As the Community Manager for AEA, I am the voice behind our twitter page. Joining Twitter and interacting on the site can sometimes be a daunting task. I am here to show you that it is easy to join twitter and actively engage other users.
So, why join Twitter?. The site is a great resource for both your professional and personal life. Your colleagues and friends are on Twitter and you don’t want to miss out on the conversations.
Rad Resource: Here are the top five reasons to join Twitter
- You control the content
Unlike Facebook, where you can’t always control the posts that you want to see in your newsfeed, Twitter is more of a one-way street –if someone follows you, you’re not automatically obligated to read about his or her life. You can choose who you want to follow and what you want your twitter feed to focus on. For example, if you want your twitter feed to focus on evaluation, then follow other evaluation professionals who tweet about topics that resonate with your interests. Click here to see a past blog post with a list of evaluators you can follow.
A common misconception: Just because you are on Twitter, does not mean you have to see what Kim Kardashian is eating for breakfast—you have to choose to follow her to get this exclusive scoop.
- It’s a news source
Twitter can help you stay up-to-date on evaluation trends and the latest evaluation news. Twitter members post articles, interesting facts, and tips and tricks focused on creating better evaluations. You can use a hashtag to follow certain trends. Popular hashtags that we follow are: #eval, #YearofEval, #dataviz.
- Twitter is a great resource for Networking
Twitter is a great place to find other professionals who share your interests. A big draw for the site is that it connects everyone from CEOs to comedians with everyday people. Follow people that you find interesting and start a conversation with them. Bounce evaluation techniques and ideas off each other. Before you know it, you have created a strong network of evaluation supporters, professionals, and leaders.
- Stay connected at conferences
Twitter is a great resource when you are attending a conference. Most conferences have a hashtag for their event (ie: #Eval15 for Evaluation 2015) which you can follow on Twitter and stay up-to-date on conference news and announcements.
Tweeting can be a great way to reflect on your learning while attending a conference and can provide a useful record of key points. Tweet good sound bites, bits of new knowledge, quotes from presenters, your own opinions or connections you are making, or interesting facts or statistics. This provides a great summary of the event and helps others gain more out of the conference—especially if they were not able to attend or missed a session.
Click here to see a past AEA365 post about the success of last year’s event hashtag (#Eval14)
- Its only 140 characters!
If you’re anything like me, you can read novels, in-depth features, and articles several thousand words long, but there are times when you’d rather not have to. Twitter is short, sweet, and straight to the point! It also presents a fun challenge—express yourself in 140 characters or less.
Be sure to follow AEA on Twitter(@aeaweb) . If you’re already connected, please feel free to print this out and give it to a colleague of yours. They just might be interested in joining the conversation.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.