Twitter is a ‘microblogging’ platform that allows its users to ‘tweet’ and share short messages of up to 140 characters in length. Twitter is great for sharing news and events, creating conversation, and keeping audiences updated with breaking news.
The following steps will help you get started on Twitter, but these are just the basics – if you want to make your Twitter presence a success, there are literally thousands of invaluable guides, how-tos and top tips on the web that will give you confidence in your Twitter strategy.
Contact the Communications Team
Contact the Communications Team to discuss your requirements and aims. The team can help you decide if Twitter will help promote your area.
Build your plan
Put together a plan for the type of content you will tweet, how often you can tweet, what you want Twitter to achieve and how you will build your followers (see Should You Use Social Media?).
Get set up
Read Twitter’s guides to getting started and signing up. These will walk you through the basic and intermediate steps of setting up your feed.
Edit your page details
Ensure that your Page name and bio clearly states your area’s connection to Brunel University, and upload an approved logo profile picture in line with Brunel's Social Media Policy.
Think very carefully about your Twitter name before completing the sign-up process. While it’s possible to change it after you’ve set up your account, it can be very confusing to your audience. Remember: names are limited to 15 characters, so you will need to ensure your ‘Bio’ is very clear about who you are and what your connection is to Brunel University.
Follow other Brunel people
Remember to ‘like’ other relevant Brunel University Twitter accounts – in particular the official Brunel University Twitter feed, Brunel International and the Union of Brunel Students (see Brunel University social media presences for the index). You can then share content tweeted by them, and potentially get your content retweeted to a larger number of followers.
Understand what makes Twitter tick
To make the most of Twitter, you’ll need to get to grips with how to take advantage of RTs, hashtags, link shorteners, etc. Again, the Twitter Help Centre will help you to work out what these are and how to use them successfully.
Edit your links
If you are linking to a news item or piece of information somewhere else on the web, you may need to edit the description to help encourage click-throughs to the content. Front-load your description with key words and/or important information, and distil the description into as few words as possible without interfering with the meaning.
Shorten your links
Consider using a service like http://bitly.com or http://tiny.cc/ to shorten long links that would otherwise take up valuable tweet space. If you sign up for these services, you can also use the shortened urls to track how many people clicked on your links in the first place – a valuable way of measuring the success of your content.
