Tweet Tweet! Why educators (YOU!) need twitter

Why teachers need a twitter account

I don't care to know what my friends are doing every second of every day.  Facebook statuses keep me pretty up to date already, and for the longest time I didn't know what twitter was even for.

News flash: I'm not following people I know in real life on twitter (mostly)

I follow educational topics and trends.

How?

Tweetdeck.

Tweetdeck is a site that allows you to have columns set up for each topic you follow.  I can scroll to the right and add tons of topics.  Here is a picture of mine:

How do you follow topics?

After people tweet a message, the will include a hashtag.  A hashtag is the pound sign # followed by an abbreviated group name.  For example, I'm interested in Educational Applications.  So I follow the hashtag #edapp.  There is a very simple "Add Column" section on Tweetdeck.

Here is Cybrary Man's great list of educational hashtags to follow.  Just add the ones that are interesting to you.

Promote your website/blog to a much wider audience/

How to make a twitter post

How would you like for every elementary teacher that has a twitter account to know when you make a new blog post?  Now you can!  You will need to shorten your blog URL by going to a site such a bit.ly. It will easily give you the shortened URL to your blog that you can now add to your twitter message.  Add in hashtags for every group you want to reach.  For example, one of my posts may look like this: "Come see my list of FREE educational apps http://bit.ly/iNIZkR #elemchat #homeschool #edtech"

Now I've reached an audience of elementary teachers, homeschools, and educational technology enthusiasts!   Marketing magic happens as people start re-tweeting your status, so it shows up in the feeds again and again!  You could easily go viral with a good topic and have significant traffic generated for your blog.  

Educational Chats on Twitter
Check out this calendar on all the weekly educational chats that happen on twitter!  You can join in anytime.  I'm going to try to start participating in the #Elemchat (Elementary Chats) Thursday at 3pm.  Check out Cybrary Man's list of Educational Chats and get started in the next one!

You can get started by following me!  :)