By Toivo Mvula
Friday 7 May 2010
Wednesday 5 May 2010
My Twitter Experience
By Toivo Mvula
I’ve been a twitterer since early 2009, but I only really started using it actively when I came to the UK (Scotland) for my postgraduate studies.
Joining and using Twitter is compulsory for the Digital Media module for the MSc Strategic Public Relations and Communication Management course at the University of Stirling.
We were not only required to share our blog posts (another compulsory requirement of the module) with our Twitter followers, but also to learn more about how Twitter works, how best to use it, and its benefits to public relations and communications practitioners.
My followers include entertainers, social media experts, PR associations, politicians, friends, magazines, newspapers and other news media.
For those who don’t know what Twitter is, it is a micro-blogging and social networking site that allows its users to send and read messages known as tweets. You can read more about Twitter on Wikipedia.
I think the reason why I started using Twitter more and more each and every day was because of the UK elections. I have a great interest in politics (having been a journalist) and since I missed out on Barack Obama’s use of Twitter and other social networking sites during the 2008 U.S Presidential Election, I wanted to experience what it was like and how political parties were using social media to campaign.
Although the UK political parties’ campaigns on Twitter received very little coverage, I think they were still very active, despite their low following.
The media coverage was more about the topics/debates that were ‘trending’ on Twitter and this is what encouraged me to tweet more and more, because I joined the debates, especially the ones relating to the UK elections.
My Twitter statistics are as follows: Following 502 people and organisations; 230 followers; 172 tweets and counting.
I will definitely continue to use Twitter more in the future, because I intend to continue blogging and share my blog posts with my followers and also engage in the discussions that are trending anywhere around the world.
Joining and using Twitter is compulsory for the Digital Media module for the MSc Strategic Public Relations and Communication Management course at the University of Stirling.
We were not only required to share our blog posts (another compulsory requirement of the module) with our Twitter followers, but also to learn more about how Twitter works, how best to use it, and its benefits to public relations and communications practitioners.
My followers include entertainers, social media experts, PR associations, politicians, friends, magazines, newspapers and other news media.
For those who don’t know what Twitter is, it is a micro-blogging and social networking site that allows its users to send and read messages known as tweets. You can read more about Twitter on Wikipedia.
Although the UK political parties’ campaigns on Twitter received very little coverage, I think they were still very active, despite their low following.
The media coverage was more about the topics/debates that were ‘trending’ on Twitter and this is what encouraged me to tweet more and more, because I joined the debates, especially the ones relating to the UK elections.
My Twitter statistics are as follows: Following 502 people and organisations; 230 followers; 172 tweets and counting.
I will definitely continue to use Twitter more in the future, because I intend to continue blogging and share my blog posts with my followers and also engage in the discussions that are trending anywhere around the world.
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