Digitalist life in the library

Things 15 & 16 – Twitter

• Thing 15: Sign up for Twitter and find people to follow
• Thing 16: Start engaging with your network using @replies and retweets

Using this helpful tool I have just discovered that I joined Twitter on 22nd October 2008. I didn't get it first time though and let my account go dormant for a while until picking up again and posting my first tweet on 25th February 2009. After that I was hooked and started singing Twitter's praises far and wide. I wrote two introductory posts on it on this blog (Twitter - the basics and Twitter - the next level) and presented a session at the 2009 British Business Schools Librarians Group (now the Business Librarians Association) conference.

Catherine, a fellow 23 Thing participant tweeted a question to the group today. She asked

"Can anyone in the Ox23 group summarise what are the main advantages of Twitter?"

And here is my response in just short of 140 characters:

Since joining Twitter I have connected with a vast network of librarians across the world. By engaging with this network on Twitter I have asked questions, had questions answered, shared useful links, discovered new tools and been part of far-reaching discussions that have sprung out of a single speculative tweet. Not only that but through publishing the links of my blog posts to Twitter via Twitterfeed the traffic to my blog has increased dramatically. This I would say is the main argument for libraries having a presence on Twitter. It's all about promotion - using channels like Twitter you can extend the audience for your library's announcements and provide new ways for your users to gather information about and interact with the library and its staff.

In a post I wrote after the session at the BBSLG conference I gave my top tips for people getting started on Twitter and here they are again...

1. Upload a picture - show us you're human. It doesn't have to be a photo of you, although it is nice, but just something that shows a bit of your personality.
2. Write a bio - for the same reason as before really. Prospective followers will want to learn a bit about you first.
3. Follow, follow, follow - to get the most out of Twitter right from the word go you need to find people to follow and lots of them. As I mentioned in my talk find a few at first and then use their follower lists to find more like minded people.
4. Share - this not only goes for what you're doing but what you're reading, viewing, thinking. Vary your tweets. Link to blog posts and articles you've found interesting and tell your followers why.
5. Engage - it's easy to be passive but you'll get more out of Twitter if you get involved. If someone asks a question answer it. If someone posts something of interest to you retweet it. Make yourself visible and get involved. It goes back to that old saying you get out what you put in.