Social Media Special - Twitter

We are starting some new blog post topics here at the Dorset Team blog. The first Wednesday of each month will be a Social Media Special post - focusing on a different social media each week, and ideas on how to use them!

Our first feature is about Twitter:  https://twitter.com/

How many of you use Twitter? Do you know that we run a Dorset Team Twitter Chat each week?

For those of you who are new to Twitter...

Some Twitter Basics:

• It's a constantly updating feed of small snippets (or 'tweets') of news or chat - maximum 280 characters long (the limit used to be 140 characters and was increased in Nov 2017)
• Hashtags play a large part of tweets - helping you find new people to follow, keep up with trending topics, and join in with Twitter chats
• Twitter chats are scheduled time slots, usually an hour long, when people use the same hashtag to chat together and share each others tweets - it's a great chance to network
• Tweets can be easily re-tweeted - shared to someone else's twitter profile. So don't share anything on twitter that you wouldn't want other people to possibly share on their feeds
• You can add photos, videos, html links, and more to your tweets
• You can search twitter to find people or hashtags - if you want to try it out then go and search #DorsetTeam to see what the team has been sharing lately!

You can see a twitter starting guide here to find out more details: https://help.twitter.com/en/twitter-guide

Your tweets can be business like - sharing new products, behind the scenes, special offers etc, or they can be chatty - what you've been up to, what the weather is like, a recent purchase you are excited about. Reply to other people's tweets and it might turn into a conversation - other people can read it too while you are tweeting, so more people might join in and reply too (you can also send people private messages, as long as they follow you on Twitter).

If you are new to Twitter, or if you haven't used it as much as you should, then jump on and say something right now! Make sure you follow some people and get interacting too. Make sure you include the #DorsetTeam hashtag so we can see your tweet!

Our Twitter hour is Tuesday from 7.30pm - 8.30pm. The Dorset Team Twitter profile (https://twitter.com/DorsetTeam) will post questions to get the chat started, and you can join in as much or as little as you want. Come and say 'hi' next Tuesday!

Next month on the first Wednesday we will be talking about Instagram. If you missed our blog post last week about the March Meet The Maker Instagram challenge then check it out here: https://dorsetteam.blogspot.com/2018/02/march-meet-maker.html 

Next week we will be sharing another new blog topic, check back on Wednesday!