My Twitter Journey
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I wasn’t that active on Twitter before I took the social media class. However, from September 1 till now I’ve done an obvious Twitter work and my Twitter activity has increased to a good extent. I’ve developed my Twitter page step by step from creating lists and moments to following people and pages that are related to my major and interests. I’ve made 117 tweets through live tweeting, hard news, and retweeting. In turn, my tweets received a response of 66 likes, 7 retweets and 1 reply during this 60 day period.
Since the beginning of this course, many of my tweets became popular. For example, my tweet about a guy who fell down during Ashura Commemoration due to bleeding got 1,116 impression and 93 engagements. This tweet was a hard news story I was covering at that time.
There are many other examples of my popular tweets including my tweet about the event done at AUB for children affected by cancer that got 332 impressions and 16 engagements and my tweet about the presentation Journalist Mahmoud Ghazayel gave us concerning media content verification.
As I interacted more on Twitter my followers increased to 48 and my followings also increased to 207. At the beginning of this course, I only had 2 or 3 followers but as I proceeded and through the steps Dr. Monika Halkort taught us to follow such as following people we are concerned about and who are related to our interests and major, creating lists ( I’ve created 4 lists), moments (2 moments) and retweeting, my Twitter page is getting more advanced day after day. The most active among my followers are Startup Superstar, a network for top startup companies & business entrepreneurs around the world (which has 455K tweets), M LeMont (461K tweets), and Todd Carey (118K tweets). The most useful and informative follower for me is Todd Carey, since I’m one of his fans and I love his style and voice. I always check out his page to know whenever he publishes a new album.
There is a relation between the amount of tweets people make and how relevant they are for others interests and this is shown in the number of likes, retweets and followers they get. For example, I will follow someone or a particular page if it’s content is relevant to my interest and my information needs. And when I like a tweet that meets my interests many other tweets from the same source start popping up in my page. Hence when they get a lot of likes, people will consequently post things related and which are in turn relevant.
Concerning my lists, I’ve created 4 lists: Social media, news conduct, journalism writing, and drawing lists. The purpose behind their creation is to organize my Twitter home and make it less crowded, and in this way I can check stuff related to each other (same topic) at the same time rather than scrolling down searching for them randomly. My journalism writing list (contains 13 members) is very useful since I’m studying Journalism. It teaches how to write in a correct and professional way. This list contains researches, studies and grammar tips that can benefit any journalist, and I check it when I have to write a research paper or a critique. Moreover, my news conduct list (15 members) contains news coverage that provide me with local and international news such as newspapers and TV stations and I check it every day. Well, since I usually draw, drawing is among my interests hence I created the drawing list (4 members) to take ideas for my new drawings but I check it only in my free times. Finally my social media list (8 members) was created to be tuned with all the news my classmates are tweeting concerning the course. I check this list every time I have a social media class. When I meet a person or a page related to those 4 lists, I add them immediately. I remove members only when their direction and type of their tweets are changed and don’t meet my interests.
These lists are very effective for me in staying up to date. Especially the news conduct list that provides me with news happening around the world. For example, yesterday I knew about the death of the Lebanese Musician Melhem Barakat through my news conduct list and followed up his funeral details today.
Lastly, to enhance my overall Twitter experience, I’m planning to continue practicing on live tweeting to tweet like a pro. Moreover, to follow more pages and people that will help me through my journey in Journalism. Furthermore,There are many sources I use for learning how to make Twitter work best for my purpose. One of them is twitter itself, in addition to Internet, friends and social media class. In twitter there are many pages that provide tips on how to use twitter as a new member such as Twitter support. Also, I search Google sometimes or ask my friends who are old Twitter users and can help me when facing troubles. Finally, of course without taking social media course, I wouldn’t have felt the importance of using Twitter on daily basis.
