Twitter

Twitter can be updated with content on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis.  You should develop a plan that details the minimum frequency of updates. 

Twitter is very fast moving.  One can interact quickly with large groups of people.  Twitter can also increase your interactions, drive up awareness of your existence.  Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, though it is a good idea to aim for 120 characters to enable others to retweet or share your post.  Twitter users expect abbreviations and shorthand when tweeting, though it is important to review tweets before posting to insure that they cannot be misinterpreted or misread. 

Twitter hashtags

Twitter uses hashtags to sort and organize tweets.  Here are some current hashtags that are relevant to early intervention:

#B25, #ece, #earlyed, #PartC, #PartCIDEA,  #prek, #parenting, #autism, #assistivetech, #spedchat, #education, #specialneeds, #disabilities, #sped, #at, #cpchat, #edpolicy, #earlychildhood

It is important to note that hashtags are constantly being added/revised.  For instance, a hashtag for this conference might be:  #2012MEIC or #MEIC2012 or even #MEIC12.

Twitter posts are most often retweeted from 8-11am EST and from 1-3pm EST.  Similar to Facebook, it is important to parse out tweets, so that you don’t overload your followers.  However, one can post the same post repeatedly on twitter as the stream moves so fast that repeats are often the only way to be seen.

Hands-free Tweeting

One way to take advantage of what we know about twitter is to use an app to schedule tweets.  There are many out there, three popular apps:  Socialoomph, Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.