![\"twitterstatsfeb2016\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/files\/2016\/02\/twitterstatsfeb2016.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nStill, I haven\u2019t been able to shake the feeling that I\u2019ve been \/\u00a0 am doing it wrong. It feels too automatic, too habitual, too much like I\u2019m going through the motions. I\u2019m pushing the metrics but I\u2019m not sure that I\u2019m connecting<\/em>. I don\u2019t want this to just be a feed. I want it to mean something, both to me and to the people that follow me.<\/p>\n With that in mind, I\u2019ve reflected on how I might be able to improve my practice in this area, and have come up with the following guidelines that I\u2019m going to try to keep in mind going forward.<\/p>\n Focus on time<\/strong>. What is happening now? What am I doing? What am I seeing? What have I accomplished? What will be happening in the future?<\/p>\n Avoid sharing news or items of interest<\/strong>. People who want to know what is happening in the world, even what is happening closer to home, have other (far better) ways of finding this out. They don\u2019t need me to cull\/curate the daily news stream for them. The exception might be when these things are closely related to me and\/or my work. When in doubt, don\u2019t share. (I also know from Twitter\u2019s analytics that these kinds of tweets get very little in the way of engagement.)<\/p>\n This is actually going to be one of the hardest changes to make. I\u2019ve formed a deeply ingrained habit formed over the past 15+ years of scanning news feeds and sharing what I come across. This started with blogging and shifted to Twitter and Facebook. I actually find it hard to scan\/read and not<\/em> share. But I know this is a twitch habit, a pacifier, and that it doesn\u2019t bring all that much value to myself or my readers\/followers. Having said that, I do have a few pressure valves that I can use to redirect this habit:\u00a0pinterest <\/a>(images) and pinboard<\/a> (links). And of course there is this blog, but the overhead of writing a blog post is so high that I don\u2019t expect it to happen very often.<\/p>\n Avoid sharing too many links to Library resources<\/strong>. This might sound counter intuitive, but my thinking is if my tweet stream is primarily<\/em> links promoting library services, resources, and news then it (I) am going to come across as more of a marketing bot than as a real person who is interested in sharing and connecting with others. I can talk about and point to these things as they relate to what I am doing in the moment, but a steady stream of \u201cdid you know\u201d and \u201clooking for\u201d and similar links isn\u2019t likely to provide much value to anyone.<\/p>\n Now I know from even a few weeks that I have a lot of work to do to raise awareness and help students learn about the resources and services that the Library has to offer. But dumping these into a Twitter stream isn\u2019t the way to do it. (Worse is that the metrics might make me feel like I am accomplishing something, when in fact I\u2019m not.)<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n These are small changes, easy to understand but possible hard to put into practice. It means changing habits and also changing how I think about Twitter. But I still believe that there is a real potential in using Twitter to connect with my community, so\u00a0 it is an effort that is worth making.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the past few weeks I\u2019ve been making an effort to shift my use of Twitter over to being a way to reach out and connect with students and faculty studying (or interested in) business and management. Looking back over … Continue reading