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Thursday, 7 May 2009

Student Devlopment on Twitter

I recently created a Twitter account for Student Development here at the University of Leicester (http://twitter.com/uolsd). I now need to decide what I'm going to do with it. As you'll see I've already tweeted from it a couple of times, but I need to know what students will find most useful and what the etiquette should be for a more institutional type account. So here are some questions.
  1. What kind of things should I tweet about? Forthcoming events, relevant resources, different services we offer - anything else?
  2. How often should I tweet from it (I don't want to annoy people)? I was thinking maybe once a day?
  3. If students follow me (it) should I (it) follow them? Is that the polite thing to do or might some consider that snooping?
  4. What about a picture - currently it's just :)
  5. How do I explain it to students who don't currently use Twitter? I was thinking a direct link from our website for those who do and a link to an information page about how it might be useful for those who don't (plus an RSS feed in of tweets).
Is there anything else I need to bear in mind?
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6 comments:

  1. AJ Cann7 May 2009 at 17:19

    "What kind of things should I tweet about?"
    Remember that Twitter is about conversation, it's not a broadcast medium. The occasional announcement is fine.

    "How often should I tweet from it?"
    Depends on the frequency the conversation demands.

    "If students follow me (it) should I (it) follow them?"
    Yes, or you can't have a conversation.

    "How do I explain it to students who don’t currently use Twitter?"
    a) Make it useful so students want to use it!
    b) Make it go viral - student-student recruitment (see a).

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  2. David Andrew7 May 2009 at 17:24

    Put your twitter updates widget in a more prominent place so they see it - maybe on its own webpage

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  3. JayJay7 May 2009 at 17:28

    The PercyGee Twitter account is going to be the main voice of the student union next year (particular for the building work announcements and conversations about what is happening and when it is happening) - possibly work with that? I'm going to have access to that account so we can work together to sync student activity related things together.

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  4. Stuart Johnson7 May 2009 at 17:30

    Thanks Alan - great stuff

    ReplyDelete
  5. Stuart Johnson7 May 2009 at 17:30

    Hi JayJay - linking up with Percy would be great. Let's chat about it sometime...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Twittbot « Developing stuff15 June 2009 at 10:29

    [...] get past stage 2 of the 3 stage set up process. I blogged a while ago about wanting to use Twitter for Student Development but since then I’ve been, at best, sporadic in my use of the account. I’m aware that I [...]

    ReplyDelete

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