Thread by @_karmacap

Went to an engaging workshop on Twitter for academics led by the fab @rdmersey, Professor & Assoc dean of research @MedillSchool @NorthwesternU. She grounded the talk in research on media & psychology (👌🏼) & since I still consider myself a twitter noob here were my takeaways:

Consistency of engagement is more important than quantity of engagement. The algorithms reward you for regular logins, regular posts/engagement, regularly following people who share your interests. A minute of checking Twitter every day > bingeing on it once a week 🤳

Think about retweeting like a cocktail party 🍸🍸- connecting people or passing on good info that may be useful to others. Don’t retweet without reading something - RTing can come across as if you are endorsing something (even if you say RT doesn’t equal endorsement in your bio)

Minimize the number of posts that only market yourself. Instead, talk about your ideas - the substance of your work and why it matters to the public. Relatedly, shine a light on others whose work you admire, your students, colleagues, etc.

(and I’ll add to this by saying we should promote the voices of early career folks, contingent/NTE faculty, women, POC, lgbtq folks, and any others whose ideas are underrepresented in the academy - thanks to @TheOpEdProject #PublicVoices fellowship for drilling this into me!)

And my favorite nuggets were about content, timing, and analytics!

Use 1-2 hashtags - research shows diminishing returns w/>5 hashtags
#AcademicTwitter #scicomm

Tweets with exclamation points!!! - more likely to be retweeted (this over-user of exclamation points is really into this suggestion), as are tweets with pics, emojis, gifs, and personality! ✨✨✨

Tweets on Sundays get the most attention & most r/ts occur in the evening

OH GOD SCREEN TIME IS TELLING ME I HAVE 5 MIN LEFT

I digress.

Finally: Look at your analytics! (I had no idea I could do this beyond likes and RTs! Blew my mind. analytics.twitter.com

Also - don’t focus too much on likes/RTs as a measure of your visibility! Also consider the number of impressions your tweets & RTs make.

There was lots more in the workshop! But this was what resonated with me at my stage in twitter usage.

Thanks Rachel @rdmersey (& the office of the provost @NorthwesternU for sponsoring such awesome professional development opportunities!) 🙏🏼