Reaching Audiences Through New Media: Lessons
We Are Learning From the International Year of Astronomy
Twitter Overview
To set up an account, go to Twitter and “join.” You will be asked for your name, a user name, password, e-mail address, and e-mail password. Once you have an account, you are pretty much on your own. Play around … no small children have been hurt! There is no tutorial in Twitter, but the “Help” button in the upper right offers some assistance in getting started, primarily through a FAQ-style topics page. You can find out how to stylize your account, change pictures, unfriend someone, etc.
Personalizing Your Account. You can personalize your account using options in the “Settings” menu found on your home page. Under the “Account” tab you can select your e-mail for Twitter alerts, provide your bio and website, and protect your account. Using “Devices” you can send messages from your mobile phone. “Notices” allows you to get updates from Twitter, nudge yourself to tweet, and get e-mails when someone follows you or sends a direct message. The “Settings” menu also allows you to update your picture and page design.
Following and Followers. To follow others on Twitter, it is best to find a friend or two using the “Find People” option. You can search by first, last, or user name (say, LRO or LCROSS or NASA or IYA). You also can invite friends by sending them e-mail from Twitter. And finally, Twitter can suggest some folks that fall into the rich, famous, and political categories so that you can have an eclectic mix of folks to follow. The best way is to get plugged into a few known entities that share your interests (space, cooking, cooking in space) and look at who they are following. Double click on the icon to open the page of anyone who looks interesting. If you like what you see, click on the “follow” button below their picture and they will be added to the list of folks you are following. If, down the road, you become bored (or other) by someone you are following, you can always select them and “unfollow.”
Your homepage has a link to a list of people you are following and people following you. There is no rule that states you have to follow everyone who is following you. Only folks who are following you will see your tweets. If you want to see a stream of your own tweets, and what others see when they visit your page, check out “Profile” on your home page.
Tweets, @, Direct Messages, and #. Once you have a Twitter account, you can update your fans with “tweets.” If someone sends a tweet to you, you can reply directly to them using a “@” immediately before their username (e.g., @astronut I am planning on hosting a star party, too). If someone direct messages you, it can be accessed/responded to from the “direct message” link on your home page. The hash tag (#) is a way of marking tweets about topics of interest to the community that can be searched. Tweets about the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference were flagged with a hash tag and could be accessed by interested followers.
Other Applications. At the very bottom of your home page is a string of URLS, including one for Apps. This is where you will find buckets of “plug ins” to help forward tweets to your webpage desktop, FaceBook account, and more. You can also send tweets from your other social media accounts and mobile devices.
You can post images to Twitter using Twitpic.This is a separate application, connected to Twitter. Go to twitpic.com, login using your Twitter account, and upload your images. Your text about the image appears in your tweet stream, along with a Twitpic URL that directs followers to your Twitpic page.
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