Using Twitter By Nancy Hanus Michigan State University School of Journalism Sept. 13, 2010

Be mature about it Pick a user name Don’t be silly Consider using your real name Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t say to your mother or your boss Use a real picture of yourself, and not one of you with a keg in it. You can be casual but don’t be “Joe College Student” on Twitter

Use a real location Don’t be cute Write a real bio Tell people you are a college student Specify the university. Not MSU – that can mean Montana State University, Minnesota State University, etc. Say Michigan State University Tell your major You can talk about yourself, but stay away from religion and politics

Uses for Twitter Share links to items of interest to your network Re-distribute content from blog, web site Get Feedback Read News Event Updates Provide Live coverage Crowd-source questions and answers Promote specific content

Don’ts Do not link to your Facebook profile unless there is NOTHING on it you wouldn’t show to your boss, grandparents or instructors Don’t protect your updates. If you want to be private, stay off Twitter

Follow and be followed Look for professionals in your field Look for professors in your field; they are likely to tweet things relevant to college students Look at who the good twitter users follow. Then follow the good ones. Add a few media outlets

The basics Update: Your tweet to the your Twitter universe Reply: To reply to something someone tweets, click the curvy “reply” arrow. It will start your tweet with symbol and that person’s user name Retweet: Copy someone else’s tweet (or hit the retweet button) and add RT to the front with their name. Direct Message: Private messages between you and someone else who is following you

Using Lists Organize the people you follow The “groups” feature for Twitter Creating a list Click on new list link Name the list: The name is also used for your list’s URL, which will be “twitter.com/username/list-name.” Make it public or private Public mans anyone can see it, anyone can follow Private: Only you can see the list. Not even those on the list can see it Add a description to the list

Each list is currently limited to 500 people Users may create a maximum of 20 lists Add users to your lists by going to their profile page, or from a following page Manage your lists in the right-hand navigation of Twitter

The # (Hash tag) Keep track of multi-party conversations or posts from an event You can search for all posts from that event or conversation using that #, like #

Twitter tools Tweetdeck Good way to organize your tweets and send them Allows you to send to Facebook at the same time Can have more than one twitter account Tweetmeme Hottest links on Twitter at Bingtweets: Trending topics on Twitter Bingtweets

Twitter sites for journalists Muck Rack: Follow journalists on Twitter Muck Rack 15 Social Media Twitter lists from Mashable 15 Social Media Twitter lists 10 journalists you should follow on Twitter 10 journalists

More Twitter resources Top 7 mistakes new Twitter users make Top 7 mistakes Trendistic: Graphing trends in twitter Trendistic Twitter search 15 Twitter directories compared on Mashable.com 15 Twitter directories

Remember: Tweets, like blog posts and comments, are indexed on search engines. So, don’t send any Twitter messages that you wouldn’t want your mother, your employer, or your who-knows-who to read either now or in the future. Once online, always online.