twitter for researchers

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I am not a technical wizard

I am also just one example (maybe a bad one): some of the tips and tricks I will talk

about I completely ignore

Focus will be on ‘researcher’ persona on Twitter

Important to find your own groove!

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First, let’s see where you are…

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Account:

- in order to keep an account active, a user needs to log in and tweet at least once every

six months, or risk permanently losing an account.

- An account might appear dead, but someone might be an active reader of other’s

tweets.

Handle / user name

- Use a short Twitter username. Limit to 15 characters

- cannot contain "admin" or "Twitter“

- avoid numbers or underlines: you want others to be able to remember it and type it

easily.

- You can be anonymous if you wish, but as a researcher it is not recommended: you

are more likely to have interesting interactions with others if they know who you are.

DJ: Blog Brevity

• Pick one main topic and two side topics that you know something about

• 70% main topic

• Explain why a link might be worth clicking

• Let your personality show

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• Twitter clients: Twitter, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Tweetbot

• Schedulers: Hootsuite, Buffer

• Feed updates

• Link shorteners and trackers: Bitly, Owly

• Analytics: Twitter Analytics, Twitalyzer, SumAll

• Filters

• Archive: twDocs lets you save Twitter tweets, favorites, mentions, direct messages

and search results as PDF, DOC, XML, CSV, TXT, XLS or HTML files.

• History: Topsy (get old tweets)

• TwInbox: integrated into MS Outlook

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With time, you'll become adept at discerning who is worth following and who is not.

There's no set strategy for this — it's completely up to you and your own personal

tastes. It might also depend on your strategy (cf. @ResearchUGent).

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@ResearchUGent: under the hood…

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David Silver

thin tweets are posts that convey one layer of information.

thick tweets convey two or more, often with help from a hyperlink.

Hors catégorie: saschel…

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Reply and Mention:

- Visiting another user's profile page on Twitter will not display Tweets that mention

them. However, you can search for all Tweets mentioning their username in the search

box. Search for "@username" to view results.

- People will only see others' @replies in their home timeline if they are following both

the sender and recipient of the @reply.

- People will see any mentions posted by someone they follow (all mentions are treated

like regular Tweets).

- People with protected Tweets can only send @replies to their approved followers.

- If someone sends you an @reply and you are not following the user, the reply will not

appear on your Tweets timeline. Instead, the reply will appear in your Mentions tab.

You can click People you follow at the top of the Mentions timeline to only display

mentions from users you are following.

It's a good idea to be judicious in your use of the Twitter @ reply button. If you're trying

to have a direct conversation with someone, be sure your tweets are interesting before

you start sending a barrage of Twitter replies. (of course, no DM is possible to multiple

contacts)

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Blue Line versus View Conversation

On Twitter web as well as its Android and iOS apps the tweets that form part of a

conversation are displayed connected by a blue line. This makes conversations much

easier to follow right from the timeline itself without having to go to a tweet's

permanent URL.

This means that if you have something to say that cannot be contained within the

confines of a single tweet, split them up into logical sentences, post the first sentence(s)

and then reply to that tweet using the reply button, remove the @mention and then put

in the second sentence(s), follow the same procedure for subsequent tweets.

Also, if a conversation started an hour ago, but the latest tweet was sent 38 seconds

ago, the whole conversation is going to appear at the top of your timeline.

Blue line: if you follow people involved in conversation

View conversation: if retweeted (so people you don’t follow)

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TWITTER CANOE

If you’ve been @-mentioned in a conversation on Twitter that mentions a lot of other

users and that doesn't stop until the people involved run out of things to say,

congratulations! You’ve been roped into a Twitter canoe.

A canoe is a conversation on Twitter that keeps rolling and adding new people until

people get annoyed or bored and stop talking to each other. Adding yourself to a Twitter

canoe is a bit of a bold move—etiquette calls for someone to add you first.

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TWEETSTORM

diatribes on Twitter by tweeting multiple times, adding a number and a slash mark—

"1/", "2/", "3/“

After you begin your tweetstorm with a "1/", make sure you start your next tweet by

replying to that first tweet. Make every subsequent tweet a reply to the previous one.

That will make sure that anyone who encounters your tweetstorm can find the entire

series easily.

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Buffer as analytics tool

Indeed, most successful @ResearchUGent tweets are often the ones during the

weekend…

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1. Your followers are reacting: you should be able to see a reaction ripple through your

feed.

2. Your number of followers is steadily and naturally growing. If your follower numbers

are falling, tweet less; if they’re static, tweet more.

3. The right people are seeing and responding to your tweets. Connect with the

influencers.

4. You treat Twitter interactions differently than promotions. If you are using your

Twitter account strictly as a promotional channel, people will treat it as such.

5. Your posts yield real results.

Knowing how many times to tweet per day is a process of trial and error, but that

doesn’t mean it’s a matter of blind luck to find that magical number. It’s an ongoing

process of refinement.

I would add: management of expectations

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“According to the study, the “findings highlight that the favoriting feature is currently

being over-utilized for a range of motivations, whilst under-supporting many of them.”

This is a common complaint for Twitter, which often watches as users find alternative

uses for standard features.”

University of Nottingham

http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~mlw/pubs/icwsm2014-favouriting.pdf

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Leterme: juli 2010 (Toen hij in Kinshasa was voor de viering van de onafhankelijkheid van

Congo postte hij de tweet 'Not at all. Want to learn to know you. You to?‘), juni 2011,

februari 2012, oktober 2012 (‘geen oog dicht gedaan na ons gesprek’), september 2013,

januari 2014

Don’t mix up accounts (easily done in Hootsuite) and don’t use shortcuts (eg ‘d’ for

direct message)

Try to come up with a witty approach to making mistakes but don’t make it worse!

It was the day of the verdict of Casey Anthony's trial. #notguilty was already trending

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/13-epic-twitter-fails-by-big-brands-

2012-2?op=1#ixzz3FOLapFHP

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