DACS General Meeting
June 2013

Meeting Review:
Reasons to Reconsider Twitter: Leveraging Social Networking for your Career Campaign

By Andrew Woodruff

Jennifer Scott (HireEffect LLC) gave a fast-moving and informative talk about Twitter and how to use it effectively.  Her presentation title indicated that she would discuss how to use Twitter in a career hunt, but she quickly moved way past that.

Jennifer started the evening by describing and contrasting the various social networking organizations, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest.  In particular, she explained that Twitter allows users to search for topics or for people with certain interests … and users can rapidly build networks of people who share that interest.  This approach is not possible with Facebook, because Facebook precludes users from searching other users’ content and focuses instead on more personal sharing between people who already know one another.

Twitter can be used for research on specific topics, as well as for social networking … and Jennifer personally uses it for both.  However, she strongly dispelled the notion that Twitter is just about useless chatting like “I’m walking my dog right now.”  She admitted that such chatting was indeed how Twitter initially marketed itself … and also how Twitter was initially utilized … but, she explained, Twitter is now used for much more than that.

Jennifer outlined how one can use Twitter effectively:

  • Information Gathering.  Anyone can search Twitter; a Twitter account is not required.  Anyone can access all posts on Twitter.
  • Information Sharing.  Twitter users can share information.  Twitter users at the Boston Marathon tweeted about the bombings before news appeared on any mainstream news media.
  • Socializing.  Twitter can be used simply as a way to socialize and develop friendships.  Jennifer said she is planning a trip to another state, where she hopes to visit people she met on Twitter.
  • Connecting.  Twitter can be used to build relationships between people who share interests.

People who use multiple social networking organizations may want to use a “dashboard” like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.  Jennifer demonstrated Hootsuite with the overhead projector.  A dashboard is a free application that allows a user to simultaneously post to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.  When a user writes a post, they can select which social networking organizations will receive the post.  The dashboard will even handle multiple different Twitter accounts, for those that may have two businesses.

Each of the social networking organizations has developed its own new vocabulary.  Jennifer explained the similar phrases that appear, such as “Follow me” on Twitter, “Like me” on Facebook, and “Pin This” on Pinterest.  She explained some of the specific Twitter vocabulary:

  • Tweet.  A message that a user sends out.  A tweet can be no longer than 140 characters.
  • Follow.  If a user follows someone, the tweets from the person being followed appear on the follower’s account and can be seen by others.  The person being followed can see the follower’s screen name … and can optionally block that particular user from following.
  • Re-Tweet (RT).  A user can forward a received tweet by resending it.  This is re-tweeting.  The Twitter application includes a button to make it easy to re-tweet.  Active Twitter users generally hope that others will RT their messages, so that a larger number of users will see these messages.
  • Call out or Reply (@).  A user can reply to a particular tweet.  This reply will get posted on the user’s account, and others can see the reply.  Jennifer said that just after the Boston Marathon bombings, she saw someone’s tweet “I can’t believe what just happened in Boston” … so she searched on @Boston … and received 50,000 messages.  (Jennifer said this was how she learned about the Boston bombings … all before it appeared on the mainstream news.)
  • Direct Message (DM).  A user can send a private message to a single other user … so long as both users are following one another.  This is a means to privately socialize or to exchange information.
  • Hashtag (#).  A hashtag is a keyword.  A hashtag generally makes a tweet more likely to be seen and re-tweeted.

Twitter users frequently use URL shorteners, such as ow.ly, bitly, and goo.gl.  These services create very short URL’s, which are web addresses, in order to save space in 140-character tweets.

Twitter limits the number of people a user is allowed to follow.  The limits are high and will not impact most users.  Users who have many followers are allowed to follow more other people.

Jennifer discussed how to use Twitter in a career hunt, as promised in her presentation title.  She recommended a group of Twitter users that meets at noon (Eastern time) every Friday.  Any user can access this group with the hashtag #HireFriday.  The group includes some helpful people who make a point of retweeting tweets from job seekers, so long as the job hunters send their tweets during the meeting.

Jennifer founded HireEffect LLC (www.hireeffect.com, @HireEffect), which is an independent job search coaching firm specializing in reverse-engineering the recruitment process and helping executives leverage social media to enhance their networking efforts.

.



Click Here

DacsGear!
Mugs and more, visit CafePress to order

 
 
© Danbury Area Computer Society, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Web Site Terms & Conditions of Use