, but this should get you going for #medialit14. The best thing with Twitter is just to have a go with it!

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