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Succeeding in postgraduate study
Succeeding in postgraduate study

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2.3 Managing Twitter effectively

There is a useful set of facts and tips in Twitter basics [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , including their rules and best practices. Once you have an account you can check your settings, set your preferred privacy level and add personal information to your profile.

The following tips may help your Twitter account evolve into something relevant to your needs:

  • Follow individuals and organisations in your field and check out who they are following.
  • Aim to follow somewhere between 20 and 100 people and organisations on Twitter to achieve a good critical mass of information.
  • If you have to check your account more than once a day just to keep up, consider refocusing and cutting down the number of people you follow.
  • Remember that it is okay to stop following people if they make a lot of irrelevant tweets.
  • Follow new people if their tweets are retweeted regularly by those you follow.
  • You can share interesting discoveries by tweeting them to your followers.
  • It is possible to run a search on Twitter and generate an RSS feed which you can add to your feed reader.

Activity 4 Posting on Twitter

Timing: Allow approximately 10 minutes

If you already have a Twitter account, you can proceed to the next step; otherwise, take a few moments to set up an account. Then undertake the following tasks:

  • Post a comment to Twitter using the hashtag #OUSPGS.

    You can comment on any aspect of the course and its contents. For example, you might like to share your thoughts on which parts of the course you have enjoyed the most so far, topics or issues that you have found particularly interesting or thought-provoking, or skills that you wish to develop further. Or you can simply say a bit about yourself and where you are going with your studies and your professional career.

  • Run a Twitter search for #OUSPGS and take a look at what others on the course have commented.