Thread by @IndSciComm

Our final thread on 'Twitter for science organizations' ! @PrinSciAdvGoI 🥁
Thread1:bit.ly/2KTX4nN
Thread2:bit.ly/2wT1dQH
Thread3:bit.ly/2Rzy9r0
Today we discuss Interactions & Mistakes. But before that, let's talk a little more about hashtags

Hashtag choices - Here is a tweet that is part of a series of live-tweets by @NCBStheory during the annual Monsoon School on the Physics of Life, held at the @NCBS_Bangalore campus.
Lets look at what this tweet did right and not-so-right

https://twitter.com/NCBStheory/status/1140547653165436929

👍🏽 Its a great idea to intersperse informational tweets with 'lighter' tweets, especially while live-tweeting events. It breaks the tedium and increases audience engagement.
👍🏽The use of media - a photograph helps to prevent text overload for the audience

As a reminder, here is the section in our second tweet thread where we discuss how to choose hashtags

https://twitter.com/IndSciComm/status/1137904223901966336

Do remember - While typing a hashtag on the phone, browser or any other interface, Twitter suggests some of the most popular hashtags for the day. This is a reflection of topics and news which are trending on Twitter at the moment. Do not simply choose the most popular one.❌✖️

Hashtags are used by aggregators, bots and superusers to filter through twitter feeds and collate specific news/information. In the example tweet, #PhysicsofLife2019 and #MonsoonSchool are acceptable choices. But in this context #harbinger and #rainbow are not relevant.

Even though #halo is very popular, it is not at all useful. In fact, the small emoji that automatically appears next to the hashtag is part of a promotional campaign for a video game of the same name. Hence, using #Halo in this tweet amounts to targeting the wrong audience.

Moving on to Interactions - As a curator of the Twitter handle for a science organization, please check your mentions and Direct Messages (DMs) atleast once in 24 hours on working days.
There are different ways of dealing with mentions and DMs depending on what is needed.

Lets say another user/handle is mentioning you and asking a clarification/question -
👉🏽If you don't know the answer - don't interact.
👉🏽If you can answer - give the answer + any extra help + URL and a redirection to a more appropriate person/handle for more details

👉🏽If you know the answer, but cannot talk publicly - Ask the questioner to DM you. Please be polite in DMs. If you think the person/handle is a troll, you can report them to Twitter or block them to avoid harassment. Remember to keep a record of the reason for blocking them.

Mistakes - A curator is after all a human being behind the handle and all humans make mistakes. A couple of last minute checks before pushing 'Tweet' usually helps keep things in check -
👉🏽Always proof-read tweets. Spelling mistakes are the most common kind of mistakes on tweets

👉🏽Double check that all the URLs point to the correct website/document
👉🏽Verify that the mentions lead to the correct people. There are many twitter handles that are very similar and do not refer to the correct person of interest.

And finally, do remember - a new tweet appears on feeds within couple of minutes. If you catch your mistake early enough, you have two options -
1. If the errors were small - like typos, you can delete the incorrect tweet and write a new one within a couple of minutes of posting

2. If the errors are considerable and the tweet has been up for a while, you can delete the incorrect tweet, but you must reference the error and write a corrected tweet - an erratum of sorts.

🙌🏽 And we are done! Thank you @PrinSciAdvGoI for suggesting this idea and amplifying our threads every week. We hope this is useful for curators looking to elevate their org's interactions. Visit us at indscicomm.blog for more #scicomm and @ us for more discussions! 👋🏽