© John Iona

A brief guide to Twitter

Sign up for a

Twitter

account at

twitter.com

This is your Twitter

@username, or handle.

Depending on the use for

the account, choose a

username that reflects this.

Set your details for

your account.

Find people &

organisations

to follow,

whose tweets

you are going

to be

interested in

reading.

Find people by using the

search facility, but make

sure you find the right

(official) account. The

more famous, the more

“fake” accounts there

will be.

© John Iona

Try searching for organisations, publishers and people who you might be interested in following. Here are just a few suggestions:

When looking

for people to

follow, search

for publishers

or authors

that you know

and see what

comes up.

If your search for a person/organisation

doesn’t find the official account, try visiting

their official website first. There you will

often find icons/links that will take you to

their official social media pages.

Once you find

someone you want

to follow, take a look

at the account and if

you are happy, click

the follow button to

follow their tweets.

People such as Phil Bradley,

Geoff Barton and Michael Rosen.

Publishers such as Penguin,

Walker, Harper Collins and

Spinebreakers.

Authors such as Patrick Ness,

Malorie Blackman, Alan

Gibbons and Philp Ardagh.

Orgnaisations such as

National Literacy Trust, CILIP

SLG, the Society of Authors

and The Guardian teen books.

Take a look at

who others are

following to get

ideas of more

people to follow.

© John Iona

Your Twitter home page

Including handles

(@usernames)

means the tweet

shows up on

their feed and is

known as a

mention.

If someone mentions you,

you get an alert here

Re-tweets (RT) are tweets

that people are sharing so

that their followers can see

them.

#Hashtags used to

keyword tweets so

topics can be tweeted

and searched easily. Tweets using the

same #tag help a

topic to trend

Patrick Ness’s

Twitter handle

Hover over a

tweet to get

more options.

Reply to a tweet

and start a

conversation with

someone Re-tweet (RT) a tweet to share with

this with the people that follow you.

This tweet will then show on their

timeline, even though they do not

follow the original tweeter

Favourite a tweet –

this is an easy way

to save a tweet to

go back to it

© John Iona

Tweeting as an organisation

When creating a Twitter account for your Library, or department or follow the advice below:

Only tweets of

those that you

follow …

… will show up on

your Twitter feed.

While I don’t follow

@norfolkbookworm, this tweet

was re-tweeted by The Reading

Agency, who I do follow. So any of your tweets,

as well as anything you

re-tweet, will show up

on the feed of those

that follow you.

With this type of Twitter account, follow

people whose tweets you think you will

want to share with your followers.

This will mean that the tweets on your feed are

only those from those that might be relevant to

your followers, and the feed is not too long.

So any tweets

from this

account…

…will show up

on the feed of

every follower

of this account.

HOWEVER You do not see

the tweets of people you do

not follow.

So students can

follow your

account, and you

do not have to

worry about seeing

their tweets…

…unless you click follow

© John Iona

Protecting Privacy

Choose the

settings option

in the menu

here

Choose to

protect your

tweets here.

Then save

your changes.

Now Twitter

uses have to

request to

follow you.

Your tweets, who

you follow and

who follows you

remains private.

You can then choose to only accept

follow requests from relevant people.

Some privacy

advice for

school libraries

Set tweets to private and then let

pupils, parents, teachers, governors

follow you on request.

You do not need to follow them

back… as long as they follow you,

they will see your tweets and you

will not have to see theirs.

Only follow accounts which will

tweet about the sorts of things

you will want to share (RT) with

your followers so that your feed

stays uncluttered and relevant.

Share your Twitter handle

(@username) with stakeholders so

that they know how to find you.

© John Iona

Having other people re-tweeting your

message to their followers, will mean

you reach more and more people.

Follow people, and

hope that they follow

back. Try to tweet about the interesting

work that you are doing, special

events and feedback you have

had from others.

Tweet about positive,

interesting stories from the

media and on the web.

Twitter is all about having

a conversation, and

sharing information, good

practice, news and ideas.

How can you

use Twitter to

your advantage?

Tweet @people if you

want a particular person

to see your tweet.

What do you want to share with your

followers? Use Twitter to promote your

Library events, new books, competitions, book

trailers, photos, reviews and anything else you

can think of to increase engagement.